Sophie Nélisse - Out Of The Woods: original English interview for L’Officiel Hong Kong
This interview consists of the original english text from my conversation with Sophie Nélisse, conducted in June 2024 for L’Officiel Hong Kong.
Hi lovers!
First of all, and right out of the gate before saying anything else, thank you for finding me here! This interview consists of the original english text from my conversation with Sophie Nélisse, conducted back in June 2024 for L’Officiel Hong Kong. Read on the L’Officiel HK website HERE with translation curtesy of Ke Wu!
We discussed filming Yellowjackets season three, running as a hobby, and paintball in the Yellowjackets’ cabin.
Team credits from the accompanying photoshoot to follow the text!
Until next time. <3
Multi-award winning Canadian actress Sophie Nélisse is more embodied now than ever.
Nélisse never thought she would be an actor. The Montreal native's early years were spent in high competition gymnastics, and it was only a shift to acting in 2010, sparked by a desire to make some extra cash to fund her gymnastics career, that diluted that focus. Only a year into her foray as a signed actor, Nélisse was cast in Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazar.
Until then, her sights had been set on the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. The next few years, in devotion to acting, were a flurry–Nélisse was only eleven years old when she received her Junta and Canadian Screen Award. In 2016, the same year as her would-be Olympic prospect, Nélisse was named by the Toronto International Film Festival as one of four actors that would be inducted into their Rising Stars programme. At the time, the program consisted of intensive specialized training during the festival's run, as well as access to closed industry meetings. Looking back now, by name alone, this title appears to have accurately predicted the reality of what was to come. Today, on a level now more meteoric than ever, Nélisse is a bonafide rising star.
Nowadays, Nélisse is one of only a small cohort of French Canadians that would be considered mainstream stars in Hollywood. Her casting as a young Shauna Shipman in Showtime’s Emmy-nominated psychological thriller Yellowjackets, undeniably, was a turning point into international recognition. The series, set in 1996 and 2021 concurrently, follows the lives and trials of an all-girl soccer team whose plane is downed in the Ontario wilderness. After many of their friends are killed in the initial crash, the survivors, with no way to contact the outside world, are left to fend for themselves; with some eventually resorting to cannibalism. Twenty five years later and unfolding in tandem with the teen’s story, the adult survivors attempt to make sense of their trauma and connect the dots on a series of long-unanswered questions from their time in the wilderness. The series is largely inspired by the true stories of The Donner Party and the 1992 Andes Flight Disaster, as well as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
Today, Nélisse picks the phone at 9am Vancouver time, and tells me that she’s currently on set for the shooting of season three of Yellowjackets. She’s managed to carve out an hour for us to catch up, sneaking away while the rest of the cast shoots scenes that don’t feature her character.
I almost can’t stop the words from exiting my mouth before I ask, “How far into the season are you guys at this point?”, not sure if this information is meant to stay under lock and key.
“Oh no, I can say!” She replies with a smile in her voice “We just started shooting episode two today actually. So we’re right at the beginning.”
Nélisse, a Montreal native, spends six months out of the year during production in Vancouver British Columbia, situated in Canada’s temperate rainforest. I ask if the seemingly near-constant rain stops the cast from shooting the way they plan and she responds, “They [the crew] always find a way around it. We’ve been shifting around scenes when it’s downpouring too hard, and we’ll do what we can when the weather is clear. And we’re actually pretty lucky; we shoot in the forest, and the area we shoot in is densely covered by the trees overhead. So when it trickles, you don't feel the rain at all. We’ve been pretty lucky in that sense this season - between the weather and the circumstances.”
I ask how life in Vancouver has been since returning for filming and Nélisse answers “It’s been nice! I managed to get the same apartment I stayed in last season back for this year, and it's started to feel like coming back to a second home. I live with Courtney Eaton [Lottie in Yellowjackets], and we’ve become best friends. It’s so amazing having her out here. We have our little life together! We joke that we’re like eighty year old women, all we do is walk the dog and cook our food and go to bed at 10pm.”
