Why This Week’s ‘Yellowjackets’ Episode Was Star Tawny Cypress’ ‘Least-Favorite’
Yellowjackets went from zero to 100,000 real quick this week, with a much more shocking, engrossing (ahem) episode than the season premiere. Considering all of the darkness that befalls our favorite former soccer players in episode 2, it’s no wonder star Tawny Cypress (Adult Taissa) can hardly bear to talk about it.
“It’s my least-favorite episode,” Cypress tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, in a phone interview ahead of Sunday’s premiere. But that’s not because of what happens in those terrifying final moments, which could understandably turn off anyone with a sensitive stomach. What Cypress struggled most with, story-wise, was her own character’s increasingly disturbing storyline.
(Warning: Spoilers for Yellowjackets Season 2, episode 2 follow.)
Episode 2 finds adult Taissa on the verge of a serious breakdown, as she continues to struggle with her disturbing blackouts. (In the past, she’s woken up in a tree, chewed on her own hand, and chased after an imaginary wolf.) Determined not to fall asleep, she’s chugging coffee like it’s a part-time job. The hope is that by staying awake, Tai will be able to keep herself from, say, murdering her new pet dog and adding his head to her creepy basement altar.
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If she can get her dangerous sleepwalking in order, perhaps Tai will be able to reunite with her wife Simone (Rukiya Bernard) and son Sammy (Aiden Stoxx). In fact, in Episode 2, it seems like Sammy has made peace with his mom, stopping by the house after school to make a surprise visit. Happy as she is to see her son, Taissa knows that he isn’t supposed to be alone with her right now, so she calls Simone to come pick Sammy up.
But when Simone comes over, Sammy is nowhere to be found. The women hop in the car to go find the son they assume has now run away, Simone steaming in the passenger’s seat while a dazed Taissa drives. But it turns out that Sammy never came to visit Taissa in the first place: Simone gets a phone call demanding she come pick Sammy up from school already.
(L-R) Rukiye Bernard as Simone and Tawny Cypress as Taissa in Yellowjackets.
Taissa then descends into her darkest place, as Simone demands that her wife start reckoning with her complete detachment from reality. But their conversation is cut short, because a dissociating Taissa ends up getting the pair into a horrible car accident.
This was an emotionally difficult scene for Cypress to perform, she says, especially because of her off-screen friendship with Bernard.
“I hate what this other Taissa has done to our Tai’s life, you know? I know that there’s a reason for it, but that whole thing with [Simone]—that was not cool. not cool. I love [Bernard] so much. … The first season we spent so much time together that we got very close, so doing anything to hurt her or her character, that was harder than [killing the dog in Season 1] for me.”
Performing Taissa as two different people—one a haunted survivor, the other a ruthless politician—helps Cypress give herself some more emotional distance in these scenes, however.
“I’m trying to definitely make a distinction between the two,” she says. “Our Taissa”—as in the adult version of the caring, selfless teen Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown) in the 1990s timeline—“is disintegrating into a shadow of herself, while the other Taissa has no moral compass at all. It’s really just her doing what needs to be done, without any consequence. She's got all the strength.”
Other choice words Cypress has for the “other Taissa” include “narcissist” and “manipulative,” someone hellbent on achieving the kind of success that gives her power and privilege over everyone else. “Taissa really needs her picture to look perfect,” she says. “That’s how she is combating what happened to her in her youth, you know? … [Everything she does] is all from a very selfish place, no matter who or what she thinks she loves. If I were friends with Taissa, I’d be like, ‘That family of yours, they’re just props, aren’t they?’”
The dominant Taissa’s decision to compartmentalize her pain in favor of her professional pursuits (and, by the end of Season 1, her family) has clearly been unsuccessful. It’s also likely why her sleepwalking side managed to run so dangerously amok last season, leaving her in a broken, near-catatonic state. It’s also what directly leads to that car crash, Cypress says—which will send Taissa on her journey toward reconciling her two halves.
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“I think [the car crash] is the real beginning of the end for her,” she says. “This is when she starts a journey trying to get rid of this other Taissa and giving herself over to other people to take control and teach her how to get rid of this other Taissa.”
Hopefully Tai makes a stop to pick up Sammy from school somewhere along the way—although she’ll have to get herself a new car first.
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