Yellowjackets alum Simone Kessell isn’t joining multiple shows involving a plane crash in Canada on purpose — it just keeps happening.
During an exclusive interview with Us Weekly, Kessell, 50, joked about the obvious connection between the Showtime series and her new Apple TV+ series The Last Frontier, saying, “Originally I was like, ‘What is it with Canada?’ Plus the plane crash and the wilderness.”
Kessell has leaned into the coincidence.
“I’ve had people on social media saying, ‘Hey, don’t get on a plane with Simone.’ I know that is very funny. But I’m not on the plane [in this one],” she noted. “There are similarities for sure.”
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She continued: “But this is more of an action thriller. And I think I have sanity perhaps on my side with this role — unlike our beautiful Lottie from Yellowjackets. So in this sense, it is quite different once we get into it.”
Yellowjackets, which premiered in 2021, follows a high school girls soccer team that ends up stranded in the Canadian wilderness after a plane crash. The survivors don’t return home for 19 months, during which time they are driven to cannibalism. Yellowjackets also features a present day timeline that reintroduces the survivors more than two decades later.
Kessell joined the hit series in the second season as adult Lottie, who was killed off in a March episode. She is now starring alongside Jason Clarke, Dominic Cooper and Haley Bennett in The Last Frontier.
The Apple TV+ series premiered on Friday, October 10, and introduced fans to U.S. Marshal Frank (Clarke) in the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska, who must protect his town while investigating the plane crash that set free multiple fugitives, now on the loose.
Kessell, for her part, plays a nurse and Frank’s wife — but Sarah is so much more than just a stay-at-home spouse.
“It’s incredibly important to not play the worried wife at home. As the character unfolds, she is carrying her own trauma, which we find out later in the season. Something horrific has happened to her as their family unit,” she teased. “I did not want to play the candy-coated and one note wife that we have seen time and time again. To me, it was vastly important that the relationship between Frank and Sarah is real ugly, honest, heartbreaking and traumatic.”
After reading the script, Kessell knew she wanted the role, adding, “Also on the page, she was never written like that, which was why I was so intrigued to play Sarah. But it easily could have gone into that of, ‘Please don’t go to work, Frank. I’m worried about you.’ But it was never like that.”
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Kessell went on to praise the show for showing the highs, lows and all the in-between moments that create a genuine marriage.
“You have seen so many phony relationships between husband and wife. But that’s not Sarah — and that’s what I love about her. I wanted to make sure that Sarah was real and I played her incredibly realistically,” she shared. “Obviously I was in great hands with the wonderful director, writers and producers.”
She continued: “But also getting to work with Jason day in [and] day out was such a thrill. We are dear friends so much so that we can bicker, we can get pissed off with each other and we can correct each other. If he’s dropped a line or I’ve dropped a line in the scene, I correct him or he’ll correct me. It’s real and it plays on the screen. I think also the relationship is essential to the craziness of the world. Every time we see them, it’s the quiet and calm before the storm.”
New episodes of The Last Frontier air Fridays on Apple TV+.