Being that Nélisse is still so early in the filming of season three, I wonder to myself if she and her counterparts know what lies ahead any more than their characters do.“Do you get your scripts ahead of time, or is it episode-by-episode?”
“We get it episode-by-episode. I don't mind it!” She replies “I can learn my lines pretty quickly. I feel like my character [Shauna], she doesn’t know where she’s headed. None of the girls do! They’re in the wilderness with no idea what to expect. In that way, it kind of makes sense for me”
She pauses for a moment before adding, “If anything, I find it to be a bit harder for our adult counterparts. They have to embody a fully fledged adult character based on the trauma that their teenage selves experienced in the wilderness, and they don’t really know the extent of it - because it hasn't been written yet.”
Speaking of her adult counterpart–played by Melanie Lynski–I ask if the two find themselves touching base often about the two timelines of their shared characters' lives, unfolding in tandem.
“We talked about it a lot in the beginning, when we first started the show. Over time though, I think we realized that we both understood Shauna in the same way, and especially after the first season came out–audiences felt like the match was strong, and it just worked kind of seamlessly. Neither of us wanted to ruin it by overthinking it after that. Nowadays, when we talk we just catch up as friends. She'll tell me about her family and I’ll tell her about my family and friends. It’s purely social now, especially since we never cross paths on set. She’s at the studio, I’m back in the wilderness!”
Speaking of the conception of Shauna as a character, in all her loveable moments and all of her darkness, I ask Nélisse about her process of continuously inventing and reinventing Shauna as she grows into herself - or perhaps into something much more sinister.
“At this point, I think she’s pretty established in my mind. I mean, at this point I’ve played her for two seasons!” She adds “I try to be intentional about letting her breathe, and not overthinking it or getting in my head about it. I don't want to start adding things that aren't necessary or don't need to be there.
“Shauna has had such a massive character arc since season one. When we met her she was feeling very much like she lived in the shadow of Jackie [Ella Purnell], and later on, even found herself coming to like the wilderness. I think it brought out a side of her that she hadn't gotten to know before. Now, I think it’s been about her reappropriating herself and finding her voice. So far in season three… She's showcasing that, and she's not giving a shit anymore. It’s been so fun and fascinating to see her progress over the course of every episode.”
Shauna, as a character, is nothing if not profoundly human. At the start of the first episode of season one, it is revealed that in spite of her longtime friendship with Jackie [played by Ella Purnell], Shauna has been secretly having an affair with her boyfriend Jeff [played by Warren Kole]. As the series progresses, every moment of real or perceived poor decision-making is cushioned by a softness that begs empathy from the viewer.
In season two, two months after Jackie’s untimely demise, a pregnant Shauna spends hours at a time in the team’s meat shed, talking to her deceased friend's corpse. During an argument with a vision of Jackie’s animate ghost, Shauna shoves her friend's lifeless body, which causes her ear to break off. After first pocketing the ear, Shauna eventually gives in and consumes it. This moment marks the first chronological instance of cannibalism we see on screen, and Shauna as the first Yellowjacket to consume human flesh. When the team discovers that Shauna’s time in the shed hasn’t only been spent practicing animal butchery, several of her own teammates come to her defense, despite the inherent discomfort of the situation. Nothing here is ideal. Shauna, they decide, deserves to process Jackie’s death however she feels is right… Even if that means treating her friend’s body like a doll.
With all of these actions and potential missteps still fresh in mind, netizens seem to rally around Shauna, in a way that can’t be explained simply by her main-character status. A basic search on TikTok or X (formerly Twitter) will yield hundreds if not thousands of fan-made video compilations and theories, the lion's share of which feature Nélisse’s character.
