‘Yellowjackets’ Star Reveals Death Scene Was “Initial Plan” & Recalls Laying “Naked On A Table” In Final Episode: “I Knew From The Beginning”

SPOILERS: This post contains details about the Yellowjackets, Season 3 episode ‘Thanksgiving (Canada)’

Yellowjackets audiences are feasting this week after the Showtime series delivered a death scene that’s been brewing since the beginning.

Following the ups and downs of a trial in which the titular stranded soccer team found Steven Krueger‘s Coach Ben Scott guilty of burning down their cabin, the actor and the show’s creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson spoke to Deadline about finally sealing the character’s fate in this week’s episode ‘Thanksgiving (Canada)’, now available to steam on Paramount+ with Showtime, before airing Sunday at 8pm ET on Showtime.

“I knew from the beginning, just from being close with Ashley and Bart when this started,” noted Krueger. “They had essentially told me that the initial plan was for Coach Ben to meet his end at some point in Season 3.”

Nickerson admitted the latest death was a particular “bummer” as Coach Ben has been with the show from the pilot, and dying in the ’90s means we won’t get to see a present-day counterpart for the character. “Man, it’s always hard,” added Lyle.

“I don’t think that fans and viewers totally appreciate just how intense the working relationship is, and particularly with Coach, just because we’ve known Steven Krueger for so long,” she continued. “We worked together on our very first episode of television we ever made, back in the Originals days, and he’s the best. We just love him so much, we will put him in any show we ever make.

“And so it really hurt for us. I’m like, ‘Oh no, I’ve lost one of my best friends in Vancouver when I’m up there.’ We really ran the thought experiment in the writers room, like, ‘Is there any way to not kill him? Because we want to be around Steven.’ He’s so good, but we just knew that it was the story that wanted to be told,” Lyle said.

And while Coach’s death might have been a surprise to some — especially as Lottie (Courtney Eaton) convinced the team to spare him after a vision told Akilah (Nia Sondoya) that he would provide their way home — the real curveball was the sudden appearance of three outsiders (played by Joel McHale, Nelson Franklin and Ashley Sutton) while the girls eat his body and dance around his head.

For Krueger, the death was a noble cause, as it signals a major inflection point for the show. “None of that happens if Coach Ben is alive,” he says. “Coach Ben literally has to be dead, and they have to be doing what they’re doing when those people show up for any of that to transpire and for all of the events to come in a chain reaction after that.”

Read on about Steven Krueger’s bittersweet farewell to Coach Ben, getting his fake head made and shooting his final scene naked.

DEADLINE: I feel like a lot of fans have assumed Coach Ben is doomed. 

STEVEN KRUEGER: I know, it’s been a long time coming, but I’m glad we took our time to get there. 

DEADLINE: What’s it been like saying goodbye to everyone in the cast and crew, but also keeping Coach’s death a secret from the fans?

KRUEGER: I will say I was a little disappointed that they didn’t just keep paying me to show up to set like they did for Brian Cox on Succession.

But no, it’s been great, honestly. I mean, I knew this going into the season. Our showrunners did a really kind and generous thing, letting all the the actors know that would be dying off this season. I’ve been fortunate, or unfortunate enough, to experience a lot of shows where character deaths are pretty normal, and so this is just kind of part of the game, and I really appreciate that our creators were able to give us that heads up going into it. 

So we all knew, and we really just got to kind of embrace all of these moments in these six episodes that Coach Ben is here for. And it’s bittersweet as always. This is a cast that I’ve grown incredibly close with. I will absolutely come out of it with some lifelong friends, and just having the opportunity to tell this story, this is something that took me by surprise, the first time I read the script and thought it was one of the best pilot scripts I’ve ever read. So, it’s fun to look back on it and think how far we’ve come for sure. 

Tell me about shooting that emotional mercy killing scene with Natalie because I feel like Coach has been through such an existential crisis. Why is it he wanted to die after all the ups and downs of the trial?

