This story contains spoilers for Yellowjackets. If you’re not caught up yet, check out our Yellowjackets story so far.
Yellowjackets has a funny moment here and there, but it’s not really a series known for its comedy (even when there’s no book club). That hasn’t changed in Season 2, but the most recent episode does happen to feature one of the funniest lines of the series for far — even if it was unintentional (and added in last second, no less).
After “Digestif” finishes illustrating that Coach Ben (Steven Krueger) is having a no-good-very-bad time as hunger starts to overtake him, the attention shifts to the Yellowjackets reconciling with the fact that they’ve just eaten their former teammate. Tai (Jasmin Savoy Brown), on the other hand, can’t believe what the rest of her team has done. She partook as well, of course, she just can’t seem to remember it.
While the rest of the Yellowjackets were caught up in their shared delusion of a Grecian feasts, it seems like Night-Tai once again took over. The rest of the team fully remember the experience despite the fantastical scenes that unfold during their starved gorging, but not Taissa. It’s not until Van (Liv Hewson) responds with “Tai, you ate her face…” that Tai fully realizes that she was a part of the feeding frenzy.
Now, eating your friend — or even frienemy — isn’t funny business. But “Tai, you ate her face…” is an objectively hilarious bit of dialogue. Because of that, and because of Hewson’s harrowed delivery, I wanted to get the details from the source. That couldn’t have been a one and done delivery, right? Hewson and Savoy Brown gave IGN the scoop surrounding the line and just how it ended up added into the script at the last second.
“That was added,” Savoy Brown starts. “Because I’m psychotic.”
“Yeah,” interjects Hewson. “Jasmin went down and took a bite out of her cheek. So they added that line into Episode 3 because they were like, ‘Whoa. Yeah, we are going to have to talk about that.’" 'Her' here is, of course. referring to Jackie's perfectly cooked corpse.
“I was like, ‘it’s here…’” Savoy Brown shrugs. But it seems like the moment that led to the line didn’t make the final cut for “Digestif.” Upon watching the final episodes, both Hewson and Savoy Brown noticed the absence of Tai taking a hunk out of their former teammate's face. “It's not even in the cut,” Savoy Brown laughs. Still, that day on set ended up being an unforgettable one thanks to the nature of the scene.
Apparently, eating Jackfruit Jackie — the name the FX team lovingly gifted to the fake cadaver— was a pretty jarring experience, even for such a tight-knit and often quippy cast.
“I was like, ‘Jasmine!’” laughs Hewson as they pretend to be mortified. But the recreation in the interview was much different from shooting the scene itself. “That line wasn't hard to deliver because it was genuinely very upsetting,” they finished.
The look on their face as they shared this bit of information really drives home just how off putting it was for the cast to go to town on this (fully vegan) “corpse,” but what becomes really interesting in the moment is that Tai is starting to lose moments where she seems fully lucid, too. We’ve theorized over whether or not what’s going on in the forest is a shared delusion or rooted in the supernatural (after all, the snow falling on Jackie’s cooked corpse was a scene created for the audience, and not something the team witnessed in-story) but, if things are rooted in the supernatural, are they more connected to Taissa than she thinks?
Tai’s one of the most grounded teens in the bunch, but the Man with No Eyes has plagued her since the death of her grandmother. We have some theories on his involvement in her sleepwalking, but this seems to be the first time that the teens are realizing that the episodes aren’t just occurring at night. When Tai insists that she must have been sleepwalking, Van reminds her that they were making eye contact and talking to one another, confirming that this wasn’t just her average walkabout.
If The Man with No Eyes is responsible for Tai's sleepwalking and blackouts, then what the heck are his motives? Last week he nearly had her walk off a cliff, and this week he’s making sure she has a full belly? If he’s directing her towards something as Van suspects, I suppose she can’t continue that quest if she starves to death. But, as is often the case with Yellowjackets, there are still a ton of questions to be answered here.
Until we get those answers, though, we’re happy to have this brief, harrowing, and unintentionally hilarious moment between Van and Tai. Hopefully their next jackfruit adventure goes down a little bit easier, ‘cause this can’t be the last person they eat… right?
Amelia is the entertainment Streaming Editor here at IGN. She's also a film and television critic who spends too much time talking about dinosaurs, superheroes, and folk horror. You can usually find her with her dog, Rogers. There may be cheeseburgers involved. Follow her across social @ThatWitchMia
source https://www.ign.com/articles/an-unintentionally-hilarious-yellowjackets-line-was-added-because-jasmin-savoy-brown-was-psychotic