Your Numbers Are Bad (with Damon Lindelof and Dan Erickson)

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Have you gotten into it? Yeah, and it does affect my mood. After I get out, I feel better.
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You know that thing where people say we're going to edit it out, but then they leave it in? Oh, yeah. That's a big podcast move, by the way.
before a question like you know you don't have to answer this we can edit it out but and then you know right or we'll edit out this whole thing and then you feel like you're let in on something that they did that's right yeah so this will actually be edited out this 100 will not be in the podcast right so there's no way anybody will hear this. Zero chance.
Okay, cool. Hey, I'm Ben Stiller.

I'm Adam Scott.

And this is the Severance Podcast with Ben and Adam, where we're talking about severance and influences to severance and things that relate to severance and just severance itself.

We're just going to keep talking about it.

We're going to talk about severance.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Doesn't matter.
There are no new episodes right now. No, we're just going to keep talking about, you guessed it, severance itself.
We're just going to keep talking about it. We're going to talk about severance.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter.
There are no new episodes right now. No, we're just going to keep talking about, you guessed it, severance.
And then what are we going to do after that? Then we're going to talk about severance some more. Yep.
And then after that, we're going to talk about severance, but this time through the prism of answering your hotline questions. Yeah.
Do you know why I like this podcast? Why is that? Because I have an excuse to talk to somebody about severance. Yeah.
Like you, because you understand that Yeah. Do you know why I like this podcast? Why is that? Because I have an excuse to talk to somebody about severance.

Yeah.

Like you, because you understand that it's like something.

Yeah, I'm not going to get sick of you talking about severance.

Sick or bored or just, you're not going to say to me, why do you keep talking about severance all the time?

Yeah, but before we get to the hotline, you are going to speak to a very special guest.

Yeah, this is actually a really fun week for me because Dan Erickson is back on the show. Severance creator, of course, the big brain that we keep in a jar.
And so we're taking that jar off the shelf so he and I can talk to one of our very favorite television writers. We're going to be joined by Emmy-winning, Peabody Award-winning writer, Damon Lindelof.
He co-created a show that, you know, it's been mentioned on

every episode of this podcast. A little show called Lost.
Yeah. You might've heard of.

That's right. And he also created Watchmen, co-created The Leftovers, Mrs.
Davis. I mean,

that's like a powerhouse list of shows. Yeah.
I'm just excited to have Dan back on the podcast and

we're going to get to talk to Damon about world building, how lost influence Dan as a writer. It's going to be super fun.

I'm excited for you to talk to him about Severance. He's so smart.
I met him a few times

really through you, was able to get a bite with him once. And he's, you know, the guy has done it

all in terms of television, in terms of creating a show for a streamer, creating a show for a network, creating a show for a cable channel and understanding that process because each one of those is a totally different process. And when people talk about Lost and how culturally affecting that show was, and they talk about the story and the debates about the story and the endings and all that stuff, right?

What people always seem to leave out is like, oh, by the way, he also was doing that for a network 22 shows a season for how many seasons? Five, six seasons? Six. Yeah.
So like to have to do that on a schedule where every September you're on the air. And so he's done it all different ways.
He's just a really, really smart and nice person. Can you imagine looking down the barrel of making 22 to 24 episodes of Severance and knowing that you get like a six week break and then you have to make another 22 right after? Like that's what they were doing for six seasons.
If you're lucky, right? If the ratings are good and you're top show on TV, which they were, then your reward is keep doing it, keep going, which is hard. Yeah.
It's crazy. Is there anything that you want me to ask him for you? Ask him if he knows what the ending to Severance is.
Okay. I'm writing that down.
That's great. You could just let us know.
Ending to Severance. Okay.
Great. He's a huge Severance fan, so I'm sure he'll answer that swiftly.
I'm also curious what you guys, you guys, it's interesting because you're like, hey, he's Damon Lindelof, you're Adam Scott. Now you're like these two sort of very important figures in science fiction drama.
What do you guys talk about when you're just hanging out? That's a good question. Yeah.
We usually talk about movies or TV shows. I had an idea though, maybe.
What's that? Power washing. Oh, shit.
Does he have a power washer? That down. If he doesn't, I'm going to get him one.
I'm going to get you one too. I feel like you two guys, I could picture you two guys power washing and just like, kind of like brainstorming, spitballing ideas for shows.
I would love to power wash something with Damon. It'd be so fun.
I'd watch that. If you power wash something with Damon though, there's a huge cliffhanger at the end of it.
Right. Okay.
Enough about power washing, if that's even possible. Let's go listen to my conversation with Dan Erickson and Damon Lindelof.
Okay, I'm just thrilled to be here with two guys that I'm lucky enough to call friends, Damon Lindelof and Dan Erickson. Damon Lindelof, of course, the co-creator of Lost, the creator of Watchmen, many other incredible shows.
Dan Erickson, our big brain. I can't believe I'm here sitting between these two guys.
The clash of the Titans, except they're not going to clash because they're also friends. Dan and Damon, welcome to the show.
Lovely to be here. I want to be the Kraken and you can be Perseus.
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a momentous week, isn't it? Isn't it, gentlemen? It certainly is. Since you're not going to toot your own horns, I do feel like this is probably the first time that you've gathered for podcasting since the record-breaking Emmy nominations.
I mean- Record-breaking for us. For us, yeah.
No, no, but it was a very high number. We joined the 27 Club.
Right. Somebody told me, Dan, that you started getting 27 dresses memes.
Yeah, I actually had three different friends who sent me some variation of a joke like, hey, you're now the Katherine Heigl of the Emmys. Wow.
You're blessed. One actually Photoshopped my face onto the poster, onto her on the poster.
Oh, I want a copy of that. Do you think you could bring Katherine Heigl to the Emmys? Just platonically.
If she's listening, she should know that she's invited. Guys, this is crazy.
I wasn't planning on it happening this early in the show. Oh, my God.
But ladies and gentlemen, Katherine Heigl. Oh, my God.
Oh, my God. Katherine, come on in.
Wow. And she has her 27 dresses with her.
She brought them all in on a rack. Oh my God.
You have laryngitis? Yeah, she can't. She can't talk, but her prop work is exceptional.
She'll be sitting here for the entire episode. Congratulations though.
Guys. Thank you.
Look, awards are so stupid. They really are.
But they're also the most important thing that ever happened in our business. And I'm rooting for you, Emmy Knight.
And I'm so glad that you're in the drama category. Because I'll be honest with you, there's a lot of comedic talk on this podcast when Ben is around.
By the way, is this the first time he hasn't been here? Should I feel special? And you know what? It's because I'm here. Because Ben isn't here, we can do whatever we want.
We can get super serious. So I just want to start by saying, Damon, we've been friends for a long time, but even before we became good friends, we had worked together.
Do you want to talk about what we worked together on? I would love to. Great.
I'm so glad you brought this up. Great.
So, you know, I'm sure people ask you this all the time, Dan. How did you break through? Like, how did you get your foot in the door? What was your first gig? So to make a very, very long story short and get to the atom of it all, which is, you know, what he's, that's why he's making that gesture.
Pointing at himself and making that keep it rolling gesture is I graduated from NYU film school and my attitude was that I would give myself five years to be paid to write something. That was my goal.
So I looked at LA as kind of like a grad school. So I sent an email to all of my friends and said, I know there are these entry-level positions, perhaps a writer's PA or writer's assistant.
If you know of any of these jobs, please let me know. And my friend, Julie Plek.
Julie's terrific. Amazing.
And a showrunner unto herself, Vampire Diaries, amongst many others. And she was kind of running Kevin Williamson's production company at the time.
He had had phenomenal success with Dawson's Creek. He was directing and had created this other show for ABC called Wasteland.
And the idea was, what if we did Friends, but it wasn't funny? That was literally, that was the elevator pit. So true.
Yeah. It was a one hour drama about very attractive 20 somethings.
The idea being that post-college, you're in a wasteland as you're trying to figure out what life is. And I was a writer's assistant on that show.
And it was just as all first seasons go, even the massively successful shows, it's just chaos. And writers were leaving and new showrunners were coming in.
And somehow I wrote on spec an episode of the show as sort of a sample, and I handed it to the youngest, the baby writers on the show.