KRUEGER: I think that the trial was kind of a microcosm of his broader storyline. This has been since Season 1, where I think they did a really good job of portraying Ben, very true to what somebody would actually be going through in this set of circumstances, where there’s the constant peaks and valleys. There’s the ups and downs of, “Yes, I want to fight to survive. I have a strong will to survive and help and keep fighting.” Versus, sometimes it’s just like, “This is too much, it’s not gonna happen. I’m starving, I’m tired. I don’t want to do this anymore.” And that comes and goes in waves, and I think we saw that a lot this season as well, where it was like, “Did I really want to survive during the trial? Did I want them to find me not guilty? And then we get to the final episode, and we’ve done this time jump within the episode, so I have been out here in this little pen with animals for weeks if not months, and it’s just time. This isn’t gonna get any better for me. And I think that that’s probably when Coach Ben realized, if there’s gonna be one person that he can talk into doing this, it’s gonna be Natalie because the cool thing about his death is it wasn’t done out of vengeance, it wasn’t done out of spite or rage. It was kind of done out of love, and I think that’s the one person he knew that he could ultimately convince to essentially euthanize him. 

And that was just such an emotionally well done scene, by the way. 

KRUEGER: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I mean, that’s a testament to Sophie Thatcher, who’s incredible to work with. I thought that the writing was so beautiful and understated in a way where they just kind of write a few lines and let us do it. They just rolled the cameras and let us do it, and honestly, Sophie Thatcher and I have had such a strong connection since the beginning of the show. I think that Coach Ben and Nat as characters have had a strong connection since early on in the show, and it was just the perfect way to to go out. And we just kind of leaned into all of that emotion and all of that heartbreak and let it rip. 

Tell me about working with François Arnaud as Coach’s boyfriend Paul. Do you think we’ll see more of him?

KRUEGER: François was incredible to work with, and the funny thing is, I think that people people may have expected that character to play a role, and he may still. I mean, we may find out, when the girls get back — I don’t know this, I’m just speculating, so don’t take this as gospel. But I think there may be a chance that his character does play a role when the girls get back and he has some questions about exactly what happened. I mean, I think that would be a cool way for the story to go. But I loved the fact that they were able to explore some of Coach Ben’s past a little bit, to give people some context about exactly who he is, exactly what he’s going through, and just fill out that storyline a little bit. 

So, the scene after you die when the scientists discover the girls dancing around Coach’s head on a table, I fully gasped at the screen when that happened.

KRUEGER: I gasped when I read it in the script. I think we all did. 

Did you have to sit for that mold or what was that situation? 

KRUEGER: No, so this was the funny part. It was me a little bit before that, when I was on the table and I was dead, and they were getting ready to carve me up. It was Natalie and Shauna, and Shauna was kind of telling her how to, how to ultimately carve me up. 

What happened was, it ended up being the exact opposite of what I thought it was going to be in both scenarios. So, when I read that Coach Ben’s laying here on this table, and they were going to carve him up and he was naked, I was like, “Oh, well, they’ll just make a little body cast for me and put that on the table. And they were like, “No, no, we, we would like you to do that.” I’m like, “Okay, great, cool. Last thing I get to do on set is just lay naked on a table.”

And then I assumed with the head thing that they would just have me there and paint my face or whatever, but no, they actually did a full 360 3D head mold of me, and that was a trip to look at as well. It was, at the same time, beautiful and the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. 

So, was it like 3D printing or did you actually have to sit in the silicone? 

KRUEGER: No. God, no. They have a much better way of doing it now, thank God. I know that that’s how they used to do it, where they would actually make a cast, like a mold out of your head while you breathe through straws and stuff. I would not have been able. Too claustrophobic. So, I’m glad that the technology has evolved since those days. It’s almost like an MRI machine but for your head, where they essentially just circle around you with a camera that fires thousands of photographs at a time. And so, even when your eyes are closed, it’s a trippy experience because you can still see the lights flashing. I think it almost gave me a seizure, but it was cool and it didn’t last very long. And then they just made everything from there based on all the pictures that they got, and I remember them saying, “Hey, your head is done. Do you want to see it?” And I thought, “Well, yeah, of course I wanna see it.” I was marveling at the artistry while also being like, “Can you please take that away? Because it’s actually starting to creep me out a little bit.”

So you didn’t keep it or anything?

