Liv Hewson is having an incredible season of Yellowjackets. Last episode, they got to act alongside their counterpart in the series, Lauren Ambrose, in two scenes bookending the penultimate chapter of season three. It was thrilling to watch these two performances merge.

Van was never supposed to be a main character in the series, as Liv and I get into below. But Liv’s embodiment of Van as someone deeper and more meaningful to the story than the writers initially conceived of for the character ushered the role from guest to regular. And I know the fans here at Autostraddle are grateful for that, myself included! Yellowjackets has become one of the queerest shows I’ve ever seen, and that wouldn’t have been possible with Van on the sidelines.

After three seasons of writing probably too-long recaps of every single episode of this series, I had the pleasure of speaking with Liv about Van’s arc, the queer possibilities of cannibalism, and what reforms the film/television industry needs to make to be a safer and more inclusive space for trans people.

If you’re not caught up on Yellowjackets, do not read this interview! We hop into spoilers from episode 309 RIGHT AWAY.

The Yellowjackets season three finale airs tomorrow, and if you’d like to watch with fellow queer fans, join our virtual watch party!

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya: I was going to kind of try to build up to this, but then I realized it’s probably super top of mind for our readers who took last episode very emotionally. So let’s start by talking about death and Van’s death, and let’s just get into it right away. I’ve just been thinking about how it’s probably a pretty complicated emotional experience to know that you’re playing this character now who does die, but you have to keep Van alive. So I was just wondering, just from your perspective as an actor, what that emotional experience has been like for you?

Liv Hewson: I have been thinking about it a lot, and filming episode nine and filming those scenes was incredibly emotional, and I am still figuring out what it means for me going forward. Obviously, I love this character and I care so much about her, and the real gift of this show is that she has died, but she’s still there through me. And Lauren’s performance is such a beautiful roadmap of where this character is going, and that’s a real gift to me as a performer, but it is a different thing now, a little bit in almost a beautiful way.

The death of Van in the present does feel like the completion of something or the ending of something. So as we go forward, I think it will impact the work that I do on this character — if and when we come back — because the knowledge of what happens to her hangs over everything that happens for me now, and I’m happy to have her with me and to have Lauren’s performance of Van with me, but I’m interested in what that’s going to feel like, because I think it will be different.

Kayla: I read that you and Lauren [Ambrose] had actually pitched that hospital scene from last episode, which is so cool. It felt very special. I was wondering if the Yellowjackets set has always been pretty open to the idea of those kind of collaborations between the performers and the writers, and how much you are able to inform your character.

Liv: The notion of us sharing scenes at all was something the two of us really wanted, and then something that we asked for. So the scene in the hospital and the scene on the plane kind of came out of a desire that we had to have this character sit with herself as she’s dying. And we’re very lucky that this show has that kind of narrative device already set up, that these characters are able to talk to each other and that the writers were interested in doing that. And I’m so grateful and quite proud that those scenes have become a central part of how the story shook out. So that meant a lot to me. I think it meant a lot to both of us.

I will say, in my experience, just personally, that the writers and showrunners have always been quite generous with me. I think my situation is maybe a little unique because when I was originally hired, I was hired as a guest actor, and Van’s involvement in the story such as it is now was not part of the plan. So this character and my performance of her is something that has really grown and changed and been welcomed into the story over time. So I have always improvised a lot, and they’ve always let me, and there have been times where I’ve asked to tweak my lines or pitched ideas or whatever, and sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes the answer is no, and here’s why.

But it’s been really interesting for me over the years that we’ve been making this show now. I really feel quite confident in my abilities, and also I feel very secure in improvising something or suggesting something and knowing that it will be either received or it will be gently redirected, but for a reason. And that’s a real pleasure of mine in playing Van, is the degree to which I can play around.

Photo Credit: Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.

Kayla: I’m always so curious about how much effort goes into syncing the performances between the counterparts for each of the roles and, for you, I know it’s different on a few levels. First of all, yeah, Van originally was not supposed to be as big of a part of the story, but also you didn’t have your counterpart until pretty far into it. So you’ve kind of established this performance, and then Lauren’s coming in and looking at that. And so, how much were you and Lauren in conversation and in collaboration for your respective performances?

