Melanie Lynskey Says Cate Blanchett, Sarah Paulson Lent Their Trailers on ‘Mrs. America’ So She Could Breastfeed Privately

Abbey White
·3 min read
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Melanie Lynskey says her Mrs. America co-stars Cate Blanchett and Sarah Paulson helped her negotiate better on-set accommodations for Yellowjackets after they offered up their trailers for her to pump and breastfeed while they were all working on the Hulu limited series.

In a new interview with The Independent that published Saturday, Lynskey opened up about navigating Hollywood, including turning down roles and why her Mona Lisa Smile audition made her “feel seen,” her career resurgence (and if she thinks it will last), as well as the rockier time in her relationship with husband Jason Ritter as he addressed his alcohol addiction.

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During the conversation, she praised her Mrs. America co-stars Blanchett and Paulson, calling both women — who were higher up on the limited series’ call sheet — “generous” after they validated and supported her during her first time as a first-time working mother. Lynskey described that experience — doubling up with work onset and being a mom — as “really hard,” but that when she would come to set “and burst into tears,” Blanchett was “very there for me.”

That included the show’s lead and Paulson offering her their trailers so she could have somewhere private to pump and breastfeed.

“These generous women were giving me the things that were afforded to them in their contracts so that my life as a mother would be easier,” she said before adding that when Yellowjackets‘ negotiations began, she then “asked for the world.”

“I wasn’t going to do that again!” she added.

Still speaking to her experience on Yellowjackets, Lynskey also clarified her past reported comments on being body-shamed while she was filming the Showtime series. The actress explained that since those comments were published, it has been “made out to be a cultural thing, but it was literally one time” and only involved a singular person who was at fault.

But her opening up about the incident publicly led to series co-creator Ashley Lyle writing her an email that Lynskey says she’s “going to keep forever.”

“Ashley said how proud she was to have created a show where there is a regular-sized woman who is in a love triangle with two hot guys,” she recalled. “She said that if she had seen something like this when she was a teenager, it would have changed the trajectory of her life. She said that they love me, and they love what I look like.”

At another point in the interview, Lynskey also spoke more about how her and husband Ritter got through a period in which he was grappling with alcohol addiction. The two first opened up about it together on The Drew Barrymore Show, in an honest and vulnerable segment that went viral.

Returning to that moment, the actress shared that while the duo love each other very much — something that was evident during their teary-eyed daytime appearance — “there was not always a light at the end of the tunnel.”

At one point, Lynskey said the duo held a “goodbye party,” as they considered a breakup, with “just the two of us locked in a house for a weekend trying to get it out of our systems.” It didn’t last long, though, with the two back in touch the very next day.

“Things were crazy for a while. It got a lot easier when my husband got sober, which I’m so proud of him for, but we were not two people who were ready for a relationship at all,” she said. “We were at a bad time in our lives, but I’m so grateful to have found him.”

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