And they called Kevin, and they were like, I think our writer's assistant can write.

And then Kevin came over to my desk, and he said, do you have an agent?

And I said, I do not.

And he said, you need to get one.

And then I was a writer, and I was in the Writer's Guild and everything else.

And the very first episode of Wasteland that I wrote, I think was the ninth episode. I co-wrote it with a woman named Pam Parker and a young Adam Scott was the love interest.
His character's name was Coffee Boy. Yeah.
Philip the Coffee Boy. I don't even think you were Philip yet.
You were just- Wow. You were just Sasha's love interest.
That's right. Sasha Alexander.
Sasha Alexander. And she called you Coffee boy.
And so, yeah, you were in my first produced writing credit. God, you were in it.
I don't think I remember- You were the standout guest star. I don't remember that part of it.
Yeah. We didn't meet, I don't think.
I mean, I was very- Yeah. I mean, maybe you were on set or something.
I don't remember either. This was 1999, by the way.
Yeah. I'm no mathematician, but I think that's at least 20 years ago or so.
Okay, over 20. Yeah.
It's one less than the number of Emmy nominations that Severance just got is what I know. I've been told to work that in as many times as possible.
Thank you. I want to keep talking about Wasteland.
It's okay if we fill the hour with Wasteland, right? Yeah, it should be all coffee boy talk. I did a bunch of episodes of that show.
You were so good that you recurred. And here's what's hilarious.
I don't think any of them aired because the show aired two episodes and was canceled. Canceled.
Yeah. But then we kept making episodes, right? Oh, sure.
Yeah. Oh, my God.
And then they all aired and I'm told it was very successful in Brazil. Right.'m not making that up which is what we were aiming for have you been to brazil yeah and i'm huge down because of philip the coffee boy yeah correct we went to brazil together and you were mobbed at the airport several times coffee boy they were speaking and saying it in english yeah in english with an american accent amazing i i think that for a show that is about sort of the emptiness, the wasteland of post-college life, to not air it is actually a great creative choice.
That's right. That's really avant-garde and beautiful.
And very meta, which is what Kevin Williamson was going for. Sure.
So knowing you guys as well as I do, we all work in TV, obviously, but we're all fans of TV kind of first and foremost. As far as being a fan goes, what does that mean to you? And what kind of fan would you say you are? Well, it's going to sound sad and or facetious, but to me, I'm somebody for whom like fandom can often sort of take the place of friendship at times in my life where I'm like, maybe I'm not living in my normal place or maybe I am.
But for whatever reason, I'm just sort of in a lonely patch. Yeah.
For me, the shows that I've really loved, like there is absolutely a sense of like returning to your friends, returning home. You put it on and your body kind of relaxes a little bit in the way that it does when you're spending time with family or people that you care about so you know i think that that for me as i got into creating stuff it was so important to me i think some people find it cheesy to say oh you have to love the characters you know you have to care about them but i'm like that's the point like like that's why i got into this is because like on certain nights when i'm feeling like it's it's just me in this big old lonely universe, I'm sitting down and I'm watching The Office or I'm watching Lost or I'm watching something with people that I have built a relationship with it, albeit one-sided and parasocial.
And yeah, I don't know that that's the most healthy thing, but for me, that's a lot of the pleasure and the joy of being a fan of film and TV. I feel exactly the same way.
And I do get that same kind of serotonin rush if I put on the West Wing or Lost or Sex and the City or one of these shows where I just love the characters so much that I feel like I know them like they're friends of mine. How about you, Damon? Well, Adam, I'm just I'm just a fan of cinema.
Oh, here we go. Settle in, Dan.
Here's what I'll say is I think that Dan's probably a little bit younger than I. You are a contemporary of mine, although you look considerably younger than I am.
Thank you. But there's like a whole generation of storytellers that self-identify as Gen X.
And we essentially were not raised by parents. We were raised by movies and television shows.
That isn't to say that we were like neglected, but I think that the idea of parenting as kind of like a gerund or a verb, like didn't really conventionally exist. They were just kind of coming around on like Dr.
Spock saying like, maybe we shouldn't beat these things, but like, we should probably provide food for them and occasionally like attend to back to the school night. But it's like, we were kind of on our own.
And so, and particularly in this age where the VCR was just invented. And then also, I think most of us as a result of the lack of parenting, our parents then got divorced.
And so all of these movies like E.T. and Back to the Future is kind of like an outlier where it's like, oh, they're together. They're on the verge of divorce, by the way.
And she obviously wants to have sex with her son, which is just not, it doesn't bode well. But it felt like all those movies that we were watching, you know, when I saw Stranger Things, for example, I was like, this is what it was.
And so my affection, as Dan was talking about the characters, is it was one way, right? But I did have that like unhealthy feeling of like, I know these people. And the thing about this medium that people watch on devices, some of which may be called televisions, there's an intimacy to it because of the scale.
It's in your living room, it's in your house, and the people's heads are the size of your heads. It's different than movies where you're sitting with a bunch of other people.
It's like church or temple. There's a reverence to it, and they're projected at the scale of God.
And so I did feel this intimate connection to that stuff.

