‘Yellowjackets’ Star Melanie Lynskey Is Justifiably Fed Up With Hollywood Casting Her As ‘The Fat Friend’

Even though Melanie Lynskey has had a prolific career filled with award-winning movies and iconic guest-starring roles, she is still a woman in Hollywood, which means that people are always going to be mean by default. Things are going great.

The Yellowjackets star recently opened up to The New York Times about being type-cast as the “fat friend” over the years. Despite being a celebrated actress with multiple awards and nominations under her belt, she is still given roles based on her looks, and she is (rightfully) sick of it.

Lynskey explained that she was always expected to play “the fat friend or the jokey kind of fat person” over the years after various roles in both movies and shows. She even recalls one specific character that stuck out to her, “There was one thing I read where the person had a candy bar in every scene. It was kind of a strange disconnect. I felt like I was pretending when I was going in and auditioning to play these dowdy people.” Instead of being involved in projects because of her A+ acting, she was only being put into roles based on her body.

The actress gained attention last month when she called out online trolls who were mad about her appearance in The Last of Us. Lynskey says that she hopes the conversation shifts to talking about characters instead of their bodies. “I very much want to be onscreen representing an interesting person who’s not paying attention to what her tummy looks like,” she said, adding that her calling attention to it is a part of the problem. “If there were more people who look like me, then I wouldn’t have to talk about it as much.”

Even though she is subjected to unnecessary hate, Lynksey is absolutely crushing it this year after appearing in The Last Of Us and gearing up for Yellowjackets season two premiere at the end of the month. Meanwhile, her haters are out there deactivating their Twitter accounts, so who is really winning here Hint: it’s the one on TV winning awards.