Liv: I mean, she’s so good. Part of the pleasure of this experience has been in watching her bring Van to life at the age that she is in the present-day timeline. And it’s such a clear springboard from Van in the present. I will never forget watching Lauren on set her first couple of days as Adult Van and realizing, oh my God, that’s the way I stand. That’s the way I hold my shoulders as this character. That’s crazy. Watching somebody else do it, it’s really fun.

And then she and I have always really been on the same page about who Van is and what are the things we love about her, what are the things we think are important about her, things that we are curious about, things that we have in mind when we play her. And getting to share that with Lauren has been such a wonderful experience. This season in particular, we spent a lot of time talking about Van and frankly talking about what we wanted to do in the time that we had left, knowing that she would be leaving us at the end of this season.

Kayla: She mirrors you very well. I’ve had commenters on my recaps who will literally say like, “Oh, I forget that they’re different people.” It’s so seamless.

Liv: See, that’s so cool. I think that is so cool. And it just makes me really happy. It’s such a joy of mine to watch Lauren work and to share this character with her, and then to see audience members respond to her the same way I do. It’s such a thrill. It’s so fun.

“I will never forget watching Lauren on set her first couple of days as Adult Van and realizing, oh my God, that’s the way I stand.”

Kayla: Okay, now I have a bunch of queer questions; it is Autostraddle after all. So to start, I have always loved things that feature cannibalism, much to my wife’s chagrin. She’s always asking me, “Oh, what are you reading?” And I’m like, “Oh, this novel about cannibalism.” She’s like, “Again? How did you find another one?” So obviously, I’ve loved the show from the start, and so does my wife for the record, she makes fun of me for all the cannibalism stuff, but she’s also fan.

Liv: Oh, sure.

Kayla: But the show right away reiterated something for me that I’ve always thought about when engaging with these stories, which is that almost everything I’ve seen or read that has to do with cannibalism has an element of the homoerotic to it-

Liv: Oh, sure, yeah.

Kayla: I mean, even thinking something like Jennifer’s Body and stuff like that. So that’s always been very present for me. And Yellowjackets, I think it’s one of the most queer TV series ever. I genuinely think that, just because it feels queer down to its DNA, it’s not just a matter of having these queer characters, but it’s just so queer, the world building all of it, the way that it approaches telling stories where there’s all this ambivalence. Is this happening? Is it not happening? That all feels so, so, so queer to me. And this is my super leading question because I think it’s clear where I stand, but: Do you think cannibalism is queer?

Liv: I think in a literary tradition, cannibalism is about a lot of things. It depends what project you’re talking about and what kind of narrative device you’re talking about, because cannibalism is also often about religion, particularly in the transubstantiation consumption and honoring death, ritual, consumption ritual. Often, cannibalism is about religion. And then other times cannibalism is about sex, it’s about the body and consuming and being in and being with somebody and desiring somebody.

And so, I think it’s less that cannibalism is inherently queer as a rule for me and more that cannibalism is rife with queer opportunity in storytelling, much in the same way that the use of monsters can be. Vampires and werewolves aren’t necessarily inherently queer in and of themselves, but they provide rich queer opportunity if you’re telling a story that explores those themes.

I think cannibalism is the same. And so, it makes sense to me that cannibalism is quite queer in this show. And then a lot of other things. But cannibalism, like anything else in storytelling, is a device. So it’s a device that you can sort of use to point in a direction of queerness or of religious consumption or of body horror or sexual horror. There’s so many ways you can go, and I think that’s part of the reason that people return to cannibalism over and over again as a device in storytelling.

“Cannibalism is about a lot of things.”

Kayla: There’s a very interesting moment this season that just really stood out to me as one of my favorite scenes. And it’s when Tai is talking to Van and she’s like, “What if we get into the outside world and people don’t understand what we did out here, and they hate us for it?” And at first you kind of think like, oh, she’s talking about queerness. They can’t be out in the outside world in maybe the way that they were able to here. But then it’s like, oh, wait, no, she’s actually talking about cannibalism because that’s the thing that’s happening that’s subversive here. The queerness has almost been normalized in the little society they’ve made in the wilderness.