And then my dad was a huge comic book sci-fi guy

and dragged me to actual comic book conventions

that were about standing on a long line

and getting something signed by a comic book writer

or a comic book artist or Ursula Le Guin.

You know, like I grew up inside that culture.

And now, like I was really touched

listening to this podcast.

I think it was Conan who was talking about the blender and the whole idea of like you're

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I'm like I, which I'm now going to ditch is like, we're more DJs than musicians in terms of, we're remixing. We've got all these amazing albums that we love, but we're kind of like finding different ways in and out of them and maybe creating something that feels original, but we're openly acknowledging that this is kind of a bit beyond homage, where I'm just like'm just like, I can just say if Twin Peaks didn't air, I'm not sitting here talking to you guys right now.
It's just like, it's the ingredients wouldn't be. Cause it's not even like, it not only informed my own art, but it's so inspired me.
It so made me want to do this, you know, and you have to say like, these are the things that made me want to do this. And that's what true fandom is.
Yeah, it's interesting because speaking of things that you're a fan of that goes into the blender, I know during season one, Dan, you and I would talk about Lost and talk about how much we love Lost. And I remember I was doing a rewatch of it while we were shooting season one.
Yeah, I remember you telling me. I just wanted to ask you, Dan, you know, you're a bit younger than Damon and I.
And so when Lost was on TV, you must have been, I don't know, in high school or- I was just out of college actually. Oh, you were just- Yeah, I look a lot younger and handsomer than I am.
But he did graduate college at 12. It's true.
Like that kid in Re that kid in revenge of the nerds. That's the thing.
This whole time I thought you were 15 years old. I was crazy.
No. Yeah.
I saw it. Actually, it's funny.
We were, um, I had graduated college and me and three other guys were driving down to LA to find a place. We ended up finding a two bedroom apartment in studio city where the four of us lived, two guys to a room.
And my friend Nathan had his laptop and had a bunch of DVDs, which was an early form of, you could show media on a little disc. A silver disc? A silver disc on one side.
The other side said Lost. But it was like we were driving down in this big van from Bellingham, Washington to LA.
And he showed me like the first 10 episodes in the car. And then, you know, we immediately just, I was hooked.
And the whole time that we lived together, we would go to the Blockbuster, which was there in Studio City. And we would rent one and then we would finish that one and we would go back.
And so it was, you know, what the kids now call binging. But, you know, we had to we had to go and walk across the street to do it.
Yeah. You had to get some exercise in in between DVDs.
So what was it about the show that hooked you in? How did it kind of spark your imagination? I mean, there just really hadn't I think it's fair to say there had not been anything quite like that in terms of how propulsive it was and how just every episode you felt like you were getting more and more addicted and you were digging further down and finding new treasures. But it really was at the end of the day, you know, it was that I loved the characters.
I loved Hurley and I loved Charlie and I wanted them to be okay. And I wanted to see that they were going to be okay.
You know, I wanted Claire to have her baby and be healthy and everything. And I think to this day, like my favorite moment from Lost is just that very simple moment.
Or one of my favorites, I'll have to say, is that moment where Hurley gives Ben Linus the candy bar. And's just, there's no dialogue.
He just hands him the candy bar and Ben sort of stares at him and then takes it. And it's just this sweet little kind gesture where you wouldn't have expected to find one.
And those were the moments that I think even more than the mystery kept me coming back. Yeah.
You know what? I keep going back to it. When I think about lost is believe it's in the first episode when Locke looks at Walt with the orange peel in his mouth.
And he smiles. Yeah, it's in the pilot.
That is just a wild moment. That was a JJ idea.
I would have followed Locke anywhere after that moment, honestly. It was amazing.
Terry O'Quinn. Damon, we've been getting a lot of hotline questions coming in.
A lot of people kind of really talking about severance and lost and the similarities between them and a lot about how the fans like to come up with theories to these mysteries. So do you guys want to hear one of these questions that concerns both the shows? Oh boy.
Is it a crossover pitch? Are they happening? Is it because Because I know that there was some grumpiness, I think, on Mike Schur's part about crossover episodes, and then you and Ben somehow converted him. And now he's then he was talking about the love boat or something.
Yeah, exactly. Lay it on me.
Let's find out. Catherine, would you like to hear the haunt line? Oh, yep, she would love to.
That's a big nod. Wow.
Cool. cool i i didn't know are you a fan of both the shows lost and this bit is is never gonna stop because it's invisible katherine heigl is is my favorite bit hey ben hey adam my name's johnny i'm from ohio and huge fan of the show as i've been watching, I've been really just enjoying some of the similarities and possibly even inspiration between Severance and Lost.
And one of the things that I noticed while watching Lost is just managing all of the questions and mysteries that would come up in the show. So could you guys speak to a little bit about how you're managing the balance of creating the mystery of the show and what's going on without overloading us with questions without answers? Thanks so much, guys.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, yeah, I'm curious to hear how Severance inspired Lost. Yes.
But before we get into that, I mean, I do think that there was something on Lost where it's like you you could you could solve a sort of a smaller mystery and get that hit of of dopamine but find that it was part of a greater tapestry and i think you know one thing that i that i said going into season two was i would like to get gemma out or at least out of where she is right now and i would like to know what the numbers are because those were both these big questions. And I want those answers to lead to bigger, equally or even more interesting questions.
I do think that if we still had truly no idea what the numbers are right now, we would maybe be starting to lose people a little bit more than we have. It's that nesting doll thing of trying to sort of start on the inside and make your way out.
Yeah. I remember that being a thing that you and Ben both felt we really needed to address in the season was answer what the numbers are.
We had some experience with numbers on Lost as well. But your numbers are bad.
Our numbers are good. Your numbers are good.
But I do think like the overlap in the Venn diagram, and I think I'm going to attribute this to something that I think Cuaron said when he was talking about children of men. Again, I don't know if I mentioned earlier, but I'm kind of into cinema.
but it was sort of like the idea of a MacGuffin being a what is never going to be as emotionally

