WEBVTT - A Moment Behind the Scenes with Jessa (Anne Yatco) 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:16.470 Hey, this is solo director and producer Jenni Curtis. Writer 0:00:16.470 --> 0:00:19.050 Chris Porter. And I got to sit down with Aniello 0:00:19.050 --> 0:00:22.560 and talk through the intricacies of her character, Jessup. Here 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:24.630 are a few excerpts of what she had to say. 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:30.990 Like you said, you were in these development workshops with us, 0:00:30.990 --> 0:00:34.680 so you kind of saw the show change and grow. 0:00:34.710 --> 0:00:37.530 Mm hmm. Was there a difference for you in just 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:39.870 from the first time we worked on her in the 0:00:39.870 --> 0:00:42.239 workshop to what we ended up bringing into the studio? 0:00:42.690 --> 0:00:45.120 I think it just got refined for Jess. I felt 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:48.690 like in the workshop Jessie was already kind of fully formed, 0:00:48.990 --> 0:00:50.700 and I think we just, like, made little refinements to 0:00:50.700 --> 0:00:54.210 like exactly how she approached the different crew members. 0:00:54.390 --> 0:00:56.730 How did you find Jess's voice physically? 0:00:57.030 --> 0:01:01.590 I felt like Jessa, just like who lives fully in 0:01:01.590 --> 0:01:04.200 my chest, if that makes sense. Like, if you think about, like, 0:01:04.350 --> 0:01:07.410 where a character lives in your body, she's like, rock solid. So, like, 0:01:07.410 --> 0:01:09.959 if I kept thinking of Jessa as just being, like, 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:14.399 the most. The most confident and assured that I could 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:17.370 ever be about who I am and what I do like, 0:01:17.370 --> 0:01:19.860 that feels like Jessa to me. And that's not to 0:01:19.860 --> 0:01:22.319 say that just doesn't have, like, her own worries and 0:01:23.010 --> 0:01:27.240 questions about herself. But she's that rock for the crew. 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:31.259 And I wanted to, like, feel that whenever I was 0:01:31.260 --> 0:01:33.570 in a scene. So that's kind of like the mental 0:01:33.569 --> 0:01:35.100 image I had in my brain to. 0:01:35.100 --> 0:01:37.830 Talk about being in the booth. We recorded this in 0:01:37.830 --> 0:01:39.330 the height of the pandemic. 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:39.960 Vaccine. 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:44.370 Pre vaccine. So we were in a recording studio, which 0:01:44.370 --> 0:01:45.660 I don't know about for you, but for me that 0:01:45.660 --> 0:01:47.670 was like a godsend, being able to be in a 0:01:47.670 --> 0:01:49.710 studio with other people. Obviously you were on the other 0:01:49.710 --> 0:01:51.540 side of the glass, so we never got to interact 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:54.030 like face to face. But I saw you. 0:01:54.060 --> 0:01:56.970 It was nice. It was one of the first projects 0:01:56.970 --> 0:01:59.910 I got to work on in a studio in the pandemic, 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:03.690 because like the pandemic happened and everything went remote and 0:02:03.690 --> 0:02:06.090 I had to learn how to record remotely. And then 0:02:06.090 --> 0:02:08.220 this came up and you're like, We're in a recording studio. 0:02:08.220 --> 0:02:09.690 And I was like, Can we is this a thing 0:02:09.690 --> 0:02:13.080 we can do yet? And it was and it worked 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:15.690 out great. And like all the safety protocols were in place, 0:02:15.690 --> 0:02:19.680 like everything felt safe and above board and it was 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:21.510 lovely people to see your face through the glass while 0:02:21.510 --> 0:02:22.350 we were doing this. 0:02:22.950 --> 0:02:26.580 Just to bring it back to Jessa. Yeah, we obviously 0:02:26.700 --> 0:02:29.580 very much love Jessa as a character, all of us, 0:02:29.580 --> 0:02:32.250 but we tried very hard to make sure that they 0:02:32.250 --> 0:02:36.000 were all very human characters. So from your perspective, what 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:38.280 is something that you love about Jessa and what are 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:41.340 some flaws that you feel are worth acknowledging? 0:02:41.730 --> 0:02:45.030 I love that Jessa is just enough of a chameleon 0:02:45.030 --> 0:02:47.820 to be able to like, connect with everyone in the 0:02:47.820 --> 0:02:51.660 crew because they're all very different. And the way you 0:02:51.660 --> 0:02:53.760 have to approach each of those people in order to 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:55.620 draw them out, in order to get them to tell 0:02:55.620 --> 0:02:57.780 you vulnerable things, in order to get them to become 0:02:57.780 --> 0:03:01.200 vulnerable for you. Like that's a different tactic for each person, right? 