The Rise of Sophie Thatcher

From Scream Queen to Future Oscar Winner

Time and time again these days I have seen uproar when the same crop of actors and actresses keep getting cast in projects. Every time you see an announcement of Jacob Elordi being cast, or Jenna Ortega, or Sydney Sweeney you will inevitably see that comment of “where did they even come from?” or “why are they in everything?”

And so if you have been out of the Yellowjackets loop, or hive, you may have suddenly started to hear the name Sophie Thatcher more than you ever did. And that is thanks to her lead roles in the movies Heretic and Companion that have come out within the last 4 months of this writing.

In an effort to avoid that line of questioning with Sophie (it won’t stop it), let’s do a quick rundown on who Sophie Thatcher is and how she suddenly seems to be popping up everywhere lately.

Sophie Thatcher’s career began by starring in a handful of short films and small TV spots from 2015-2017 as she appeared on shows like Chicago P.D. and The Exorcist.

That was until she landed a supporting role in the 2018 film starring Pedro Pascal, Prospect.

Following that film she continued appearing in some short films and TV shows until she landed her breakout role in Yellowjackets in 2021. Sophie landed the role of Teenage Nat, opposite her character’s adult counterpart Juliette Lewis. This role is the role that finally let Sophie be seen by large audiences and gave her a spotlight to truly showcase what she can do. And if you’re anything like me, you were blown away pretty early on by her performance of Teenage Nat and were immediately hooked.

As Yellowjackets now enters its third season (with more on the horizon), Sophie continues to deepen her performance in this role and now enters the third season with a far larger following than she had entering the show. But that’s skipping ahead quite a bit, let’s go back to 2021.

Following Season 1 of Yellowjackets premiering in 2021, Sophie landed a re-occuring 3 episode role on The Book of Boba Fett from the Star Wars universe. This was actually the first role of Sophie’s that I had ever seen, as I hadn’t seen Yellowjackets yet, and it saw her sharing the screen with veteran actors like Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen.

Then Sophie landed her first lead role in a feature film in 2023’s The Boogeyman. This film was based on a short story by Stephen King with the film being written by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, writers of the 2019 standout film A Quiet Place. Remember their names, they will come up again.

Between a lead role in a theatrically released horror film and her time in Yellowjackets, this is when she began to be seen as a legitimate contender for the silver screen. However the next time she was seen on a movie screen was almost a full calendar year later in MaXXXine, the third film in a trilogy from Ti West & Mia Goth.

But between those two roles she was seen plenty as Season 2 of Yellowjackets released in the spring of 2023.

Now we turn to last year, when the Rise of Sophie Thatcher kicked into hyper drive. The writers of The Boogeyman, Beck & Woods, had created a new film called Heretic. This time they were directing and they remembered Sophie from her performance in The Boogeyman and brought her back to star in their film alongside Hugh Grant. The film came out in November of 2024 and was well received by critics and audiences as Sophie Thatcher really shined through.

Then late last month, Sophie was at the front of another theatrically released horror film titled Companion. While you can say that Hugh Grant was the true lead of Heretic, there is no denying Sophie as the lead in Companion as she is the core of what the rest of this film revolves around.

Like Heretic, this film was well received with many (even if they didn’t enjoy the film) lauding Sophie Thatcher for her performance. Along the way of the press tour for Companion, Sophie was really put in front of the eyes of many through her mainstream interviews with the likes of ABC News.

And then we circle back to Yellowjackets that just 2 weeks after the release of Companion, returned for Season 3 with Sophie Thatcher once again one of the main characters of the show.

So if you’re following along at home, within the span of 4 months the name Sophie Thatcher popped up in 3 different mainstream projects and will only continue to garner people’s attentions. I haven’t even mentioned that in the fall of 2024, Sophie released her debut EP Pivot & Scrape and plans on touring her songs this year.

While a lot of her standout roles have been in the horror realm, Sophie has made it clear that she really wants to expand her bounds and show not only audiences, but herself, that she can do so much more. So while I think she may be a bit more selective on her next role(s) to prove that; everyone at home better prepare to hear the name Sophie Thatcher a hell of a lot more.

Because she isn’t going anywhere but up.