Apple TV+ will launch season one of the riveting dramatic thriller Severance on February 18, 2022. Created by Dan Erickson, Severance is set in a world in which a new procedure’s been developed that allows employees of a fictional corporation (Lumon Industries) the ability to literally separate their work lives from their personal lives. The personal life has no idea what the work life does during their time in control of the body and vice-versa.
Severance stars Adam Scott as Mark Scout, the Lumon Industries employee at the center of season one. Britt Lower plays Helly, Mark’s co-worker and a newcomer to the severance procedure.
Scott, Lower, and series creator, writer and executive producer Dan Erickson joined executive producer and director Ben Stiller for Apple TV+’s 2022 Television Critics Association’s virtual winter press tour. During the panel, Stiller said he was excited to dig into something that felt different than other projects he’s been involved in.
“You know, I didn’t really know exactly what the tone was going to be going into it. I had an idea. I think we all had an idea but that’s what I really loved about the writing,” explained Stiller. “It felt very unique, and so it was exciting to go into something that was different, for sure.”
Creator Dan Erickson described the series’ setting as deliberately ambiguous. Severance takes place somewhere in America but neither the geographic location nor year are ever discussed.
“We obviously shot mostly in New York, in New Jersey, so there’s sort of a vague New England, East Coast-y feel to the city. But we didn’t really want to know exactly where it was or tie it to a specific locale,” explained Erickson. “And then the time…I would just say it is around now. It’s like vaguely now-ish. We’re not going for something where like, you know, this is 10 years in the future where severance has existed or has been invented and already exists. It’s sort of an alternate, vaguely now-ish timeline.”
Erickson was also deliberately vague when it came to the actual severance process. When Adam Scott as Mark enters Lumon Industries, how does he suddenly lose his memories of life outside of work? Those who’ve gone through the severance process label their two halves as innies and outies, but how does the switch take place?
Erickson joked that he has files in his laptop that explain how he made it make sense scientifically, but viewers don’t need all the intricate details to understand when the innie/outie swap happens.
“…Suffice it to say there’s some sort of a barrier that, you know, if you’re basically halfway down the elevator, you pass it,” said Erickson. “We’ve talked about it as a [trip] wire; we talked about it as just some sort of a threshold. You pass that and it sends a frequency in the chip in your head that causes you to switch to your innie mode and then it just comes back up when you’re going home.”
Essentially, the actors playing characters who’ve undergone the severance process are playing two versions of their characters. Adam Scott said the actors were given all nine of season one’s scripts before shooting so they knew exactly what the innie and outie versions of their characters would be going through.
“We didn’t go episode by episode. We were shooting it all basically at once. We were jumping around constantly, so we got all of them. And it was great to know exactly where things are going because often in TV, or at least in TV I’ve done, you’re finding out week by week what’s unfolding for your character. Which is super interesting, as well, but this was really handy to be able to know where you’re going and be able to jump in and know exactly where you are in the arc.
And as far as the innie and outie of Mark, it was important to Ben and Dan and I that this not feel like…that we not approach it like it’s two different characters,” explained Scott. “I think for an actor, often your first instinct in a situation like that is to be like, ‘Yeah, I want one of them to have like a mustache and a limp or something like that.’ But this, it was very important that this be one guy and it’s just different parts of one guy or almost different halves.”
Scott continued: “And so the differences are subtle. I mean, one of them has 40-odd years-worth of life experience and the sorrow and grief and joy and all of the stuff that goes along with that. And the other one is, for all intents and purposes, two or two and a half years old but physiologically is bringing in a lot of that stuff and a lot of the feelings from the outside world but just doesn’t know how to locate it or name it. And so it was a matter of figuring out what those differences are from one to the other, the addition/subtraction of that and how it may manifest physically or in the voice or you know, and how that changes over the course of the story. That’s kind of how we approached it.”
Describing her approach to playing Helly, the most recent Lumon employee to undergo severance, Britt Lower said, “So Helly obviously wakes up on an office table, having no clue who she is. And so, as an actor, I was doing a lot of homework outside of work but primarily when I was coming to set as Helly, my job was to be in a state of discovery, investigating what is going on.
One of the lines I say most often is, ‘What the hell?’ and I think Helly is operating as kind of this avatar for the audience, understanding what it’s like to have the severance procedure, to have no clue who you are and to immediately be in this place that you’re like…she immediately knows she’s got to get out of there. Her instinct is to escape right away. And so being able to just be present to the elements of design that were contributing to that eeriness and to be in a state of investigation was kind of the way I went.”
Severance addresses the work/life balance and takes the division between the two to the extreme. Erickson found it ironic that writing a script about hating work wound up getting him a job that he loves.
“It’s sort of been a strange evolution for me. But I will say you know going into this, I think in this industry in this particular job, it’s one of many, many jobs where it is hard to separate work/life balance. I think since the pandemic, certainly, a lot of people are working from home. You’re doing your job 10 feet from where you sleep. So, for me, it’s been a challenge to sort of teach myself to be like, ‘Okay, it’s 5 p.m., I’m done. I’m gonna sit on the couch and watch something and not think about this anymore.’ And it’s a challenge, especially when it’s something you love,” said Erickson.
Britt Lower describes Severance as being about the very human desire to want to compartmentalize parts of our lives. “And what really struck me about the role of Helly is that she really becomes her own worst enemy in this series, and she thinks of herself as…you know, she’s at odds with herself. And I think the core question is does forgetting about the painful parts of life or the parts of yourself that you don’t like for half the day, does that make life better or worse? And there’s a lot to chew on in there,” said Lower.
Ben Stiller thinks Dan Erickson’s created a series that’s more than just a metaphor for the work/life balance. He believes Severance addresses how we live our lives in general.
“Like what we’re doing in our lives and how we’re going through this experience that we all have of being alive and how we spend our time and what we question and don’t question,” said Stiller. “I feel like that’s so there in that workspace, that that idea, that really resonates and made me think about it a lot. As we were sort of toiling to make the show about people toiling and doing things, we were all sort of like wondering what are we all doing here, doing all this stuff, keeping ourselves busy? I mean, it’s not just that, but I think ultimately, those bigger questions are interesting and kind of somehow resonate for me with this show.”
Adam Scott’s takeaway was less philosophical. “I feel like one of many things I learned was never let a stranger put a microchip into your brain. It’s just not a good idea, no matter how terrific the promises sound. Just stop. Or just really think about it before you let it happen,” joked Scott.