uplifting as the MacGuffin being a who and so the idea of a MacGuffin being a what is never going to be as emotionally uplifting as the MacGuffin being a who. And so the idea of like the numbers in Lost started out as something that Hurley played in the lottery and then it created horrific luck.
But it was also something that Rousseau was repeating in a message. And then they were written on the hatch and they just kind of kept cropping up there.
And it was like the answer always had to be like, but what do the numbers mean? Is like Dreyfus asking, what does this mean? And it means that aliens are coming and they're going to be returning some pilots that they stole or borrowed. And then they're going to take some more people, but that's not what he means by what does it mean? And I think that the beauty of what we were trying to achieve on Lost, and it's something that I certainly chased in my subsequent shows, but I feel like Severance has in its first line of dialogue in the pilot, is some deeper sense of meaning.

I think that this kind of idea of identity and what its relationship is to memory.

And it's those kind of like deeper philosophical questions that if Cold Harbor is related to that central idea of who am I?

You know, like, am I the sum total of the experiences that I had? This kind of total recall construct of like, wow, I've been rooting for Arnold for this entire movie, but now here's this videotape of him talking to himself. That's what I really thought of when I saw Helena for the first time.
I was like, wow, like, am I still rooting for her? And the whole Indie Indie Audi concept, you've gotten me to treat Mark as two different people when he's one person, that's what the show is about. And so as long as the mysteries are centering around that fundamental idea, you're much more playing with what does it mean on an existential level? What does it mean to be alive versus I'm opening up the mystery box and a dove flies out.
It's just like those things, it's not to say they don't matter. The mythology does matter.
And when Carlton and I were messaging around Lost and we were like, people are all wrapped up in the mythology. All that matters to us is the characters.
What we should have said and what I reflect upon is it's the marriage between the characters and the mystery that makes the show work. If I don't feel something when you tell me what Cold Harbor is, you know, it can't just be revelation.
It just can't be like a whodunit.

It really has to connect back to the central idea of the show.

Okay, it's time for a quick break.

We've got more from my conversation with Damon Lindelof and Dan Erickson right after this. This episode is brought to you by The Farmer's Dog.
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Explore more at notion.com slash severance. Damon, for whatever reason, you know, Lost and Severance are both shows that people refer to as mystery box shows.
And I just have a general question. Does that phrase mystery box show, does that come from JJ's reference? He had a story about a box that he grew up with and never never opened yeah he gave a ted talk um and it's like it's a box with a literally a question mark on it and it's a great ted talk yeah um and i think like you know it's one of those things that that seemed like wonderful at the time and then it became like a very harsh criticism and i was curious about whether or not you guys are experiencing this because like, as soon as the pilot aired, you know, people were like, what's the noise in the woods? And it was like, Oh God, if you're interested in that, wait till you meet Rousseau, you know, like, and there, it was just mystery upon mystery upon mystery until we basically got to the season one finale.
They find the hatch, which JJ had pitched in the very first meeting that we ever had. They should find this thing in the ground and they should spend the entire season trying to get it open.
And I was like, they're not finding it until we know what's in there. And so the writers immediately started, we understood that that was catnip, but that is a literal mystery box.
And so there was a whole summer between the finale, which aired in the middle of may and the premiere which aired in early september where like the culture and anyone that knew that i had any affiliation with the show was just like just tell me just tell me what's in that fucking hatch but on the heels of that they go don't tell me but i need to know that you know everything right i need to know that there's like a detailed plan and you're not pulling this out of your ass. And the punchline of JJ's mystery box, Ted talk, is the power of ambiguity.
Right. Right.
You're like, he's going to open it up here at the end of the Ted talk. Spoiler alert.
He doesn't because the whole idea is like your imagination, or at least the anticipation of what's inside the box is so much greater. And it's like, I will say that there's a part of me that loves, you know, ambiguity and also gets infuriated by not knowing the answer, like having to argue it out.
but I like Michael Hanukkah movies. And it's sort of like, you know, he made cachet in a certain way and you can debate whether or not