KRUEGER: No. In fact, some people were like, “Do you want to? You should ask if you can keep your head.” And I’m like, why would I want that? What would I do with it? What, am I gonna put that over my fireplace? I don’t want to look at that every day. Not to mention, I’m pretty sure it costs like $25,000 to make. So, I don’t think they were just going to give that to me. I think it’s in the display section of the makeup effects and special effects place that did it up in Vancouver. 

I meant to ask you just out of curiosity as like an audience member and a viewer, that moment of the three people kind of coming out of the woods and the split-second reaction that happens to that, to me feels like an inflection point, in not just the season, but the overall series arc. 

Yeah, I did not see it coming. It threw me for a loop. Once that episode hit, I could tell it’s about to get real. 

KRUEGER: Which is why I think it’s important — yes, it’s sad, of course, as an actor that your character ends up dying — but at the same time, none of that happens if Coach Ben is alive. Coach Ben literally has to be dead, and they have to be doing what they’re doing when those people show up for any of that to transpire and for all of the events to come in a chain reaction after that. 

I’m sure you’ve gotten this question a lot, but if Coach Ben had survived, who would you have wanted to play him in the present day? 

KRUEGER: I mean, I would have wanted to play him in the present day, just because I feel like I’m at an age where I can be aged down, but I could also do a Mandy Moore in This Is Us thing. In fact, I knew from the beginning, just from being close with Ashley and Bart when this started, they had essentially told me that the initial plan was for Coach Ben to meet his end at some point in Season 3. But along the way, I was like, “If things change, if you want to revise that plan, I would love to play myself in the older present day.” And I specifically remember Ashley saying, “Are you sure? Are you sure you would want to work both timelines and sit in the makeup chair for like three hours in the present day timeline just to age you up?” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s a good point actually.”

I’ve seen some cool ones online. I love the idea of like a Javier Bardem. That would be pretty badass. That’s an amazing compliment for whoever came up with that. 

I mainly just want to see more Pedro Pascal on TV right now.

Pedro Pascal would be a good one too. I know, I have gotten that comparison before and I’m like, yes, please bring it. 

And I have to wonder — I loved Coach’s shorts in the pilot, and I didn’t really think about it until much later, but was that kind of foreshadowing for him losing his leg? 

KRUEGER: Your guess is as good as mine, because I didn’t even know that coach was losing his leg until we started. So, we filmed the pilot at the end of 2019, and then of course, shit hit the fan with COVID, and so we didn’t even get picked up for the first season until the very end of 2020. So, it was almost a year later that we got picked up. 

I had heard no mention whatsoever of Coach losing his leg while we were shooting the pilot. It wasn’t until we were getting into that territory where we knew we were going to get picked up and Ashley had told me, “Oh yeah, something we didn’t tell you about Coach Ben is he gets his leg cut off.” And I’m like, “Oh my God, what more can you do to this poor man?”

So, I have a feeling that the short shorts were trying to kind of accentuate those legs right before he lost one. It is funny, that was one of the main character descriptions in the breakdown when I first got this was, “a 90s soccer coach who wears very short shorts,” and I remember freaking out because I have some chicken legs. I’m built like a little stick, and so my legs don’t look great in short shorts. So, a few weeks before the audition, I was just going to the gym and trying to do leg presses just to fill out those shorts, and then I tried to find a pair of shorts that were kind of short but not really. 

I remember showing up to the audition, and it was like every guy there—oh man, the shorts got shorter and shorter. Every guy I looked at, I was just like, “Oh, they really went for it.”

Do you have any favorite behind-the-scenes memory from your time? 

KRUEGER: Season 1 will always stand out to me for a couple of reasons. I think that that anytime you’re shooting the first season of a show, it’s always chaos, and when you layer on top of that the fact that we were still kind of in the middle of COVID, and we were in Canada, and the borders were closed, so we got to Canada, and we were stuck there. It was very much like life imitating art in a way, like we had nobody but each other. We couldn’t have friends or family come visit, we couldn’t leave. So, in a way, that doesn’t always happen on shows like this with big ensemble casts. We had nobody but each other, and we were kind of forced to just bond together and spend all of our time together. And for that reason, I think that we became incredibly close as a cast, and that’s really sustained itself through three seasons into this. I think the biggest thing I’m gonna take away is the relationships that I’ve made with with some of my cast members, and the fact that we got to tell such a cool story.