0:03:01.410 --> 0:03:05.130 One of the tactics being her big monologue in episode three, 0:03:05.490 --> 0:03:08.250 kind of baring it all herself in kind. And I 0:03:08.250 --> 0:03:12.390 think that's so, so valuable, just trying to relate to 0:03:12.389 --> 0:03:15.690 people out there in the world. So many people are 0:03:15.690 --> 0:03:20.370 un willing to try different avenues to be able to 0:03:20.370 --> 0:03:22.680 connect with people that they normally wouldn't. And I feel 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:24.090 like just as the kind of person who would be 0:03:24.090 --> 0:03:26.760 able to do, you know, how I lost my arm? 0:03:27.020 --> 0:03:29.220 A drunk driver. 0:03:29.700 --> 0:03:34.900 That's right. One year before self-driving cars became mandatory. I 0:03:34.900 --> 0:03:38.290 was driving home with my fiancee and we just had 0:03:38.290 --> 0:03:41.800 dinner with her parents. They thought we didn't need her something, 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:45.490 so they gave us all their leftovers. I'm sitting there 0:03:45.490 --> 0:03:48.400 in the passenger seat with four boxes piled on my lap, 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:52.720 and I see these headlights coming real fast toward the 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:57.850 driver's side window. And I think to myself, these leftovers 0:03:57.850 --> 0:04:02.080 are going to go everywhere. And that's where my memory 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:03.700 just ends. 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:06.550 This monologue that we've been talking about in episode three, 0:04:06.550 --> 0:04:08.950 I swear, like Jessa became a friend of mine and 0:04:08.950 --> 0:04:10.660 a cheerleader of mine, and I would go back and 0:04:10.660 --> 0:04:13.930 listen to this monologue when I was having, you know, 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:19.450 stress about the show and stress about life and her perspective, like, 0:04:19.450 --> 0:04:22.870 helped me as a person. And I guess I kind 0:04:22.870 --> 0:04:25.630 of want to throw it over to Chris who wrote 0:04:25.930 --> 0:04:29.860 the thing. What is it you were trying to say 0:04:29.860 --> 0:04:32.410 with the monologue? Where did it stand in the story 0:04:32.410 --> 0:04:36.159 and how did you come to the words of it? 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:40.660 Definitely functionally, with this moment in this story, what was 0:04:40.660 --> 0:04:44.200 important is communicating who Jessa was and how she works 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:46.690 just like and was explaining. She kind of has to 0:04:46.810 --> 0:04:49.450 be a chameleon and find a way that she fits 0:04:49.450 --> 0:04:52.839 with these other crew members because she's not only there 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:56.200 to stitch up fools, as Jessa says, she's actually there 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:59.230 for their mental health as well. And she knows in 0:04:59.230 --> 0:05:01.690 this moment Jamal is spinning out. And we know that 0:05:01.690 --> 0:05:04.719 in the more present timeline, which is the most future 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:09.099 timeline of Jamal facing what could be his imminent death, 0:05:09.610 --> 0:05:12.220 he's also spinning out and he needs to hear these 0:05:12.220 --> 0:05:16.480 words again that Jessa has relayed to him. So story wise, 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:18.849 I knew that that had to be the mission of it. 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:21.850 Part of her back story, I knew that she had 0:05:21.850 --> 0:05:23.919 to have a bionic arm that was caused by this thing. 0:05:24.370 --> 0:05:27.849 Her story about the leftovers going everywhere is actually somewhat 0:05:27.850 --> 0:05:30.640 inspired by a true story, where I was leaving a 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:33.820 friend's house on Thanksgiving and his family had given us 0:05:33.940 --> 0:05:37.390 multiple pies. I had them in my passenger seats, about 0:05:37.390 --> 0:05:40.000 three different pies because they were like, Here, thank you 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:41.770 for coming to our Thanksgiving. Here's a whole bunch of 0:05:41.770 --> 0:05:45.219 extra pies. And thank God it was not a drunk driver. 0:05:45.490 --> 0:05:48.549 It was not a situation where I lost a significant other. 0:05:48.550 --> 0:05:50.050 It was not a situation where I lost a limb 0:05:50.050 --> 0:05:52.539 of my body, but I definitely slammed on my brakes, 0:05:52.540 --> 0:05:54.969 reached over to the pies and thought to myself, These 0:05:54.970 --> 0:05:57.580 pies are going to go everywhere. And that is where 0:05:57.580 --> 0:06:00.280 my memory stops, right? Then it does not kick back 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:02.890 in for 3 hours until a cop is questioning me, 0:06:02.890 --> 0:06:05.200 asking what year it is and who the president was. 