Juliette Lewis’ Natalie and Tawny Cypress’ Taissa went through a lot in Yellowjackets Season 1, but they were introduced as tenacious forces with especially well-defined qualities and goals right out of the gate. However, things are changing in Season 2, and it feels as though their foundations are being rocked more than most this time around.

At the end of Season 1, Natalie was kidnapped before she could take her own life and Taissa pulled off a surprise win in her State Senate election, but her marriage was about to be shattered by Simone’s (Rukiya Bernard) discovery of the gruesome shrine in their basement. When Season 2 kicks off, it’s quickly revealed that Natalie was taken to Lottie’s (Simone Kessell) wellness retreat for her own safety and Taissa is unraveling as career and family pressures mount courtesy of more and more frequent visits from her sleepwalking self.

Image via Showtime

Given the fact that Taissa and Natalie are experiencing such significant change (and perhaps growth) this season, I opted to ask Cypress and Lewis for their anchors for their characters to ensure that, no matter their headspace or circumstances, all of their actions are based in some sort of consistent truth. Cypress began:

“When you’re crafting a character you have to craft who that character is, their history, and all that sort of thing. In television, it changes from time to time, but the core of who Taissa is, she’s a narcissist, she’s selfish. Even falling apart in Season 2, she’s still selfish. I don’t know how many you’ve seen, but her finding Van, that’s not to help Van. That’s to help herself. In trying to help herself, I think she reverts back — it’s sort of like your first love when you’re a teenager and you see that person again 20 years later, you fall sort of right back into old habits that you had and that’s the Taissa you’re gonna see in Season 2. She is nothing like Season 1 Taissa.”

Image via Showtime

Just like Taissa is nothing like the Season 1 version of the character, so it goes for Natalie as well. Here’s how Lewis described Natalie’s current situation and also how she prepared for the role this season:

“Natalie is totally different as well in that the first season she was strong-willed in her ruin. You’re really seeing someone circle the drain and do it in a harsh manner defiantly because her love has been stolen from her, and she’s also just super toxic. So this new place, she’s cleaned up. It was not by choice. But I watched a few things of people who survived suicide. That was really compelling because you could switch on a dime to want to live in [a] turn of events. A guy, he does TED Talks, he survived jumping off a bridge. It was really fascinating. But different, Natalie’s wanting to find the truth and she’s softer and it’s a really odd, unfamiliar place for her to be quite what you’d want for a person — by the end, she wants answers for everybody to do better.”

Looking for even more from Cypress, Lewis, and Simone Kessell on Yellowjackets Season 2? We’ll have the second half of this interview for you when Episode 6 becomes available on April 30th.

If you’d rather not wait for more Yellowjackets talk, be sure to check out the first half of our interview with Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, and Lauren Ambrose below: