Dark arts of a misfit

Former child star Christina Ricci opens up to Lorraine Ali about trying – and failing – to fit Hollywood’s mould.

It started with a small plane crash in the woods and became a global obsession. Yellowjackets, which concludes its first season this week, has become a north star for weekly TV viewers since it premiered in November.

Part survival drama, part witchy mystery, it follows the members of a girls’ high school football team – and, 25 years later, the grown-up survivors – who get stranded in the remote wilderness for 18 months after their aircraft goes down on the way to a tournament.

Merging Mean Girls social dynamics with animalistic ritual, cannibalism and a killer 90s soundtrack, the series moves between 1996 and the present day, with Christina Ricci, New Zealand’s own Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis and Tawny Cypress leading the adult cast.

As outcast Misty Quigley, Ricci portrays a conniving sociopath in nerd’s clothing. She’s a terrifying creature, thanks largely to Ricci’s talent for playing characters with dark, twisted cores: Wednesday Addams of The Addams Family; Katrina Van Tassel of Sleepy Hollow; Selby Wall, lover of female serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster.

But complex female roles weren’t always easy to find. Ricci spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the Hollywood stereotypes she’s tried to avoid, the reasons she relishes Yellowjackets and why we should all stop making fun of Misty’s bad hair.

Historically in film and TV, women – particularly teenage girls – climbed to the top of the pack by being catty or cruel to one another. In Yellowjackets, they’re strong survivalists. And they can be brutal.

‘‘They’re not stereotypes. These are real individual characters, people that remind me of girls I went to school with. Fully formed, whole characters instead of caricatures . . . These could be male characters, in a lot of ways.

‘‘It feels very real to me, like something we don’t see that often with film and television. If a woman is brutal, the entire show

is about how brutal she is and not just another aspect of her character. I also loved the character I was playing. As an actress, I’m always looking for something that I haven’t seen a lot of in Hollywood.’’

Misty is fantastic and terrifying and tragic and ultracompetent.

‘‘What I love about her is the way she expresses her rage. I love the idea of a person who the only viable way for them to express their rage is passive-aggression.

‘‘She’s a small woman. She looks completely innocuous and has no social currency. She’s not ‘hot’. She’s not charming. She’s not cool. So imagine someone like that having gone through their whole life and is still in a place where she’s eking out entertainment and enjoyment and glee from everyday life.

‘‘She’s squeezed like a stress doll. Ultimately, what happens is the eyes and the ears pop out in this comical and yet horrifying way, and that’s very much Misty.

‘‘She is so passive-aggressive, so full of edge, because she’s got so much rage by having been thwarted her whole life. But she can’t express it in the way a 6fttall man would. So it’s all smiles and masking everything. That really awkward laugh when she feels uncomfortable or nervous.’’

In what ways, if any, did you relate to her?

‘‘I am a small woman who

apparently is adorable to people who like to touch me and not take me seriously and like to assume I’m stupid before I open my mouth. And I’m an actress who didn’t go to college, so I must be really dumb. But I can’t be directly hostile or directly confrontational.

‘‘I deal with my anger in a very passive-aggressive way as well when I’m out in public, or in the streets, or dealing with someone in the parking lot who’s cut me off. So I very much related to that, and I love the idea of getting to show that because I don’t feel like I’ve ever played anything where I got to show that manifestation of rage.’’

Yet she’s also a sociopath whose manipulation and ruthlessness serve her well in a live-and-let-die setting.

‘‘The pack is not wrong to shun her. They sense there is something wrong with her, which is why she’s not allowed into the fold. It is a really great, fair, complicated character because you kind of empathise with the fact that she’s always wanted to be accepted and never has been. But then she shows you exactly why she’s not accepted and invited to the party.’’

And her unfortunate sense of style doesn’t help endear her to the crowd.

‘‘Sammi [Hanratty, who plays the younger version of Misty] and I

have talked about this. When we put on the glasses and the wigs, all of a sudden people would start treating us differently.

‘‘People would start teasing me and making corny jokes, dismissing me. I was no longer important, and, in some cases, I was invisible, even though I was like No 3 on the call sheet. It didn’t matter. People react to seeing someone who so clearly has no social value and seems so innocuous.

‘‘She and I talked about how it’s so informative to be treated that way and to then apply that to playing a character that’s been treated this way her whole life.’’

You have played so many interesting and offbeat characters, but I’m assuming those roles were not easy to find. Have you and your castmates talked about the way things have changed for you as the culture has changed?

Yellowjackets ‘‘We’re very aware that we’re getting to play more and more interesting characters. We have discussed the way that things have changed just in terms of being an actress – what you’re allowed to request for yourself.

‘‘A lot of the younger girls on this show are very much able to stand up for themselves and say, ‘No, I won’t do that. I don’t want to do that. I don’t like how I’m being treated.’ And to witness that, having been their age on

film sets, was sort of like, ‘Oh, my God, this is amazing. So are we all allowed to do this?’ It’s so fun not to be hampered by all the traditional requirements that there used to be for female characters . . . in terms of what you are allowed to express as a working actress that would not throw you into the realm of ‘difficult’.’’

What was the most challenging aspect of working on Yellowjackets?

‘‘Misty is a character who expresses herself in a way that people are unfamiliar with. Sometimes people would feel that what I was doing would not be recognisable because it wasn’t traditional. ‘How do we know she’s angry if she’s smiling?’

‘‘There would be discussions about making her more relatable, but I felt we’re in a time and place now where you don’t have to see yourself in the character to be interested or even sympathise.

‘‘It was tough for me because I like to be bold, to make very strong choices and kind of ride the edge. Sometimes maybe it’s too much. Finding that balance where people felt that she was still ‘relatable’, while still being true to the character that I wanted to play, was difficult.’’

The finale of Yellowjackets is on Neon and Sky Go now and SoHo at 9.30pm tonight.