you get the answer in the end credits or not, but it's just not, it's not in black and white. And that's like, that's so cool to me.
But I do think that this sort of idea of, are you stringing us along? When are we going to get the answers that are satisfying to us? I feel like on the periphery of Severance fandom, and I try not to abuse my friendship with you, Adam. And I had dinner with Ben and kind of like met him for the first time before, maybe the week before the finale.
I think he was like coming out just for that, but I hadn't seen Cold Harbor yet. And he was just in the space of like, I think it's great, but like, how's it going to play? Are they going to feel fed, you know, and the insatiability of it all.
And, and, and again, you guys are, you've made 20 episodes as of right now. So we made 25, uh, the first season of lost.
So can you imagine we did that? No, we did that between I met JJ the last week of Lost. Can you imagine? Dan, can you imagine? And we did that between, I met JJ the last week of January and the finale aired of season one, episode 25, hour 25 aired the following May.
So 15 months, 25 episodes. That's insane.
From, hey, how are you? And that was the speed. And so when people would say to me, have you got it all worked out? I was like, you know, every Monday we come in, there's a blank board.
And then, and then the following Tuesday, it's completely filled while we're editing. You know, it was like, there was no time.
The first time that we got to work on our mythology was between seasons one and seasons two. We had, I got married.
So we had nine days off before we went back to work on season two. Good Lord.
So how's it going for you guys? Well, that's the thing is the definition of a mystery box show, if we're going to take it from J.J. Abrams TED Talk, is that the box never opens.
And that's why it's special is because of that ambiguity,

but inherent in a mystery box show and the audience's enjoyment of it, according to the audience and according to people who like to write about television, is that not only do you know what's in the box, but at some point we get to find out what is in the box. That's at least From what I've gathered, that seems to be the overriding concern of a lot of viewers of the show.
So is that how you take it as well? Is that how you define what a quote unquote mystery box show, Dan? Yeah, I think so. I mean, and of course it's never with a character, there's always what they want and there's what they need.
For me as a fan, I feel the same for myself where I'm like, there's the thing that I want that is going to keep me watching this show. But at the end of the day, by the time I'm done watching the show, the question is, did I get what I need? Which is often not the same thing as what I thought I wanted.
And that's not to dismiss people's very justifiable desire to get these answers or their their faith in us that we have thought it through enough that they're in a world that makes sense and has an internal logic. But I think there's, there's so much power in just having that central question for me, it's, you know, watching lost.
It was that moment where, where Charlie goes, you know, guys, where are we? And he's, he's, he's better at doing his voice than I am. But, uh, I think you gave him a run for his money.
I think his impression of himself is spot on personally, but you know, for us, there's guys, what is it we actually do here, which is your line. And you need something like that to sustain that, to keep you clawing your way out.
You know, to me, it's, I think of severance, like we're starting in this small box in the center and we're going to claw our way out and there's a slightly bigger box outside. Right.
You know, it's a Russian nesting box situation. And the question is, what's going to keep you clawing your way out? And once you get out and you look back and you see what you were inside of this whole time, is it going to be satisfying or are you going to look at it and go, oh, that was it? Right.
You know, and it's hard. And I don't know yet if I am good at that, at successfully landing that plane, but I guess we'll find out.
I think you are. I mean, the thing that I often find is when people come up, particularly between seasons or after a finale saying, just tell me what this is or tell me what that is.
They don't actually

want to know any of it. What they want is to have that feeling of wanting to know.
That's the key

to the whole thing. It's not, they don't actually want me to answer that question.
If I did, it

would be a huge bummer. So it's that middle ground.
That's where the fun is.