And I was wondering for that scene, how much were you and Jasmine considering the multiple meanings of that scene and the nuance of the conversation of what does it look like for our relationship when we’re on the outside world?

Liv: Taissa is literally talking about both things. She’s talking about the need to keep the cannibalism they’ve committed and the society that they’ve built a secret, but she is also talking about what it will mean for the two of them as out lesbians when they return to North America in the late ’90s. Both sit very heavy on Taissa, and Van’s really not willing to deal with any of that. And that I think is such a clear hurdle approaching those two later.

And it’s something that Jasmin and I have always been super aware of, and Lauren and I too actually have always spoken about that even when she first joined the show, that it’s very clear that down the pipeline for these two characters — who are in love and have built a world in which they can be freely out and in love, and it’s a non-issue — for them to have to return to the world as we know it to be in New Jersey in 1998, the fear of scrutiny is real on their queerness and on their lives and the crimes they’ve committed.

I think thematically, it’s fascinating that for Taissa, those two things are really intertwined. And so Van and Taissa’s respective relationship to those things, their denial of them or not, their comfort with them or not, I think that is very rich with possibility in terms of storytelling and what’s coming up for those two. I think it is a very real gay experience, as removed from reality as it is being on Yellowjackets. It is something that I really understand, and if and when we get there, I’m really excited to explore.

Kayla: I was wondering how you think of Van’s relationship to her queerness changing through the seasons or shifting? Because I think the point that we’re at on the show now with this society that the Yellowjackets have created, it does feel almost queernormative in a lot of ways, and also even genderless in some interesting ways.

And to me, they’re not really thinking about some of those outside rules, even as they’re bringing in lots of other rules. A big thing I’ve written about this season is they’re bringing in this kind of criminal justice system in a way.

Liv: I know!

Kayla: Which is so fascinating!

Liv: Optional!

Kayla: But then meanwhile, all these other societal rules are sort of lost. It feels very seamless for Shauna to all of a sudden be in a relationship with Melissa and all these other things. I was wondering if you’ve been thinking at all about how Van’s queerness has shifted through the seasons. When we start, she and Taissa aren’t out with their relationship to the other girls.

Photo credit: Kailey Schwerman/SHOWTIME.

Liv: It’s alluded to a few times that the reason they’re not is because Taissa’s scared. I think even in season one, Van teases her about it while they’re swimming in the lake together. It’s like, “What are you, scared of what other people think?”

My conceptualization of Van’s queerness was that I don’t think she was somebody who was really able to be closeted. I think Van’s very clockable and always has been. That’s just my own imagination. When I piece together for myself what I think this person’s life has been like, and when I imagine Van pre-crash, I imagine somebody who’s getting called a dyke in the hallway and going, “Yep. Yes, I am. Yes, sir.”

Kayla: Absolutely.

Liv: I personally imagine that to be one of the things that she is defiant about. So that was something that always interested me.

Kayla: “You can’t make jokes about me because I make jokes about myself” — that kind of thing.

Liv: Yeah, we’re talking about somebody who uses humor first and foremost as a fallback for everything. So with Van, I was always like, I know her. I know her, and I recognize her. This is somebody who’s gay in high school and has no choice but to wear some armor about it. But Taissa has her own, frankly, completely valid reasonings for wanting to be more discreet and more protective of herself. So I think for Van, it’s like they crash, and then when we as the audience first see Van and Taissa kiss, the first thing Van says is “Finally.” Finally, we’re alone. Finally, I get to kiss you against this tree. But I think thematically, there’s also perhaps an energy of finally, we are alone in the wilderness. Finally, we can be together while our team is stranded here.

Something that’s always been so beautifully tragic to me about that relationship is that their experience of being together and being out and falling in love can never be separated from the worst thing that happened to either of them in their lives. Their romance and their relationship is forever bound up in this life-altering traumatic experience of being stuck in the wilderness and having to survive. So when you get back, how do you maintain that relationship while trying to get distance from that experience? You can’t. It’s not possible. So the signposts of the future problems coming their way in that relationship, I’ve always really understood.

