Between Yellowjackets, Army of the Dead, and now Fallout, Ella Purnell has already built up a small list of projects involving either cannibalism or flesh-eating zombies. It’s something the actress can joke about, especially because Yellowjackets and Fallout have gone a long way towards establishing her as a star. Even so, Purnell doesn’t want to be known for only taking those kind of roles.
“What’s so funny is that I didn’t put two and two together with Yellowjackets and Fallout,” said Purnell during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I never ever was like, ‘Oh God, what are people going to say about my cannibalism trend?’ It never occurred to me until I started doing press, and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I guess it’s a thing.’ So, hopefully, we don’t make a habit of this. I don’t want to get typecast as the cannibalism chick.”
Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Yellowjackets Seasons 1 and 2 ahead. Feel free to skip if you don’t want to know what happened.
Purnell’s Yellowjackets character, Jackie, died at the end of the first season, and her fellow survivors ate parts of her body to survive. While she was filming Fallout Season 1, Purnell’s former Yellowjackets cast mates decided to have some fun by showing her pictures of that scene.
“I was filming Fallout, and I was very overwhelmed, and so I was being really slow with reading them,” recalled Purnell. “And then, out of nowhere, I got all of these texts and selfies from the Yellowjackets cast with my charred corpse. And, in a weird way, it really did look like me, even though you can’t really see any details. It was just her charred body, but it’s my body. So it was mostly funny, but it was also a little bit disconcerting and a little odd.”
Purnell will be back for Fallout Season 2 on Prime Video, but Amazon hasn’t set a return date for the series yet.
