Courtney Eaton, Simone Kessell, and the Return of the Antler Queen
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The first season of Yellowjackets ends with a question: Who the fuck is Lottie Matthews?
Is she a clairvoyant? A teenager with mental health challenges? A cannibal? A survivor? The Antler Queen? All of the above? Actresses Courtney Eaton and Simone Kessell are still trying to figure it out.
“I can say things like I think she's an empath and has this energy that draws people to her and has never really trusted her own brain,” says Eaton, who originated the role, when asked to describe her character over Zoom earlier this month. “But beyond that, it's a little dialogue in my head of being me and Lottie.”
The Yellowjackets story plays out in dual timelines, with one plot taking place immediately after a plane crash in the 1990s that left a teenage soccer team stranded in the wilderness, forced to do unthinkable things, and the other focused on the survivors in the modern day, who are still dealing with the trauma of what happened in the woods. For the better part of season one, it was unclear if Lottie was ever rescued, but in season two of the Lord of the Flies-esque drama, airing now on Showtime, audiences finally meet the adult version of Lottie, played by Kessell, who not only made it home, but is seemingly thriving as a caftan-wearing cult leader who now goes by Charlotte.
“Whether you want to say she's the Antler Queen, the spiritual guru, whether you want to say this is a woman who has a sixth sense, has this energy and this way that she can read people, an intuition, a clairvoyant, a messiah, a healer, there are so many masks to Lottie Matthews,” Kessell says, trying to answer the show's inquiry. “In fact, she's reinvented herself as Charlotte. So you can't define Lottie Matthews. And I think we'll keep asking: 'Who the fuck is Lottie?'”
Initially, Kessell, who recently played Princess Leia's adoptive mother Breha Organa in the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi, didn’t know she was auditioning for the role of adult Lottie, as the whole process was shrouded in secrecy. “They were very cagey in the audition process. They gave me sides that I was like, ‘Oh, so she's what, a psychiatrist? Okay.’ How wrong that was,” she says, noting that while she was familiar with the show, as she is friends with Melanie Lynskey (who plays the adult version of Shauna on the series), at the time, she hadn’t watched season one. “So, I came home and I was typing it in and I was like, ‘What the fuck is this show?’ And then from there, I just kept doing more research.”
After securing the role, Kessell met Eaton shortly before filming started, and the two women shared an instant connection. “When we met at a dinner in pre-production, within the first second we felt like sisters and she was saying, ‘You feel like part of my family.' We started talking about Lottie and I just knew that she was going to take care of her,” Eaton says.
While some of their fellow castmates had collaborated on the older and younger versions of characters in season one—Lynskey and Sophie Nélisse both play Shauna; Tawny Cypress and Jasmin Savoy Brown play Taissa; Christina Ricci and Sammi Hanratty play Misty; and Juliette Lewis and Sophie Thatcher play Natalie—Eaton established Lottie on her own.
“It's interesting because going into this season, I've never had to share a character before, and I was so excited to. But the different timelines of Lotties, we're almost on different planes. She's almost the light and I'm the darkness of the character, but we had little chats here and there about things like, 'What hand do we write with?'” Eaton explains.
“There's this string that ties us together and that was something that we both kind of understood, and she knew from the beginning where Lottie came from. She took it and made this amazing older version.”
Kessell drew from Eaton's performance, using it as the foundation for her version of Lottie. “I love Courtney's intensity and that she has just such a stoic stare. And I was like, 'Ooh, that's really good. I'm going to take a little bit of that and pop that in my pocket and use that when I can,'” she explains. “Without even knowing it, Courtney gave me little acting gifts that I could just take and I was allowed to. It wasn't plagiarism. I was actually allowed to. The first time I was allowed to copy another actor.”
Kessell, who researched cults and cult leaders in preparation for this season, also found inspiration for Charlotte in controversial spiritualist (and the subject of the Hulu documentary The Deep End), Teal Swan. “I was like, 'Let me just watch this woman. What an extraordinary character that she is.' Because behind closed doors, that mask that veil comes off, and that's what I was interested in—not the powerful presenter delivering sermons. I was more intrigued by what happens behind closed doors,” Kessell says.
Eaton compares herself to Lottie several times during our conversation, referencing how similar she is to the teen she plays on TV, but she’s also quick to point out, “It's not like I'm going to start a cult or anything, but a lot of the choices she makes—or the essence of them and where they come from—I think would be my similar choices.” “We have the same instincts,” she says.
They may not have plans to start a commune full of heliotrope-clad acolyte anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean Eaton and Kessell don't already have loyal followers.
“The fan culture's been amazing. The embracing of the Lottie cult leader, they love it. Daily, I get messages asking to join the cult,” Kessell says. Eaton gets those same DMs. “There are Instagrams that will message me like the 'Church of Lottie Day Saints.'”
And while both actresses continue to be impressed by the fans' citizen detective skills when it comes to theories for this season, they were tight-lipped about exactly what to expect from upcoming episodes. But they did hint at struggles for Lottie in the wilderness.
“Younger Lottie is going on a bit of a rollercoaster, and I don't think there's much light for her in the '90s version. She tries a little bit, but it is mostly just downhill for her, which is sad for Lottie,” Eaton says. “But I kind of love her diving into the darkness so she can come out later in life, figuring some stuff out.”
And in both timelines, fans can expect drama between Lottie and Shauna.
“At the end of the season, it definitely ramps up especially between Lottie and Shauna in the past and then in the present,” Kessell adds. “Lottie's a pivotal character this season in both worlds. I think everyone will enjoy it in a way that will make you feel better about your own life.”
Yellowjackets airs Sunday nights on Showtime. Shop Now
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