Yellowjackets’s Steven Krueger Played the Long Game With Coach Ben

Spoilers follow for “Thanksgiving (Canada),” the sixth episode of season three of Yellowjackets.

Poor Coach Ben. It’s a common refrain for viewers of Yellowjackets, who have watched Steven Krueger’s soccer coach suffer consistently over the series’ three seasons. On the very first day after his team’s plane to nationals crashed in the Canadian wilderness, Misty Quigley (Samantha Hanratty) amputated Ben’s leg with an ax. In season two, as he was missing his boyfriend Paul back home, he considered suicide after being ostracized for his refusal to indulge in cannibalism with everyone else. In season three, he was (most likely falsely) accused of setting the fire that burned down their cabin that winter. He’s the one adult out here, yet he has the least authority in this upended power structure.

Krueger’s intensely internal yet physical performance has been crucial in portraying the full spectrum of Ben’s agony throughout his time on the show, from the delirious exhaustion of starvation to the panicked frustration of not being believed. Ben’s efforts to keep himself alive in season three have mostly been an exercise in futility, even with allies like Natalie Scatorccio (Sophie Thatcher), who did her best to protect him from the team’s bloodthirst, and Misty, who mounted an impressive defense at his mock trial. In “Thanksgiving (Canada),” though, Ben meets his merciful end, mercy-stabbed by Nat after a brutal force-feeding that left him more hopeless than ever. And with that end, he propels the next phase of this story as a new group stumbles upon the camp right after the girls have feasted on his flesh.

For many fans of the show — and for Krueger himself — Ben’s death was a foregone conclusion. “As much as I would have wanted Coach Ben to survive the wilderness and have a grown-up version in the present day — I always pitched myself as playing the aged-up version of me, like a Mandy Moore in This Is Us — that wasn’t really possible for the rest of the story to exist,” he acknowledges. “Ben’s death sets off this chain reaction, this ripple effect. None of those things would’ve happened if he was still alive.”

When did you find out your character was going to die this season, and what was your reaction?
I had known from the beginning that this was Coach Ben’s arc. I had always been told, through the grapevine and directly, that season three would be the end of his story. A lot of times, actors don’t find out that they’re dying until an episode or two before. You don’t want to cause too much mayhem. You don’t want somebody to suddenly come back and say, “Oh, well, if I’m dying, I want a bunch more money.” To our showrunners’ credit, they did not follow that industry protocol. If you asked them directly, they probably would say they wish they had. No actor really likes to hear that they’re losing their job. But it’s not me being killed off. It’s a character dying as part of the natural arc of the story.

You knew it would happen at this point when you were hired?
Ish. It wasn’t official or anything, but just in talking about it privately with the showrunners, they had mentioned, “Coach Ben will be around for the foreseeable future, and then as we get into season three, that’s when we initially discussed him meeting his end.”

The funny thing about a show like this is the creators go into it with a plan. Things always shift depending on a million different situations that pop up, but I will say I think for the most part, our creators have stuck to their plans.

At the end of the episode, we get this huge moment with a new group stumbling in after the ceremonial feast. What was it like seeing your own severed head?
Wasn’t fun. I thought that it would be, “Of course I want to see it. This is artistry.” As soon as I saw it, I had two very conflicting emotions: Wow, this is an incredible piece of art, and kudos to the people who did this, because it looks exactly like me, while simultaneously being like, Get that thing away from me. This is actually creeping me out. When it looks exactly like you, you’re like, “It’s like I’m looking at my future here. I’m seeing myself dead.” It’s some weird, meta existential thing happening in my mind.
 
Going into this season, were you under the impression that Ben really did burn down the cabin?
The first cut of the finale episode last season was so long that they had to cut out massive chunks of it. There were big scenes we filmed that were missing. They wrote the episode in a way — especially with regard to the cabin burning down and my potential role in all of that — where it pointed to Ben doing it pretty explicitly, but also they filmed it so that they could pull out individual chunks and make it more ambiguous. I think that was one of the things they decided as they went through the cut of the finale, and they were like, “Where do we want this to lead? How do we want people to feel about it? Do we want it to be more definitive, or more of a mystery?” In my mind, I was always under the impression that Ben did burn down the cabin. I like the fact that they made it much more ambiguous.

How did you portray Ben’s slide into deterioration and starvation in these recent episodes, especially this last one?
Our makeup team is incredible. I have some pictures that I still look back at occasionally of me on set. They made me look awful. I also played the long game: From the very beginning of the series, I knew the direction this was all heading, so physically I planned where I wanted to be at each stage. At the beginning, I put on a lot of extra weight, bulked up to be that 1990s New Jersey musclehead former-athlete dude, knowing that as we were starving in the wilderness, I can gradually wean back off. Season two, I was right at where I normally am weight-wise, physically and aesthetically. And I knew going into season three that this would be the direst circumstances for Ben. I ended up losing quite a bit of weight intentionally for it.