We chat about the nature of portraying a character that is both so flawed and so beloved, and Nélisse muses, “I think on a broader level because these girls are so flawed and the circumstances are dark, it only holds the mirror up to the viewer even more to show understanding to them. It’s a powerful reminder that the experience of being human isn't black and white. We are all flawed people, and no matter what it is, it comes from something, if that's nature or nurture, that can be pinpointed within us. I think what’s so interesting about this series is that we get to see firsthand where those flaws and complexities come from for the characters, in a really direct way. We get to come to understand them, and even empathize with them, and sometimes hate them for the things they do!” She laughs “It really feels like an exploration of the full spectrum of what a human can be.”
I ask, “Has there ever been a moment where you’ve thought to yourself Shauna, I just can’t back you up on this one?”
“There’s never been a moment where I’ve thought to myself ‘oh, Shauna was too mean here’ or ‘she’s gone too far’. I’ve portrayed her for so long that I can’t not see every action she takes for being a product of the moment she’s in and the emotional toolkit she has in that moment. I love how nuanced she is, and I’ve come to love and appreciate that we show the darker sides of the girls. I really feel like it’s valuable to recognize that doing something unfavorable doesn’t make any of us an irredeemable person.”
Late last year in 2023, Nélisse’s most recent film, Irena’s Vow, premiered at TIFF. Since then, the reception has been nothing short of glowing. The film follows the real life story of Polish nurse Irena Gut Opdyke, who saved the lives of twelve Jewish people during the Holocaust by hiding them in the cellar of the hotel she worked in, one which was frequented by Nazi officials. Irena’s Vow was written by Dan Gordon, who also wrote the Broadway play of the same name, on which the film was based.
Nélisse muses about taking on the role of Irena, stating, “Yeah it was a very, very surreal project. I feel honored that it was offered to me. I didn’t know Irena’s story going into shooting and when I read the script I thought to myself this is so fantastical, surely there's some fiction mixed in. But no, everything in the script is true! I went on to read her biography and did extensive research on her life and experiences. I think it’s so wild just how many stories about WWII are still going untold; so many unsung heroes.
“What I love especially about Irena’s Vow,” she continues, “is that the subject matter remains so timely and relevant to today, and the lessons from her story reach beyond her time into the present. We still see unrest all around the globe right now, in Ukraine and of course in Gaza. Irena, to me, is proof that a little goes a long way. She was so open and non-judgemental and let her love for humanity be her compass even in the face of danger. I think if we were all a little bit more like her and embraced one another despite our differences, we’d live in a much better world.”
In October of 2023, Deadline announced that Nélisse was cast in Director Corin Hardy’s new high school horror feature Whistle. “It’s about a group of friends who stumble upon an ancient Aztec artifact; a Death Whistle,” she says. “The concept goes that when you blow it, you summon your death. Everyone blows it… and then finding themselves being chased down by their own impending deaths, the characters have to come back together to defeat it.”
Written by Owen Eggerton and now wrapped as of late last year, the project is now set to release after premiering at TIFF in September.
Between Shauna, Irena of Irena’s Vow, and now her character in Whistle, Nélisse has formed a reputation in the industry for treating even her most cerebral characters with a deserved patience.
I ask, “Has it been an intentional choice, this run of characters with dark and oftentimes gritty stories?”
“I think, for me, the through-line is that I love a complex character. I see Yellowjackets as a thriller more than a horror in a lot of ways, and I think that’s been part of why I continue to love the story, and why I love playing Shauna so much. I look for complexity and relatability and an interesting character arc above all else, and the more parts of that full spectrum of human emotion we see in a character, I think the more we can relate to them. And honestly, that’s probably my all time favorite part of my job; that I get to give a voice to the stories of people who may not have one. I remember the first time I felt so compelled by a character, and like someone understood or saw me. It was so powerful to feel like I wasn't alone in that moment, and like a story like mine was worth telling.
“In terms of how dark the projects I’ve been on have been, it’s very true. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that I admittedly watch a lot of very dark and sad films and TV on my own time.” She laughs “But also, I just havent had the opportunity to do comedy, and I’d love to try it out! It’d be such a welcome challenge and I definitely don’t feel particularly attached or tied down to one genre. I come from an athletic background having done high competitive gymnastics, so I would love to do an action movie. I’d love to go through that whole process of having to do niche physical training for a role and learn new skills in that realm.”
