As was in the middle of shooting her future hit series , she found herself pining away for the circle of friends she had formed by way of her previous hit series, . The English actor had joined the Showtime series knowing full well that her starring role as Jackie Taylor, the captain of the Yellowjackets soccer team, would conclude with her But as Purnell bonded more and more with her fellow actors, her one-season role, initially a selling point, became less appealing. So she tried to reverse course and prolong her stay in the inhospitable wilderness where the desperate teenage characters have to resort to cannibalism as a means of survival.
“I was like, ‘It’s only a one-year deal. I’m not locked into a seven-year contract.’ So, at the time, that seemed really appealing.
And then when we started filming — I didn’t want to die,” Purnell tells . “I tried to convince the writers to keep me on the show a bit longer. So they thought about it, and then they called me and were like, ‘She’s got to go.
We tried. We did our best.’” had become upon release in November 2021.
It struck a chord in the zeitgeist and with each passing week and episode, you could feel its momentum gaining steam. The show’s success created a bittersweet feeling for Purnell, who knew that her ticket had already been punched. But a couple of months after the — in which Sophie Nélisse’s Shauna held Jackie’s lifeless, frozen body in her arms — Purnell was cast in the lead role.