I do want to just say, circling back to something that Dan said earlier when he was talking about fandom, like the most valuable lesson that I think that I've learned over the years, at least in terms of my own storytelling, is something that you've already kind of seized on, or at the very it appears that severance has figured out which is that if the characters don't care about that mystery solving that mystery then it doesn't really matter like that is to say it may matter to a certain subset of the audience and i was listening to the pod a couple weeks ago and you and ben were talking to one of those incredible podcasters who just goes like really deep. And he was, he was the Alan Stare.
I got to listen to his pod, but he was talking about how the chips work. And I was like, holy shit, I've never even thought about this.
I've never even thought, yes, as he was going down, like, well, Ms. Casey, she could have multiple hard drives and blah, you know? And I was just like, okay, that now he's really interested in that.
But unless there's a character on the show who needs to know how the chips work, because most of the characters on the show, they're, they're interested in, you know, affairs of the heart or they've all voluntarily severed. So the last thing they want to know is the answers to these mysteries that the, the inherent mystery of the show is kind of like built into it.
And one of the biggest and most deserved criticisms that we got on Lost is, why aren't the characters trying to solve the same mysteries we, the audience are, you know? And was like, well, Locke was really fixated on opening up the hatch, but he felt like the island was communicating to him in some way because it had healed him. But everybody else was kind of like pretty nonchalant about opening up the hatch.
And so there was almost like a level of amnesia that had to like float in over the characters, what we called the Tom and Jerry effect, which is like Tom would literally get the shit kicked out of him violently by trying to kill Jerry. And then it just dissolves.
And then it's the next morning and they're both back to normal. And you think that at least Tom would say, I have a sense memory that this is going to, it's a Wile E.
Coyote thing, but he's going to just keep doing what he's doing. And I think that that is actually built into the premise of self-inflicted amnesia.
That is to say, if they wanted to solve these mysteries, they wouldn't be severed. Right.
Going off what you're saying, I think that's something that I've really loved about Dan's writing from day one, which was, you know, there's this rule that I've mentioned on the show many times, which is Mike Schur's rule for television, which is you should be able to take the character names off of the page of any page of a good TV show and know exactly whose line applies to which character. I've never heard that.
And I feel like from day one, not just that, but just looking at a photo of the MDR workers of Brit, me, Zach, and John, it's like, oh, I know who these people are. So the characters from day one have been integral to the mystery and integral to the audience's interest in the mystery.
And Lost also, you just love these people and you don't want a hair on their head to be harmed. Right.
There is no more compelling mystery on the show than why did these people choose to do this to themselves? And we get that for Mark from the jump. And then of course it gets undone to some degree when we learn that Gemma is still alive.
But the exhilaration of that little child running into the closet and drawing his arms around Zack's neck and he's just like, what the... And you just are like, this guy's a dad? And that to me, and this is not to take anything away from whatever the cures have been up to for centuries, but that was more satisfying than any kind of mythology answer, which you're going to have to give, but the mythology has to be in service of the character's journeys.
And so the idea of like, you know, now that Irving is out, the idea that he was compiling lists and information about Lumen, that's all really interesting to me, but I was much more interested in, is he going to find Bert? You know, what's going to happen there? And so that idea, again, sort of of like, who are these people? Why did they do this to themselves? What are they trying to heal? What are they trying to forget? Because it's quite a radical procedure. And I think that the show is basically saying it's a bad idea.
You know, like all great sci-fi is like, hey, there's world hunger. We should make giant tomatoes.
And then you get fucking giant ants. And it's like there's great intention you know it's a temporary salve but i i would be very surprised if we get to the end of the journey and the show is saying like everybody on the planet should get severed i mean look how well these people are doing yeah you know i don't think anyone's doing particularly well right yeah yeah we're not gonna we're not gonna be releasing the actual chip in tandem with the you know series finale yeah be like this whole thing was an ad because we've been holding it in our hands and looking at it the entire time here you go everyone yeah but damon i think you made a really fantastic point where you know the mystery heigl is nodding as well yeah she agrees she is in full agreement.
But where the mystery is only interesting in so much as it's important to the characters, and to me that was why it was so important. Or I think that that's why the reveal that Miss Casey is Gemma landed the way that it did.
Not just because it was surprising and shocking, but all of a sudden it was because suddenly this question of what do we do here is tied, you know, inextricably to the loss and the marriage. Because whatever it is that we're doing here, that is what caused your happy domestic life to be ripped away from you.
Right. And the love of your life to be ripped away from you.
And especially I think in season two when we the the flashbacks and actually got to see in episode seven that that life that you had had to me even just watching that episode for the first time I suddenly was more invested in the in the mystery than I had been which speaks to you know the work you guys did and the work Jess did on that episode but I I uh yeah I I think for every character, there is this question of what is it that we do here? But the bigger question is, why does that matter to me? How does that affect who I am on the inside and the outside? Yeah. Damon, do you have any questions for Mr.
Erickson? I do, of course. I'm not going to ask any mystery questions because I don't want you to answer them.
And we both know that you won't. I guess I have two questions.
The first is, in all honesty, do you think Ben is listening to this? Why would he? And why haven't we taken greater advantage of that? I do feel like we should embed some kind of secret passcode that we would only be without explicitly saying, did you listen to that one? Like, I'll give a thousand dollars to the charity of your choice if Ben listens to this. But how could we prove it? Because there's no way he will.
How about this? Yeah. How about if Ben listens to this, he would have to make it this far into the interview.

Yeah.

And we will know he listened

to it. If the next time he sees any of the three of us has to be in person, he has to go to shake our hand and then say, do you have the recipe for bananas foster? Perfect.
Perfect. Yep.
Perfect. Although should we pick something that isn't his catchphrase already? Because he says that all the Good idea.
That's a good idea.

Right, exactly.

And I know that the goats are an example of this, right? Because I've heard you guys talk about it. But one of the things that happened on Lost was that there was something that we were kind of like, oh, this is interesting to us and exciting and we're talking about it and it's in an episode.
But we just had no idea that the audience was going to lock in on it in the way that they did. And there are a number of instances, and this happened on The Leftovers as well.
But other than The Goats, now that the message in the bottle, that is the creative process, where you're just making this, and there's like 500 people who are making it, and then suddenly there's millions upon millions upon millions of people who watch it. Is there anything about season two? Because the goats were introduced to us in season one.
We got a meal. Again, I will pitch you, Dan.
I will write the Gwendolyn Christie a meal spinoff where they just wander from town to town and solve people's problems. Solving mysteries.
It's like a Kung Fu thing. No mysteries, just problems.
Just problems. Yeah, personal.
Just everyday problems. Uh-huh.
Always with the mysteries, this fucking guy. You're right, you're right.
My question. Thank you for pulling me back from that.
My question is, in season two, was there anything that kind of like the audience locked in on that you were like, huh okay like what didn't see that coming yeah i think that well it's not that i didn't see it coming but i i think dr mauer in the fertility clinic ah you just see him like walk by in the background yeah but for a lot of people that's become the thing huge moment wow yeah robbie's robbie is so so he's amazing oh my god yeah oh my god the singing voice of the beast yeah well and the speaking voice isn't he oh yeah i think he's both yeah yeah is he really yeah for beauty and the beast i thought he was only the singing sometimes they break it up like my buddy brad is the singing voice of aladdin oh wow but. But they have someone else voicing Aladdin.