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:07.029 And sure enough, when I found my car and it 0:06:07.029 --> 0:06:10.000 was totaled, the pies had indeed gone everywhere. But there 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:12.760 is always something about that. Like I told that to 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:15.250 the insurance people when they were taking my statement, I 0:06:15.250 --> 0:06:17.290 was like, I thought, these pies are going to go everywhere. 0:06:17.589 --> 0:06:19.779 And I remember looking back on that and thinking, What 0:06:19.779 --> 0:06:22.300 a stupid thing to think, what a stupid thing to 0:06:22.300 --> 0:06:25.150 spend that fraction of a second on. And so that 0:06:25.150 --> 0:06:28.000 became sort of what happened to Jessa. And I wrote 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:30.490 it into the story that way because it just resonated 0:06:30.490 --> 0:06:32.409 in my brain of, Wow, this is the way that 0:06:32.410 --> 0:06:33.240 humans think. 0:06:33.250 --> 0:06:36.100 Yeah, that hit me when I was like reading it 0:06:36.100 --> 0:06:38.380 and working on it because yeah, we do think about 0:06:38.380 --> 0:06:41.799 really weird stuff at the worst possible moment and that 0:06:41.800 --> 0:06:45.310 is just human nature and it's so easy to beat 0:06:45.310 --> 0:06:47.799 yourself up about that kind of a thing, but you 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:51.190 really literally couldn't help it. That was all you were 0:06:51.190 --> 0:06:53.469 going to think about at that moment. And having to 0:06:53.470 --> 0:06:54.880 sit with that is is hard. 0:06:55.060 --> 0:06:57.520 And it's very human. And I think that's what's powerful 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:00.490 about the script is there are so, so many human 0:07:00.490 --> 0:07:05.350 moments in this and everybody has their own truly human flaws. 0:07:05.350 --> 0:07:09.010 Jessa gets to see all of them. Yes, because everybody 0:07:09.010 --> 0:07:12.070 spills their guts to her. So what is just a 0:07:12.070 --> 0:07:15.700 view of all of the other crew members, all these people, 0:07:15.700 --> 0:07:18.610 you know, so deeply? And let's start with the first two, 0:07:18.610 --> 0:07:21.790 Jamal and Ren, you become close to both of them. 0:07:21.940 --> 0:07:26.020 For Ren, I think Jessa sees like kind of a 0:07:26.020 --> 0:07:29.470 kinship with her. Like I think she she sees Ren 0:07:30.100 --> 0:07:31.989 kind of respond to the world in a way that 0:07:31.990 --> 0:07:34.630 Jessa has in the past like. And I think that 0:07:34.630 --> 0:07:38.620 resonates with her. So I get the sense that Jessa 0:07:38.890 --> 0:07:42.370 reaches out to her first because she can see her 0:07:42.370 --> 0:07:44.980 coming down that same path that just some might have. 0:07:45.250 --> 0:07:49.330 But also, I think that makes them closer friends than 0:07:49.330 --> 0:07:52.540 probably anyone else in the crew. Not that Ren is 0:07:52.630 --> 0:07:57.790 the most outgoing or easy to form relationships with, but 0:07:57.790 --> 0:08:01.660 I think Jessa is able to crack the shell a 0:08:01.660 --> 0:08:05.110 little bit more with Ren, and part of it is 0:08:05.110 --> 0:08:10.150 probably occupational by nature, but some of it is like 0:08:10.150 --> 0:08:14.740 just genuinely she appreciates her presence and wants to wants 0:08:14.740 --> 0:08:15.310 to help her out. 0:08:15.970 --> 0:08:19.030 I love that you said Ren responds to the world 0:08:19.030 --> 0:08:21.100 in a way that Jessa has in the past, because 0:08:21.100 --> 0:08:23.950 we definitely didn't give you that. That was something you 0:08:23.950 --> 0:08:28.030 created as Jessa on your own. Yeah. And I didn't 0:08:28.030 --> 0:08:29.410 know that. I didn't know that. 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:32.150 I guess I get this. Feeling that Jessa was a 0:08:32.150 --> 0:08:35.270 lot like that because she has this I approach it 0:08:35.270 --> 0:08:38.450 like just had this life before the incident that she 0:08:38.450 --> 0:08:40.870 talks about in episode three and then a life afterward. 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:44.870 And she talks about having to change her whole outlook 0:08:44.870 --> 0:08:46.520 on life and having to change her whole way of 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:51.589 approaching approaching this new world. So I feel like before 0:08:51.980 --> 0:08:55.100 she was different and I get the sense because she 0:08:55.100 --> 0:08:57.260 was she was going to be a marine, she was 0:08:57.260 --> 0:08:59.780 ambitious and all this kind of stuff. And I think 0:08:59.780 --> 0:09:01.550 she might have been a little more of a closed 0:09:01.550 --> 0:09:05.590 off person like like Ren with the exception of her fiancee, 0:09:05.870 --> 0:09:06.170 you know? 0:09:06.860 --> 0:09:07.460 I love. 0:09:07.460 --> 0:09:12.230 It. Yeah, me too. Well, that's a taste of our 0:09:12.230 --> 0:09:14.870 behind the scenes with Anadarko. If you'd like to hear 0:09:14.870 --> 0:09:17.120 the whole discussion, you can find it on the solar 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:18.530 panel on Apple Premium.