[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Yellowjackets Season 2 Episode 3, “Digestif.”]
“I didn’t have to do a whole lot of acting honestly. It was pretty scary,” Steven Krueger confesses concerning the scene in episode three the place his character, Coach Ben Scott, hallucinates that one of many Yellowjackets (Mya Lowe) is foaming on the mouth and making ready to eat him.
That very state of affairs is what followers of the thriller have been anticipating with dread since Coach selected to not partake within the group feast on Jackie. Rest simple, Ben followers. Krueger joined our The Buzz on Yellowjackets aftershow and revealed that the nightmare received’t turn out to be actuality anytime quickly. Instead, tonight was a key turning level in his character’s intriguing season-long arc.
“He’s ostracized, pushed aside as an authority figure. Now he’s left to his own devices. A lot of times that means his own psyche, which can be your own worst enemy. Once his identity as coach and protector is stripped away, what does he have left? It leaves a raw mess of a person who doesn’t know who he is. That ends up having some pretty dire consequences,” Krueger reveals. “As we get beyond Episode 3, you start to see more and more of what Ben is going through in his own mind and how that connects with the past that he left behind.”
Brendan Meadows/SHOWTIME.
The flashbacks to Ben’s pre-crash life with boyfriend Paul had been one thing Krueger was completely satisfied to see within the script. The actor did a lot of analysis to get into the headspace of what it was wish to be a homosexual trainer within the Nineteen Nineties. “One of the things that stuck out was: not only am I a closeted gay man, I’m [also] a teacher. What did that mean in that time period? Why was it such a secret? The reason: my life and career would have been over if this was revealed. The laws in New Jersey…they didn’t pass a law until much later that would have protected me as a gay teacher. I easily would have been fired and potentially prosecuted.”
Check out the video to listen to extra fascinating particulars about how that hallucination sequence was shot, extra from Krueger about moving into character (and getting round set on crutches); plus what’s subsequent in Coach’s friendship with Natalie (Sophie Thatcher), the one Yellowjacket who appears to “get” him.
“He spends a lot of this season realizing he can’t trust any of these girls, as much as he would like to,” the actor says. “A lot of his story is seeing him come to that realization, and grapple with what that means.” Could there be an antler king?
Yellowjackets, Sundays, 9/8c, Showtime (and Fridays on On Demand and Streaming)