But wait, wasn't Peebo Bryson

singing some of the Beast songs?

Maybe.

Yeah, I don't know where I put that one out.

Guys, let's answer this on our Beauty and the Beast pod.

Yeah.

Which we're recording right after.

And Catherine, she wants to stick around.

Would you like to stick around?

She knows, but she can't tell us.

Oh, she just wrote something down, guys. I'm a beauty and the beast trivia specialist.
Yeah. I couldn't come up with anything.
And by the way, it's called be our guest. That's right.
Yeah. That's right.
Beast our guest. Even better.
Um, you guys, thank you for being here. I love both of you.
I love hanging out with you. I love talking about TV and movies and stuff, but I'm mostly just happy that you're my friend.
Both of you guys are incredible artists, and we're just so thrilled to have you on the show. Or at least I am.
We'll find out if Ben is. We're going to find out.
Yeah, Bananas Foster. And by, gentlemen and ladies and everyone listening, don't you dare say to Ben, hey, just the next time you see those guys, he's got to listen.
Cone of silence. You are now complicit in the greatest podcast surprise party that is deeply unmeaningful in most ways.
And no one can send it to him on social media.

Like, hey, this is what's going on.

This is a thing.

No.

He has to organically decide to listen to a podcast

on which he does not appear.

All right.

It was great having you guys on.

Thank you.

Pleasure.

Thanks, Adam.

That was my conversation with Damon Lindelof and Dan Erickson.

We're going to take a quick break,

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Adam, if our partner ZipRecruiter was helping Lumen hire for various roles, what kind of keywords would they use? Ooh, can withstand fluorescent lighting. That's good.
Enjoys long, claustrophobic hallways. Perfect.
Drum major. Goat lover.
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I mean, that sounds great. I'm telling you, see for yourself.

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The first day?

Yeah.

The first day.

Yeah, I know. It's insane.

Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash severance right now to try it for free.

That's ZipRecruiter.com slash S-E-V-E-R-A-N-C-E.

Oh, that's how you spell severance.

Yeah, I've been telling you for five years now. All right, shall we get into some hotline questions? Yeah, let's do it.
Let's do it. Hi, guys.
My name is Amanda, huge fan of the show and this podcast. So my question is about Mark's fish.
Who is taking care of these fish as he's going on his little reintegration missions at the end of the season? And also, what are their names? I love Mark's fish. Thanks so much.
Thanks, Amanda. They do have names, don't they? Do they? Did we give them names? I thought someone named them.
Really? Maybe somebody on set named them, I think. Yeah.
I didn't, I never, I mean, I don't know if it's the same fish actors that we've had in every episode though. One's blue and one's red.
Fish actors. But I remember when we were making the choice to put the fish tank there, as we were setting it, I remember thinking to myself myself this is a big decision because this fish tank and these fish are going to be here for like if the show goes number of seasons yeah you know and the fish have i think we've gotten a lot of mileage out of the fish you know in terms of what we're paying them because they're really cheap they're cheap but whenever we use them there is a person on set who's looking out for the fish.
Right. I remember we had to get some closeups of the fish or you had to get some closeups of the fish.
So the camera was right up there against the fish tank and you needed the fish to swim into frame now and then. And it was getting tough to coax them, but we couldn't tap on the glass.

No, no.

Yeah.

You can't tap on the glass.

No.

You couldn't put like anything in the water to try and get them to swim in a direct, we just had to wait there.

Yeah.

You have to respect the fishes, you know.

I mean, the great thing about fish is you can negotiate a deal with them and tell them,

you know what, you want like a bump, you want like a, you know, like 50% pay bump and you agree to it. And then 30 seconds later, they forgot.

That's right.

They forgot they even asked.

You don't have to pay them anything.

Exactly.

We did pay them because we're not assholes.

Right.

You know, we don't pay them.

Yeah. And by the way, at one point there was a move to turn them into CG fish.
And I was like,

no, we're saving. Those fish actors are going to get the work, you know.
Save their jobs. Was there really a discussion about CG fish.
And I was like, no, we're saving those fish actors are going to get the work. Save their jobs.
Was there really a discussion about CG fish? Yes, there have been discussion. Look, we don't use CG animals or a lot of CG on the show unless it's like kind of like hopefully something you're not noticing.
And I feel like animals have not been perfected yet. And so those are real fish.
And then the reality is somebody from the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has to come and be on the set and you have to have the fish wrangler. And so it's like, you know, there's like a whole entourage.
Yeah. But I love the fish and I love kind of what everything that they represent and visually how they feel in the apartment.
And I'm glad we made the choice to go with the fish. Me too.
It is weird now that in movies, even if there's a dog or a cat, oftentimes it's completely CG.

Yeah.

I still feel like I can tell every time.

Me too.

Me too.

Has there ever been a CG animal that you haven't been able to tell it's not a CG animal?

Well, I wouldn't know, would I?

Because it would have convinced me so much, so hard.

I know.