But Van is really dogged about her own queerness, I think. So when I think about Van, I think about somebody who’s not able to hide, not able to hide her queerness because it’s obvious. And they’re not really able to hide the experience they’ve had in the wilderness, because she literally has scars on her face. She is visible, she is marked by what happened to them out there, and she carries that with her in a way that is visible to other people. And there is something there that I think overlaps with her queerness a little bit, to be honest. And then, those two things to my mind would make her a target for scrutiny once they got back.

We know that Van and Taissa separate, and then we know that Van loses touch with all of them, and she holes herself up in Ohio and surrounds herself with films she loves. She’s like, “Fuck this. I’m opening a video store and I’m recommending the queer films that I love to the kids in my neighborhood, and I don’t want anything to do with any of you.” So we’re talking about somebody who returns to the safety of who she is over and over again, no matter what, even if it isolates her from the world, from her teammates, from the love of her life in the end, because that is something she cannot escape and she cannot hide from and doesn’t want to.

“My conceptualization of Van’s queerness was that I don’t think she was somebody who was really able to be closeted.”

Kayla: A particular challenge of acting on the show is that you have the two timelines, but then you have everything that happens in between that we haven’t seen on screen and you haven’t read on the page. But you can imagine from point A to B, this and this has to happen. So are those things that you’re thinking about?

Liv: All the time.

Kayla: That’s a lot to hold!

Liv: All the time. It’s funny because in some ways, what we do in the ’90s timeline is the blueprint for what the present-day timeline cast is having to do and keep in mind. So there’s that dynamic. But then there’s another dynamic at play, in which the ’90s timeline is an exercise in foreshadowing, but the things that we do are weighted with meaning because of what happens later. So there’s a kind of looking forward and looking back simultaneously that I feel as an actor working on the show.

Kayla: I want to move beyond the scope of Yellowjackets just for a minute. I know you’ve been a really great advocate for calling for systemic change in Hollywood when it comes to trans exclusionary policies, particularly when it comes to the gendered acting categories. Are there any other specific changes that you hope to see in the industry to make it a safer and more inclusive space for trans people?

Liv: Thank you. Something that I have spoken a bit about before that I think is important for people outside of the industry to understand is we culturally place a lot of stock in the visibility of who is in front of the camera. And that is important, right? It is important, and it is heartening, and it’s significant when queer and trans people are in front of the camera and are front-facing and are part of the conversation and visible in the industry in that way. But I will say that I think, of equal importance, is the presence of queer and trans people behind the camera. And in many ways, if you only have queer and trans people in front of the camera, but not behind, there is an aspect of that that is incredibly disempowering, because those in front of the camera often have much less control or input than the average person imagines.

So while in the position that I’m in, I really want to be front-facing and useful and of assistance in whatever way I can, but in order for systemic material change, that necessitates participation from queer and trans people at every level of production in my industry and in any industry. It’s not enough to have queer and trans actors if everybody who’s writing it, directing it, producing it, filming it, marketing it, selling it is cis and straight. That is not going to produce the kind of work that is actually going to move the needle in the long run. You need a team of everybody, like queer and trans presence in the writing department, in producing, in directing, in marketing, and in positions of authority. That is where a lot of the change will happen.

Kayla: Is there any trans art, literature, film, anything like that that has excited you recently? It doesn’t have to be recent stuff. It could be from the archives, so to speak, but just something you’ve engaged with recently that meant a lot to you and you’d like to shout out?

Liv: I Saw the TV Glow was my favorite film of last year, and frankly, one of my favorite films that I’ve ever seen in my life. And actually, also last year, I mean, a bunch of my favorite movies, there was, I Saw the TV Glow and there was The People’s Joker, and there was Stress Positions, all three of those films being released in that same year. They’re all very different.

Kayla: So different, so different.

Liv: And that’s part of what was exciting to me about it. Here you have three completely different films from three completely different artists, but they each have something really strong and beautiful to offer. And that is the kind of stuff that I want to see more of going forward.

Kayla: Whenever somebody asks what I want for the future of queer and trans art, I’m always like, “More of it. Just more of it.”

Liv: Exactly.

Kayla: Even bad stuff or mediocre stuff or whatever. Just more of it.

Liv: That’s so important. Yeah. Everybody else can make all kinds of shit.

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