Courtney Eaton on Mad Max, Sleep Paralysis and Connecting with The Wilderness

Words: Gina Tonic | Photographer: Sarah Pardini with Paradis Agency | Makeup: Dana Delaney | Styling: Erik Ziemba with Paradis Agency | Hair: Antoine Martinez with Paradis Agency | Video: Amanda Elman

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When she was first cast in Yellowjackets as camp psychic and eventual cult leader Lottie Matthews, actor Courtney Eaton wasn’t even sure if she wanted to work in television at all. 

Warned by friends that committing to a series meant “signing your life away for five years”, Eaton was wary of accepting a role that could – if the show took off – take up so much of her twenties. During the audition process, the Australian 29-year-old was offered the opportunity to be a series regular on the show, but opted to be a recurring character instead – a part that felt less of a commitment than a leading role. But after filming on the first episode of season one wrapped, Eaton changed her mind: she was ready to give years to the Yellowjackets.

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Growing up in a small town two hours south of Perth, Eaton tells me that she didn’t have particular aspirations for modelling or acting, just a sense that she needed to see more of the world. She beams at me over our Zoom call as she recounts an idyllic sounding childhood: “Growing up in Australia was kind of what everyone imagines, just running around in swimsuits. We were pretty much left to our own devices, running around and wreaking havoc.”

“I was a very go-with-the-flow kind of kid.” Eaton continues, reminiscing on getting scouted by Vivien's Model Management aged 15. Before she was shipped off down the traditional casting routes we all know so well from America’s Next Top Model reruns – New York, Paris, Milan – Eaton’s agent showed her headshots to George Miller, who was casting for his 2015 blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road. After an elaborate audition process in which Eaton had to perform a monologue from Network (1976), and recount a happy story and then a sad story from memory, she scored the part of Cheedo the Fragile, joining the likes of Zoe Kravitz, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough and Abbey Lee Kershaw to play one of Mad Max antagonist Immortan Joe’s five wives. “I kind of just winged it, and I think I mostly won them over with my sad story, just bawling my eyes out as a 15 or 16-year-old.” Eaton adds. “It wasn’t until I got on set that I realised what acting actually was.”

“It felt really therapeutic, and I’ve been chasing that feeling since, like, ‘Wow, that felt good.’”

Although five months in the Namibia desert could be enough to put a newbie off for life, Eaton found solace in the extremes of the situation. “I specifically remember one scene where I’m running back, crying my eyes out.” She says, “It felt really therapeutic, and I’ve been chasing that feeling since, like, ‘Wow, that felt good.’” The joy of acting, for Eaton, is found in the catharsis of tapping into unrestrained emotional responses. In all the roles she’s played in the past decade, Eaton purposefully includes part of herself in the characterisation. 

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Although Eaton notes she might like to dabble in comedy in the future, the roles she’s played so far are much more dramatic and extreme. “It’s funny because my agents and managers always ask, ‘What do you want to do next?’ And I’m like, ‘Crying, screaming, sad.’” Eaton smiles, “I really enjoy getting my emotions out in those ways. I feel like I can connect with people through those types of scenes and stories.”

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“I really enjoy getting my emotions out in those ways. I feel like I can connect with people through those types of scenes and stories.”

In Lottie, Eaton is given plenty of chances to go to extremes, never knowing what the next episode’s scenes will bring. She explains how it’s only at the end of filming one episode that the showrunners only provide castmembers with the script for the next. The only major clue comes when a peer is invited out to eat solo by the producers or writers – an act that the Yellowjackets cast have named “the lunch of death.” 

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“When I was younger, I thought I used to see things at the end of my bed and hear things, but then I realised it was sleep paralysis.”

Regardless of the uncertainty of knowing whether or not your character makes it through to the end of the season, Eaton says that being kept in the dark about upcoming plot points makes it all the more easier to toe the line between Lottie’s experiences with schizophrenia and the supernatural. Pointedly, the show, the show’s creators and Eaton herself have never revealed whether what Lottie undergoes in the wilderness is a case of an unmedicated mental health condition or an intuitive sixth sense.

In the first episodes of the new season, the audience watches Lottie take a step back from the spotlight after her campmate Natalie – played by Sophie Thatcher – takes her turn as camp leader. Away from making decisions and leading seances, Lottie takes more of an isolated approach to her relationships with her teammates and with the wilderness that surrounds them. Without the responsibilities of authority, Lottie’s mind is left to wander.

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“She’s become more of a wallflower, grappling with who she really is at her core. She felt really forced into the leader role – she doesn’t trust her own mind, so how can she expect others to trust her or rely on her to take care of them? She’s also trying to figure out her connection with the wilderness. Is she a fuller version of herself in the wilderness, or would she be better off going home? These are all the questions she’s struggling with this season until things start to unfold one way or the other.” 

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“She’s become more of a wallflower, grappling with who she really is at her core. She felt really forced into the leader role – she doesn’t trust her own mind, so how can she expect others to trust her or rely on her to take care of them?”

Eaton applauds the writers specifically for making Lottie a character that is emblematic of moral uncertainty. Although we like to imagine we may be practical in the face of disaster – at the very least, not leading a troupe of girls into cannibalistic ritual – Lottie represents the not knowing that intrigues all of us about ourselves. Eaton confides that she feels in the same circumstances, she’d follow a similar route that Lottie has, believing in a higher power to make sense of the carnage. 

“When I was younger, I thought I used to see things at the end of my bed and hear things, but then I realised it was sleep paralysis.” Eaton laughs. “But is it just sleep paralysis? Or is there something more? When it’s a very specific thing that you see and hear, it makes you wonder.” Regardless of her own spiritual cognisance, or lack thereof, she definitely does believe in the preternatural. “I feel like there’s something there. I feel like kids are so in tune with everything and as we get older, with stress and life and all of that, we lose that connection. I don’t know to what level, but I like the idea that there’s something to it. I feel like there has to be something in the world.”