Yellowjackets’ Christina Ricci On Misty’s Sexuality and Whether the Tiny Terror Has Killed Before

Awards Daily chats with Yellowjackets’ Christina Ricci about Misty’s sexuality, whether her character has killed someone before, and what a disturbing scene in the pilot says about one of the scariest characters on TV.

Christina Ricci really disappears into the role of Misty Quigley on Showtime’s Yellowjackets, so much so that you might not even recognize her.

“That was very much what attracted me to the character and most of the characters I play,” says Ricci, “this idea of doing something different that I hadn’t necessarily seen or done before.”

And Misty Quigley is definitely someone TV has never seen before. The tiny terror works at a nursing home where she withholds pills from one patient before telling her, “Don’t fuck with me.” And when she goes on a date, her prospective suitor is clearly not interested in her, and yet she still persists—aggressively.

“I don’t believe that Misty believes she’s going to find love or a man who’s even attracted to her. I think very much for her, and when I was playing those scenes, it made me think that she was taking a very predatory position because she knows this man doesn’t like her. She knows he’s not attracted to her, but if she can get him to sleep with her, she’s won. And that very much reminded me about how some men view women. It was an interesting reversal for me to play. There’s no way this person, having gone through what she’s gone through, believes that she will find love. She’s been nothing but rejected and if anything the rage she would feel would make her want to trick people into doing things they’d feel bad about later.”

‘Well, she does have that bunker ready to go.’

In an Awards Daily interview with Samantha Hanratty, who plays the younger version of Misty, Hanratty says she wondered if Misty might be asexual, something that Ricci also seems to question.

“I don’t think she cares about her sexuality. I don’t think she genuinely cares about men. I think with Misty, she tries on different attitudes and perspectives and versions of the women that she sees around her.”

Her interests mainly seem to be in being a citizen detective solving crimes or being an offender herself, having kidnapped reporter Jessica Roberts. Has she kidnapped people or killed people before outside of the wilderness?

“Well, she does have that bunker ready to go,” Ricci says with a laugh. “So, I don’t think you all of a sudden so easily kidnap someone. You’d have more anxiety about it if it was something you hadn’t done before. But this is not from the writers. This is just as the person playing her and as an audience member, that’s what it made me think.”

‘She’s covetous and possessive.’

When Natalie turns up on her doorstep (or more accurately, bypassing the doorstep to her darkened living room with a shotgun), Misty isn’t scared or even that startled. Even when Natalie asks her about the threatening postcard they both received in the mail, if anything, she’s rejuvenated by thought of returning to 25 years ago.

“That was the greatest moment in Misty’s life, the greatest time in Misty’s life, and she clearly is someone who wants that chaos again. Her regular day-to-day life is probably total misery and she longs for it. So when it comes back, she’s excited. One of the reasons that she’s so powerful as a character in this dynamic is that she’s got nothing to lose. And she knows that everyone else is terrified of it coming out and she holds all the power because she doesn’t care.”

Misty and Natalie have a special friendship, but Ricci believes that Misty isn’t actually capable of caring about people (even Natalie). In fact, Misty’s obsession with Natalie might relate to how Misty sees herself.

“I think she’s covetous and possessive, but I don’t think she understands love. In the absence of love, those would be the things she identifies as loving. I think she really desperately wants to possess Natalie and we don’t really know why. When we were filming Season 1, my thoughts were that Natalie is the best version of Misty that Misty can imagine of herself, because Natalie is also an outsider and not close to people and on the fringes, but she’s so cool and everyone wants to be near her and she’s beautiful and funny. And Misty’s like, I’m an outsider, too. That’s what I thought in the beginning, but then I think how obsessed she is with Natalie, it possibly has to do with something that happened in the past.”

And it might not even be the wilderness that made her incapable of loving or caring about someone else.

“We see in the pilot when she’s young, her watching that rat in the pool slowly drown and die, I think the point of that scene is to show that there’s something wrong with her psychologically and emotionally, and that root thing that’s wrong with her as a child causes her to be shunned and rejected.”

Now that the gang is back together in Season 1, Misty is thrilled with the idea of chaos beginning all over again, which could spell more craziness moving forward.

“I think the crazier it gets, the more fun she’ll be having. Unless somehow she gets thwarted. We haven’t really seen her get thwarted in any way. Things have worked out for her so far.”

Yellowjackets Season 1 is available on Showtime.