We chat for a while about her favorite films of the last few years (Nélisse loved The Banshees of Inisherin, Triangle of Sadness, and indie flick Blue Jeans, to name a few) when she offhandedly mentions “Oh, also! When Courtney [Eaton] and I drive to work together in the mornings, we listen to true crime podcasts!”
I ask, “Do you think, maybe subconsciously, listening to people talk about murder helps you get in the headspace to shoot Yellowjackets?”
“I hadn’t thought about it before… but yeah actually, it kind of does!” She replies “It creeps me out in a good way. We’ll listen to it for an hour and then arrive at the forest to shoot and especially when it’s getting dark at night, I’ll get a little freaked out! I’ll go for a walk and wander off out of the way from all the big technical lights and it’ll be legitimately very spooky. But also… As a person, I’m very scared of everything to begin with!” she laughs
Thinking back to the first time we met, on the photoshoot that accompanies this piece, an offhanded mention from our first ever conversation floats from the back of my mind to my consciousness. “Am I remembering right that you told me the last time I saw you that you guys shoot on a golf course?!”
“You were close, it’s a paintball range!” She laughs and responds generously “It’s fully operational too, they play paintball here whenever we're not shooting.”
I ask if any extra care has to be taken to clean the evidence of paintballing from the set and she responds “Oh yeah! They built the Yellowjackets cabin on the course and then we wrapped season one, and when we came back it was covered in paint!”
“Spoilers if you haven't seen the ending of season two–but the cabin was going to be burnt down anyways, so it could’ve been a lot worse! But our crew still had to clean it up as well as they could before getting the shot. We’ll even still now find… You know those little paint pellets that go in the paintball gun? Yeah, we find those around all the time while we’re shooting.”
I wonder aloud if anyone who plays paintball on that particular course has ever thought: Hey, that house looks familiar…
Nélisse chimes in “I know, we were just talking about that the other day actually! We were thinking, it must be so fun for anyone who's seen the show, to then be able to play paintball on the sets of Yellowjackets. It must be pretty cool!”
I ask, “Sophie, what’re you excited about right now?”
“That’s such a great question! Let me think about it… I’m excited to be cooking more!” She replies “I love having time to cook.
“Also, I don't know if it’s weird to say I’m excited about it, but I’ve loved taking care of my physical and mental health. I feel so good being back in a routine. As much as I love being home [in Montreal], I can get kind of overstimulated and lose track of my priorities because the scales have tipped far in the direction of me having a social life again. It’s that headspace where I’m wanting to do the important things like book time to see my therapist, but when there’s so much to do and so many people to try and see it’s impossible to have a concrete schedule… And then I just never get around to it.
“So in that way, it feels awesome to be out here in Vancouver and have a routine. Just the other day, I actually ran 40km! That was a personal record and I was so excited. I look at the people I know who casually run marathons and think maybe that’s not that impressive,” she laughs “But I was so happy!
“More than anything else, I’m just excited to be back at work. It feels great to be outdoors so much and doing what I’m so grateful to get to do.”
Watch Irena’s Vow in theaters now, and watch out later this year for the theatrical release of Whistle. Yellowjackets is set to return to air for Season 3 in early 2025.
Photographer, Producer, Creative direction : Océane Auclair @oceane_auclair
Model and actress : Sophie Nélisse @sophie__nelisse
Interviewer and writer : Orly Estrin @orlyestrin
Makeup artist : Orly Estrin @orl.y
Hair stylist : Eloïse Larocque @eloise.larocque
Nail artist : Alexa Dony @goodforher.nails
Styling : @ageofaquarius.studios and @jadesimard.dsgn
Set designer : Orly Estrin @orlyestrin
Flowers made by : Eustache de Gaulejac @faussemaison
Light assistant : Raphaele Sohier @raphsohier
Light assistant : Jherry Duperval @jerry__d