‘He’s A Trooper’: I Asked Yellowjackets’ Director About Doing The Unthinkable To Joel McHale, And I’m Amused By How Many People Had Thoughts On How To Make It Happen

Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched the latest episode of Yellowjackets on Showtime or with a Paramount+ subscription.

With its deadly penultimate episode, Yellowjackets Season 3 continued thinning out the herd of adult survivors, while also delivering a fairly shocking murder in the ‘90s timeline that follows the demises of Coach Ben and the frog-studying Edwin. Now, I can’t sit here and say I truly believed Community vet and Animal Control star Joel McHale was destined for the long haul as the standoffish and overly self-confident wildness guide Kodiak, but I guess I didn’t expect him to get shanked in the face by Hannah, who’d previously seemed to fancy him.

Such as it goes in the heightened world of Yellowjackets, and I’m hoping its impending finale is among the bloodiest 2025 TV events and when I talked to “How The Story Ends” director Ben Semanoff, I had to ask him about filming a scene that showcased an unspeakable act such as plunging a knife into a face as good-looking as McHale’s. (Tongue planted firmly in cheek, of course.) The effect looked awesome, and Semanoff told me this was a situation where a variety of crew teams had something to say about pulling the face-stabbing off. As he put it:

Oh, man, yet another one of the set piece moments that requires a lot of conversation. Especially because, we have [the] great Masters FX, which does the all the special effects, and we have a terrific visual effects department, terrific special effects department, terrific prop department. All with their own opinions on, ‘Oh, this is how I can do it.’ ‘Well., this is how I can do it.’ [Laughs.]

Ben Semanoff mentioned earlier in our talk that Travis’ scene setting up “The Pit” was one where seemingly everyone who could possibly have an opinion about it made that opinion clear, with an abundance of meetings and conversations held ahead of time. With good reason, mind you, since the staff working on Yellowjackets behind the scenes are consistent at crafting excellence from one episode to the next, and setting up such iconic lore moments has to be handled with a deft touch.

But we’re also talking about taking out a household name like McHale with a gnarly demise, so I could easily believe that more people thn normal would want to voice ideas for it. Who doesn’t want to say “I think the best way to stab Joel McHale’s face is…” as a way to start a work meeting?

Alas, no matter how much time is set aside for preparatory conversations and outlining ways for everything to work, that might all fly out the window when it’s time to actually bring the scene to life. As the director put it:

So you sort of bring them all together and sit in the conference room, maybe over several sittings, and you throw ideas around, ‘Well, what’s the implication of this and that?’ And then you get to set, and it’s like 11 o’clock at night, and you got 20 minutes to do it, and you hope it all works.

There’s something so wonderfully chaotic about weeks worth of conversations all dovetailing and glomming together and then being filtered out into roughly 20 pressure-filled minutes worth of filming. I mean, it maybe didn’t feel so wonderful for Ben Semanoff to know he had to get that shot as perfect as possible in such a short timeframe. But considering how great the stabbing looks in the final cut, I dare say the additional pressure didn’t cause any major damage.

Joel McHale's Kodiak about to get stabbed in the face in Yellowjackets Season 3

(Image credit: Showtime)

Joel McHale Gets Big Praise From Yellowjackets’ Ben Semanoff

When it came to working with the future Scream 7 cast member himself, outside of dealing with all the crew-filled meetings and conversations, Semanoff had nothing but kind words to say about Joel McHale, especially in regards to the actor and host taking on material outside of his normal comedic comfort zone. In the director’s words:

He was great. He’s a trooper. He was super willing to try things, both from a performance standpoint and a stunt standpoint. He hasn’t done a ton of acting in his career, and I know this is like a new sort of initiative for him, right, developing his acting career, and I think he’s terrific. He’s extremely natural. He’s got great comic timing, as we all know, and we had a lot of fun.

I can only hope that whenever the script for Peacock’s long-awaited Community movie gets the greenlight for production to start, Joel McHale welcomes each of his former co-stars back with a poster-sized shot of Kodiak’s impaled face. I would also appreciate such a poster.

So no big heartbreaking Kodiak arc to expect from the Season 3 finale, for better or worse. I’m not exactly celebrating being right in assuming Van would die in Season 3, and I cannot wait to see how Taissa and others gain vengeance on Hilary Swank‘s Melissa. If the greedy-ass Wilderness truly does need another sacrifice, that deceitful, murderous bitchface should be the one to take the fall.

Yellowjackets‘ Season 3 finale, “Full Circle,” is set to stream for Paramount+ with Showtime subscribers on Friday, April 11, and will air on Showtime on Sunday, April 13, at 8:00 p.m. ET.

Source link