Melanie Lynskey Savors 'Sharing Very Deeply' with Yellowjackets Costars on Video Chat: 'We're Like Sisters'

Video chat kept the Yellowjackets cast abuzz all through "intense" filming and the worst of the COVID pandemic, star Melanie Lynskey exclusively tells PEOPLE in this week's issue.

The Showtime mystery series filmed in the final months of 2019, and its stars quickly learned they needed a way to decompress in between scenes because, as Lynskey puts it, "the dynamic offset is also very intense, like it cycles through a number of different emotions within the hour."

So one of her costars jumped into action. "Tawny [Cypress] started a text chain and then it turned into Marco Polo because of how Juliette [Lewis] is with the texting," Lynskey, 45, says of Lewis's epic voice-to-texts messages.

"We started to do Marco Polo's to each other and they became really intimate, like we were really sharing very deeply with each other," continues the Emmy nominee. "And so we have this knowledge of each other that's very profound and deep and a lot of respect and love, but we can also really gossip and complain. We're all pretty good at complaining."

Lynskey added, "We're like sisters, you know?"

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Since the show aired from November 2021 to January 2022, Lynskey has been processing fans' massive reaction to the show.

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"I was honestly surprised at what a phenomenon Yellowjackets became," she admits. "I never had the expectations, I've been doing this for 30 years. I felt like it was good, I felt really good about it. And I was like, 'I hope people like it,' but the expansiveness of the response really was amazing to me."

Not only did fans love it, but so did the critics. On July 12, the former Two and a Half Men star received her first Emmy Award nomination.

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"I think that Emmy nomination is more meaningful for a lot of reasons," she tells PEOPLE. "One of which is, I'm sort of past the point in my life where I had hoped for anything like this. I just was kind of happy to be a working actor and grateful for that. And I have health insurance and all that kind of stuff."

Lynskey describes her nomination as "a dream come true for a dream that I stopped to having." She adds, "It feels very, very special."

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As for season 2 of the hit show, which has already revealed several new cast additions and promotions, Lynskey says it "all just feels really exciting."

As for what awaits her character Shauna, the actress says she was in the dark until very recently: "I really don't know anything. Warren Cole who plays my husband emailed me and said, 'What do you know?' And I said, 'I haven't read anything. I don't know anything.' And he said, 'Here's what I have so far.' And he had like quite a lot of information, which surprised me, but I'm not going to give any of that away."

She adds, "I just sort of have been waiting and I figure they'll come to me when they're ready to share something."

"I'm trying to give them enough space because I can't imagine the pressure of your first season being received like that," she acknowledges. "And then every actor wants to know, 'What's happening to me? What's happening to me?' So I'm just like, 'When you're ready, I'll read everything.'"

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The 74th Emmy Awards will air live on Sept. 12 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on NBC. Yellowjackets is streaming now via Showtime.