I feel like it's always quite noticeable. Like this makes me think of the dead seal.
Seal. Yeah.
Me too. I just thought of that.
Do you know a weird thing was when the dead seal in episode 204 was also, I think was sculpted by Pankow who does all of our, he did an amazing job with that to get that decaying seal. And then when we got to Newfoundland to shoot episode 208, there was a real dead seal on the beach when we got there.
Whoa. Yeah.
That's it. I don't have anything else on that.
Did you take pictures? I did. Did you get a selfie with it? No, I'm not.
That wouldn't have been good to do. It was not respectful.
It was a seal. The one that Pankow created was really disturbing because it was in the midst of decomposition.
It was disgusting. It looked like it smelled horrible.
It looked like that and didn't smell at all. No, it smelled actually delicious.
Okay, next one. Great.
Next question. Hey, Ben.
Hi, Adam. My name is Sab calling from France.
I've been a huge fan of the show since the beginning and would like to thank all of the team for the amazing show. I'm also a photographer and love all the behind the scenes you share Ben on Twitter.
Is there any chance for you to release a photo book someday? Can't wait for the next season. Greetings from France.
Bye. Oh, thank you.
Yeah, Bendo book. I think that's a good idea.
Bendo book. Yeah, I'd like to do that.
I'm glad we have all those pictures and it's really fun now to interact with people online who are fans of the show who really appreciate those. Yeah, they're great photos.
I love behind-the-scenes photos. I was just watching some thing about Jaws 50th anniversary, watching some behind the scenes footage I'd never seen.
It just like, it's the best, right? When there's something that's so imprinted in your mind and then you get to see a little bit of like what the, you know, or anything like from The Shining when you see behind the scenes footage from that. Totally.
It's fascinating. I still, it still blows my mind when I see a behind the scenes photo, like you said, like I've never seen from Back to the Future or Star Wars or something.
It's still just crazy. I do.
I love it so much. And I love seeing the ones that you put out on Instagram and stuff.
They're really great. It's really, it was fun to start like taking them and then have you guys like make fun of it and be like make jokes about it in a fun way because then it felt like okay it's okay to do this because i do feel like the best behind the scenes photos are when it's you know somebody who can get in there and not sort of disrupt what's going on yeah and uh been fun so yeah i think it'd be great yeah um should we do one more yeah yeah hey there adam and ben my name is alistair i thought i would ask what inspired the uh finale freeze frame shot i loved that scene i thought it was a great way to close off the season thank you yeah so good i mean honestly when dan wrote out the draft of the script and he had that that final like them running through the hallways it just for some for some reason, it was just like a thought that just like jumped in my head.
I knew what we could do with the hallway lighting. And I thought it could be really romantic and also really disturbing.
And the idea of a freeze frame, you know, of where they're going to go, what's the future, that just seemed like, you know, the way to go. And for me, there's definitely like, I guess, just like subconscious images in my head of freeze frames from movies from when I was a kid and movies that ended on freeze frames and zoom ins to freeze frames.
I love. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I think, ends on a freeze frame on Donald Sutherland, like going in, right, pointing.
And those images are sort of like in your head and subconscious. I love the zoom ins so much.
Yeah. And then we wanted to make sure it had that grainy feel of a 70s zoom in and since we don't shoot the show on film we actually had that shot that scene filmed out onto 35 millimeter film and then we re-transferred it and zoomed in on the freeze frame of the film yeah so that you get sort of the film grain feel as you go in on it and then the song

was part of it you know the thing about the song at the end i always thought we cut it together the first cut of it and it went on for a long time which i really was into because i thought okay this is the end of the season and for me it was always like this is just sort of like we're kind of going back to the first scene and you know the first episode i remember loving it and feeling like I needed needed that space to absorb what just happened. Right.
Right. And knowing, because I think you know this is it, this is the end of the season, and just kind of hanging on and seeing where the fuck are they going, and then to just have that final shot where you really get to take in, where we kind of are starting to think a little bit and looking at each other i love all the space in that and you guys you guys really hit that too because in the script you know it was like important to really get that idea that at first you're sort of elated and then it's kind of slowly turns into like oh what the fuck right yeah um and we did that i think we did that like 10 or 11 times we did that run down the hallway and we were shooting it at like 100 frames a second so super slow motion but you guys were doing we were full speed we were yeah yeah and i knew that we would just then go back and find the right freeze frame yeah and then the red coming in i think also for the show kind of yeah signified just change of some time.
And that's it for the episode. You know what? I can't believe it's already been five weeks.
Yeah. Yeah.
What do you think? Should I tell listeners the good news? Yeah. Go for it.
Okay. We are coming back with more episodes of this podcast.
Yeah. We've really loved talking with people who have impacted us while making

severance. And there are so many more who we want to bring on the show.
Yeah. And there are more people who help make severance who we want you all to hear from.
Yeah. So we're going to take a few weeks off, but then we will be back.
And in the meantime, keep calling the hotline and keep looking into what the heat index really is. You know what it is.
It's humidity times temperature, maybe? I don't actually know. I'm already confused.
Okay. The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott is a presentation of Odyssey, Red Hour Productions, and Great Scott.
If you like the show, be sure to rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your other podcast platform of choice. It really makes a difference.
If you've got a question about severance, call our hotline, 212-830-3816. We just might play your voicemail and answer your question on the podcast.
Our executive producers are Barry Finkel, Gabrielle Lewis, Naomi Scott, and Leah Reese Dennis. This show is produced by Ben Goldberg.
It's mixed and mastered by Chris Basil. We have additional engineering from Javi Cruces.
Show clips are courtesy of Fifth Season. Music by Theodore Shapiro.
Special thanks to the team at Odyssey, Maura Curran, Eric Donnelly, Michael LeVay, Melissa Wester, Kate Rose, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schuff. And the team at Red Hour, John Lesher, Carolina Pesikov, Jean Pablootter, Josh Martin, and Christy Smith at Rise Management.

I'm Ben Stiller.

And I'm Adam Scott.