I know that’s always a controversial thing. This, for me, was truly driven by story. This wasn’t a choice I made because I wanted to be outlandish or catch people’s attention. The important thing was not just how it looked on-camera, but also how much it did for me from a psychological perspective. I remember reading an article a long time ago when Bradley Cooper did American Sniper, and he talked about the fact that he put on a lot of weight for that role and started to see and experience the world completely differently because of it. He would be walking down the street, and somebody would accidentally bump into him, and it would be like a fly bouncing off because he was so big. He wasn’t used to experiencing that, and the weird kind of power that comes with it. This was the exact inverse for me. I shed quite a bit, and I felt it every time I was on set. At one point, Ben probably believed he could’ve fended off the girls physically. This season, that was not the case. I felt it in my body and mind that I was weaker, and if these girls were to attack me, I probably could not defend myself.
 
Going back over your arc from season two into three, it feels like Ben kind of follows this pattern. He’ll seem completely resigned to his fate, like when he came close to suicide last season, and then something will bring his fight back for a while. That happens multiple times this season, even just at the trial — Ben knows the deck is stacked against him, but then he starts to believe he could survive, and he gets emotional talking about how much he cares about them, but then he slips back to resignation at the verdict. And then he has a little fight left in him at the end of episode five, but by episode six he’s ready for it to be over with.
That always felt very real and natural to me. There are ups and downs in a situation like this: Sometimes you really have the energy and will to survive, and sometimes, you’re like, “I’m over it. I’m too tired, I’m starving, I don’t want to do it anymore.”

I work with a great teacher and coach named Gregory Berger. Going into this season, I basically said, “I don’t know if it’s interesting enough for me to just play with the idea of ‘Do I want to survive or not?’” That, to me, is a little bit too easy. As we started to look at the writing of the episodes we had, what we came up with was maybe it’s not about whether I want to survive; it’s more about what impact I want to have on these girls. To save you the bullshit actor process stuff, what I ended up doing internally is, All right, I think my goal is to make this decision as difficult as possible on these girls. That’s what will bring out their true characters and allow them to be honest with themselves about who they are.
 
It’s so whiplash inducing: One minute, the girls want Ben dead but he’s fighting to live, and then the next, he wants to die but they’re forcing him to live.
When it seemed like things were going well for me, I went the other direction, and when it seemed like they weren’t, I went the other direction to pull everybody back to that middle ground of making this a really difficult decision. I let that be my North Star for the entire season.

Why was Nat the right person to kill Ben?
Of all the girls, Ben had connected most with Natalie. They see each other as kindred spirits, established way back in season one early on. Getting to go out with Sophie Thatcher was such a treat. We connected on a deep level early on just over our love of the craft of acting and our love of storytelling. We had that in common from the jump. If you could pick, Natalie was the person who should do it, because it was out of love, it was not out of spite or hate or vengeance.
 
What did you make of Misty’s final creepily affectionate gesture in kissing Ben?
I thought it was really sweet. I remember giggling to myself reading that. This is exactly the response that Misty would have, whereas everybody else is probably like, “Ew, what are you doing?” Very normal for her. It was very fun to film that with Samantha. She and I get along great.
 
In episode five, Akilah has a vision of your body as a bridge. Did you actually film for that?
I’d never done anything like that. It was basically one giant blue screen, and I was essentially lifted up on some posts that were like a platform. It wasn’t super-comfortable. They would lift me up and roll the cameras and have me breathe in different cadences, then lower me back down. Three or four minutes on this platform was enough before my body was like, “All right, this doesn’t feel good anymore. Let’s take a break.”
 
Last season, you filmed a lot on a soundstage. I assume you filmed much more outside this time?
Yeah. That was a massive undertaking for the set designers in season two, to pull that off and make it look like winter. But for us, we all prefer being actually outside in the elements. It just brings this level of realism to what we’re doing: You can roll around the dirt, and it all feels like it’s supposed to, versus doing it on a soundstage.

What will you take away from this experience?
This has been the most challenging role of my career. I’m excited to play more roles that are as emotionally demanding, psychologically demanding, and physically demanding as this. From a broader sense, the fact that this show has found an audience just goes to show that people are hungry for new, original ideas these days. We’re in this weird cycle in the industry where there’s not a lot of risk being taken. There’s the constant reboot and spinoff. And don’t get me wrong, I love a reboot and a spinoff. You want to come get me a Marvel movie right now? Tell me where to sign. But I hope we move as an industry back toward more willingness for risk and allowing creators to lead audiences to where they don’t even realize they want to go, instead of letting computers and algorithms and data predict what people want to see next.