Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Showtime/Getty
It’s almost midnight here in the UK. From my laptop, Simone Kessell is beaming up at me, the morning sun pouring into a boho chic room of her Sydney home.
Looking at her now, it feels appropriate that she is talking about the light that seems to emanate from Lottie, the caftan-wearing wellness guru she plays in Yellowjackets. She wanted the character to be a sort of beacon for her acolytes, Kessell says, in stark contrast to Lottie’s darker teen version, played by Courtney Eaton. “Courtney has this beautiful way of being very strong and stoic and still,” she says. “I sort of cherry picked those moments from her performance, and then brought it into a present day version of somebody I would like to follow if I joined a cult.”
As I look at Kessell now, I can see why the extras who played her followers on the show remained spellbound after the cameras stopped rolling—she has the same charismatic radiance in real life that she does on screen, the kind that renders Lottie’s cult as almost too inviting.