Christina Ricci Gets Misty, In More Ways Than One, With The Multi-Generational Dark Drama YELLOWJACKETS

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede Christina Ricci of the new SHOWTIME series YELLOWJACKETS is a legend in the horror-thriller genre, but she admitted to having a limitation. “I don’t think I’m believable as a scared person,” Ricci revealed in a virtual interview. “Yeah, I did one project where I was supposed to be scared, and I watched it, and I was like, ‘No, I don’t buy it. Way too blasé.’ ” One thing’s for sure when it comes to YELLOWJACKETS: Ricci’s quirky character, Misty Quigley, is not scared, for reasons both big and small. The official debut of YELLOWJACKETS is Sunday, Nov. 14, but the first episode has been available as a sneak-peek on Crave for the past week. Some general details about the first episode are going to be discussed, so consider this a spoiler alert. YELLOWJACKETS is part psychological horror, part survival epic, and part coming-of-age drama, with a large ensemble cast that also includes Juliette Lewis, Melanie Lynskey, and Tawney Cypress. The story is told in two eras: 1996, when a state-champion high school girls’ soccer team experiences a tragic plane crash, and the survivors are stranded in the wilderness for 19 months; and the present day, when those same survivors are still dealing with the ramifications of what they did to stay alive two and a half decades ago. Viewers get a foreboding taste of Misty – who is played impressively by Samantha Hanratty as a teen, perfectly complementing Ricci’s current-day version – in Episode 1. But Episode 2 of YELLOWJACKETS, coming to Crave on Nov. 21, can only be described as “Misty mania,” with all sorts of revelations about the character’s painful path, from awkward equipment manager longing to fit in, to linchpin survivalist, to passive-aggressive and possibly dangerous adult. “I do not like playing likable characters,” said Ricci, who forever will be remembered as a child star – she played Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family movies – but has worked continuously in film and TV for more than 30 years. “I said this first about Misty, and then we all jumped on it, but I always describe myself as sort of a murderous golden retriever. Like, I’m small, and I look sweet, but don’t touch me, I will kill you. So I love playing a character who also has that. Misty looks like an adorable hedgehog, but you know, she’ll kill you with her spikes.” The young Misty is a massive fan of the cool girls on the team in YELLOWJACKETS, but in kind of an obsessive way, and it’s not reciprocated at all – she’s just the goofy equipment manager, and she has absolutely zero social standing with them. And yet, when circumstances change in an extreme way, Misty’s standing changes, too. But what happens after that? Is Misty expected to slide back into obscurity, so to speak? “I think one of the things that made me a good child actress was my ability to sit back and just watch, and to really understand all the personalities around me, before I acted or contributed – and I think that is something Misty has,” Ricci said. “Misty as a young person is practising the art of assessing every situation. Because she’s not included, because she’s forced to the outside, that is what she does. And then you apply what would have been, like, 20 years of punishing rejection, and the way the world deals with a woman who has no social currency. So in the future, assessing situations is what she’s able to do very quickly, to manipulate people.” Ricci is certainly in her creepy element with YELLOWJACKETS, although she believes that her well-established standing as something of a “cult queen” has been largely circumstantial. “They tend to be the projects that get made the most,” said Ricci, referring to horror, or horror-adjacent, films and TV shows. “There was a period of time when I did tons of low-budget dramas and dark comedies, but they don’t get the same attention that the more fantastical, fantasy, sci-fi, horror things get. We’re now at a place where horror is big, and it’s the easiest thing to get financed, to tell you the truth. I love horror, I love watching it. But if the question is, was that a choice on my part, it hasn’t really been a choice. My main drive is always to do things that are different, something that is not like anything I’ve done before, and hopefully not really like anything I’ve seen done too many times by other people.” Well, YELLOWJACKETS is definitely different – largely because of the Misty atmosphere. billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv