S2E4: Woe's Hollow (with Theodore Shapiro)

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Dot com Slash C-O-N-F-L-U-E-N-C-E. Hey, I'm Ben Stiller.
I'm Adam Scott. And this is the Severance Podcast with Ben and Adam, where we break down every episode of Severance.
And today we're talking about the fourth episode of season two, Woe's Hollow, written by Anna O. Young Munch and directed by Ben Stiller.
Yeah, this was a big one for us. And the other exciting thing is that we're going to be joined by Severance's marvelous composer, Theodore Shapiro.
Yes. Then Ben and I are going to talk about some scenes from the episode.

And of course, the prophetic Zach Cherry will be back to tell us what he thinks will happen in the next episode. That's right.
Zach doesn't watch anything. We don't even know if he reads the scripts when he's, you know, except for his lines.
He just feels what he thinks is going to happen. Yeah, yeah.
He's like an octopus.

Oh, like an octopus in what way?

Well, an octopi tends to intellectualize each one of their arms.

I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Does this have to do with like my octopus teacher?

Yes, which I didn't see.

Yeah, and you're saying an octopi, but an octopi... Octopi is a plural...
That means several, yeah. So, oh, you're saying octopi use...
They sense things? I'm just assuming that that movie is about a psychic octopus, and I don't think that's what it's about. It is not.
Be warned, there are spoilers for episode four here, so learn from my recap pod listening mistakes and be sure to watch the episode first and then listen to us yeah definitely because there's definitely a big big spoiler oh in this episode good lord yes yeah so how have you been ben i'm great I'm great. I'm still buzzing from the experience of the Grand Central Station Severance pop-up that happened when we're recording this yesterday.
That was just so much fun. It was incredible.
It really felt like we were taking a step back and bringing things down to sort of a basic performance level. And it was like a happening.
It was like a happening. Yeah, like a fluxus sort of thing, if you know about that history of experimental performance art.
The idea was to have a cube in the middle of Grand Central Station that had the cubicle with you guys sitting there doing your severance stuff. And you guys originally it was a great idea that apple had yeah uh and originally it was just going to be actors that they hired to kind of like look like office workers at the cubicle and then you said we should do it the actors should really do it yeah you said i'll do that yeah and i just figured the cast would be game, and lo and behold, everybody was super into it.
It was incredible. It was incredible.
And you guys just went in there for three hours. Yeah.
And you refined, and you interacted. I vacuumed the floor.
Well, you did that, the little roller thing, which you do in episode two, I think. Not a real vacuum.
And I'm not convinced it does anything, but just move dust particles around. Then Ms.
Cobell came in. Oh, man.
And you got in trouble with her at one point. Many times.
She got upset. She threw a coffee cup.
I was talking to my wife and daughter on the outside when the coffee cup got thrown. And I was like, whoa, what just happened? What just happened? It was amazing though, because nobody could hear you guys on the inside and people were literally enthralled.
It was mesmerizing. When Milchik came in with the red ball, I didn't even know what he was doing with the red ball, but he didn't look happy.
No. And at a certain point, Patricia got under the desk.
Yeah. What was going on on there a couple of the monitors went out and so patricia took it upon herself to try and fix them and then once she started fiddling with the plugs all of the monitors went out that's so patricia it really is that's but yeah tramell when tramell walked out because you had to kind of walk through the crowd to get to the cube the whole place got really quiet yeah and then like there were cheers too oh i think when he came back the second time and when patricia came in it was so great it was just you know people discovered it nobody announced it and it was just yeah we just we just walked in and there was no announcement or anything.
And people just sort of started stumbling upon it and being like, wait a second, those are the actors from the show. And we just improvised for three hours.
But there was a certain freedom to it because no one could hear us. Yeah.
So we could just do whatever we wanted. And we kind of decided that it fell somewhere around season one, episode three.
Just the culture of MDR felt like it fell somewhere in that area. Yeah.
I could not have been more excited or happy watching it. And it just was so much fun.
It was a blast. And it was fun to also talk.
For me, on the outside, I was like taking pictures. I got to talk to fans of the show.
It wasn't just people who were, you know, going home from work. There were people who saw it on Reddit or on social media and came down who were fans of the show.
They like made the trip. Yeah, well, they saw it.
It came up on their feed and they ran over. And it was great.
I talked to people from Brazil. I talked to people from Ireland, from England.
It was just great to talk to fans of the show and see how excited they were about the second season. And you don't get a chance really to interact.
I guess when you guys went down to Brazil for the Comic-Con down there, you got a chance to meet people. We did.
And people are so excited for season two, which is really flattering and and so much fun but this had its own sort of organic feeling to it because like you said there was no announcement it was just something and i'm glad we did it for a few hours because people like you said were able to kind of make the trip and we were still there by the time they got there yeah we wanted it to go on for long enough that people could discover it and you guys would still be there. And you guys were troopers and amazing and so much fun.
So that was great. Well, all right.
Our guest. This is exciting.
Is one of Severance's secret weapons, though he's not really that secret because he won an Emmy for the show. Yeah.
I feel like we're the secret weapons. We're the secret weapons.
He's the guy who has the Emmy. Theodore Shapiro, Teddy Schaps, as his friends call him.
Teddy, how are you, man? I'm good. How are you guys? Great.
Yeah, we're good. We're good.
So great having you here. And by the way, Adam and I are in person together in New York here right now, which is fun.
Yeah. We can high five like multiple times if we needed to.

Yeah.

You've done it already so many times.

That's right.

So, Teddy, you and I go back a while.

Do you remember?

Do you remember when we first met?

We first met.

You called me to try to get me successfully, try to get me to work on dodgeball.

That's so funny because I was asking you that question like I knew the answer and i don't remember when we first met so now i mean i know dodgeball was the first thing we worked on and i'm wondering do you remember what you had done sure yeah so i had just done along came polly ah and starsky and hutch oh okay and I think you'd seen... Maybe that's where you guys both knew each other.
Yeah, I wasn't involved with either of those movies in any way other than just showing up on the set. But that must be the connection.
Yeah, no, I didn't. I mean, Todd Phillips directed Starsky and Hutch and the great John Hamburg, who's a mutual friend of ours, wrote and directed along Cain Polly.
And yeah, those scores were great. And you came and Ross and Thurber, who was directing Dodgeball, I guess I must have suggested that, you know, let's talk to Teddy.
You were probably Theodore to us back then before we knew you. Hey, can I ask you something? Can I ask you something? Yeah, yeah, sure.
It is Shapiro, right? It is Shapiro. I've always wondered that, you know, some people pronounce Shapiro, Shapiro.
Yeah, what is it? I mean, I think that Shapiro is the correct pronunciation. And I think that Shapiro must be just some weird Ellis Island, you know, decision that one of my forefathers made.
Really? Yeah. I mean, I'm not the only Shapiro.

There are others out there, but I don't think it's grounded in anything authentic.

I think it's, it must be some Americanization.

So it's not like an affectation that you put on it when you came to Hollywood.

I was not like trying to make people.

Sounds like you may be accusing him of an affectation. Well, you know, he's like a fancy composer and maybe he's like, you know, I don't know.
It is quite fancy. No, I was not trying to impress anybody with Shapiro.
I'm impressed with it. And I get to impress people when they say like, oh, I really like Theodore Shapiro's work.
I'm like, it's Shapiro. Excuse me.
It's Shapiro for those in the know. So Teddy, you and I know each other completely separate from all of this because our sons, Julian and Graham, have been in school together since kindergarten.
Yes. And, you know, I was thinking about the fact that the first time I ever heard about this show was at a Halloween party where you and I were accompanying our sons and talking about what's going on.
And you told me about this show. And I was like, oh man, that sounds really good.
I hope Ben calls me. Also, you know, the first time that I ever met you was at our kids preschool in Pasadena.
So I remember everyone like, oh, that's Adam Scott. I remember just being like, holy shit, Ben Stiller's here.

Holy shit. Holy shit.
So Teddy, and we went on to do a few movies together. Yeah, you did Tropic Thunder together and Walter Mitty.
So you guys have worked together quite a bit. Yeah.
We have. Is there a particular process you guys fall into together? Is each project sort of a fresh start? What do you think, Teddy? I mean, I think that each project has actually been a little different from the last.
We've developed a little bit more of a process over time. And in particular, I think what I would say is that with MIDI and then with this, the big difference is just me starting to write earlier in the process and sort of having the music exist during Ben's creative process earlier, which I think helped in both cases, which helped the music sort of evolve as like an integral part of the project.
Yeah, I remember having some pieces that you had written on set from the very beginning when we started shooting season one. You had some kind of sketches of themes for us to play on set, and it was really important to have that.
Yeah. Well, we were lucky on Severance because when we had this delay due to COVID, I think that was around the time you were able to write a lot of music.
Well, yeah. I mean, it's interesting.
I think that we found our main theme during the COVID break. I actually, I like, I have this kind of fond memory during the summer of COVID in 2020, we had like just discovered the main theme.
And I was up in Oregon and drove to Oregon. Can I just interrupt you? When you say we had just discovered the main theme, what that means is Teddy wrote the main theme.
Actually wrote three different or didn't you send me like three different options? Wow. Well, I said.
So actually, I had started writing a bunch of themes and sending them to you and you were excited about what I was coming up with. And then in February of 2020, I flew to New York and we met up at the set and you were like listening to the music.
And there was just like this one little part that you kept

coming back to. And it was just like, it was the B section of something that I'd written.
It wasn't

like the main part of it, but you kept coming back to that thing. And I was like, oh, first of all,

always follow Ben's instincts. That's like the cardinal rule.
And like, there's something that

Ben is responding to here. And in that thing that we were listening to, it was kind of like an

I'll That's like the cardinal rule. And like there's something that Ben is responding to here.
And in that thing that we were listening to, it was kind of like an electronic piece. And then when I got back to L.A., like I went home and I sat down at the piano and I played the four chords from that B section at the piano.
And it was like, oh, what if it was this? So wait, when you say it was an electronic piece, do you mean it was, what do you mean? Like it was that same melody, but. It wasn't the melody.
It was just like the four chords. But But all of the sounds were like more overtly electronic.

Okay.

But when I played it at the piano, suddenly like the tone of it changed completely and it became more of this mystery

and i was like oh wait maybe this is the like maybe this is the whole thing yeah We had been talking talking about like what if there's one sound for the innies and one sound for the audis and like the innie world is electronic and the audi world is organic and you know but when i played that thing i was like oh wait a minute what if the whole show is just like a puzzle like this would be the music if the whole show was just one kind of puzzle. So I sent that off to Ben and I was pretty excited about it and did not hear back from Ben for like three weeks.
And so I was like, oh man, that's a bummer. He didn't't like it and i sort of thought that i was on to something and then like one day like the phone rang and he was like oh i love this thing like this is great i'm really into this you're like where the hell have you been for three weeks was it just sitting in your inbox for three weeks no i had listened to it immediately and I just didn't want Teddy to feel too good about like that he was.
Smart. Thank you.
No, I don't. I think I must have gotten preoccupied or something or I was doing other stuff.
And there's also something else unique about this particular theme in that it's not just providing kind of this emotional through line for the series and sort of tying things together. It's also really catchy in its own right, which instrumental themes often are not.
Often they're there as sort of background. But this is a really kind of earwormy, really beautiful song.
And to think that you were kind of sectioning it off as sort of a minor part of another theme is really interesting. And Ben, it kind of obviously stood out to Ben, but you were, was it like a bridge to something else? It wasn't a bridge to something else, but it was just sort of the middle set.
You know, it was like, here's my main idea. Okay, I'm going to do something here, and then I'm going to come back to my main idea.
And, you know, what's interesting about that is that sometimes when you're not being precious about something, you'll just do something that is simple and memorable, thinking that you're just kind of tossing it off. Yeah, yeah.
And the more complicated thing is going to be the main. Exactly.
And yeah, I mean, it was just, it was funny because I had these four chords and the fourth chord kind of demanded that I write this like sort of a weird melodic idea. And that's where, you know, da-da-da-da-da.
Yeah know yeah you know it was the thing that fit with the weird fourth chord and um the fourth chord often does that doesn't it that's the thing right um i have no idea what i'm talking about i was just gonna say what do you what's amazing to me teddy is like you can't emphasize enough how important Teddy's music is for the show. I think, you know, just, I am such a fan of yours, and I really don't understand how you do what you do, you know, in terms of the creative process, because you have so many constrictions in terms of what you're having to create, you know, to have something like to score a scene and to time that it can take and how much, you know, and the notes that you get, the feedback of, you know, if it's right for the scene or not.
And also just like where it comes from and the instrumentation and all these things. I'm just amazed at your process because you also are incredibly fast in terms of how you do the work and it kind of spoils you for any other process because Teddy will turn things around so quickly.
But it's really, for me, any movie we've worked on together, it makes me want to be in this world, to live in this world that the music creates that inspires me visually and just in terms of the tone of the piece. And so we were really lucky that you were willing to write this music ahead of time when we started shooting season one so that when we were shooting and on set, we could actually play it during some scenes.
And when we were trying to find the tone of the show and so we play it, you know, in MDR or something and it would just sort of change the whole feeling. Walking down the hallways and stuff, you would play it.
It did really help. Yeah.
You know, there's so much music in the show. There's so much music in this show.
Yeah. And I agree.
It's so integral to the show and the feeling in the show. And I actually feel like your music has saved me on a number of occasions in scenes.
Teddy, you're a filmmaker. And what I mean by that is like, you know movies so well and you've worked on a lot of movies.
And I feel like that's another part of our relationship and our collaboration for me is the way that you work with Jeff, our editor. You guys have developed an amazing relationship.
But, you know, when an episode comes in, you know, you get the rough cut of the episode. I, there's always like a little something inside me to like, I hear from Teddy, like, did you like it? Did you not? You know? And it's not because, it's not because I just want you to like it.
It's because I really value your opinion as a filmmaker. And I feel like that's a big part of what you do.

You know, the way that we work on this show, where I feel like I'm talking, you know, Jeff and I do, we have this very close relationship. And I feel like I'm in constant conversation with Jeff.
And then it's always understood that you are in conversation with Jeff. And so I feel like the three of us are just sort of making the show in post together in a really interactive and creative way.
And, you know, it's not always like that with every project. Like sometimes you're brought in at the end and, you know, the film's already edited and, you know, they just sort of want you to put your music on top of it and you just, and sometimes that's just the way their process works.
But it's just such a joy to do it this way and to sort of have the music live in the show from the beginning like this. And you've written so much music for the show and you wrote so much music ahead of time.
But then when we get to the editorial process with a specific episode, we'll lay in music that you've written ahead of time, but then there'll always, you know, be that sort of crafting of like, oh no, this actually needs a new cue or this needs a new idea here. And that's a big part.
And that, you know, goes to episode four, you know, episode 204, where obviously this, this story is in a whole new environment and that required you to come up with a new theme, just a completely new theme. And I think you did that ahead of time, too, the same way you did it for season one, but for this specific episode, right? Well, I mean, that was one of the first things that you ever told me about season two was about this episode.
And so I feel like from the time that I started writing themes for season two, I was really focused on this episode in particular and finding sounds. But truthfully, like Ben, I should say that the thing with 204 was that this was the episode where I feel like we worked the hardest to find the tone of anything in both seasons.
And a lot of those things that I did in advance ended up being part of the episode. But there was, you know, we were working at it for a while.
And what was it about this episode that was a bit tricky for you guys to zero in on that particular tone? Well, this is, you know, the episode where they go, it's like the Lumen's version of a corporate retreat, but it's in the freezing wasteland where, you know, it's called an Orkbo, where Milchik is putting them out in the elements. And I always wanted the episode to be very visual and to be not a lot of dialogue, at least the way it ended up in the first part of the episode has very little dialogue and to be stark and, you know, kind of otherworldly.
So, yeah, that was the idea behind it. And, you know, just from the very beginning of the episode where we find Irving on the lake and then he, you know, hears Mark's voice and follows his voice and he meets Helly on the way up and they end up on top of this cliff overlooking this big lake.
And there's

this monitor there with a message from Milchick. You know, it just was surreal and we wanted it

to be surreal and eerie and weird. Actually, you know, why don't we take a listen to the

Milchick video music that you wrote. Yeah, like the retro.
Yeah.

That is actually the theme that you wrote.

Yeah.

Patricia sings in season one.

That's right.

Exactly.

The cure him.

The cure him from season one. But the Muzak version.

Yeah.

And I remember, Ben, you just kept saying, like, can you make it shittier?

That's exactly right.

You kept on coming back.

I was like, this has to sound more like really bad Muzak.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It sounds like almost like a grade below Muzak you would actually hear.

It is a grade below Muzak. That's right.
Yeah. Yes.
It's some guy quickly doing something for this video. Exactly.
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So, Teddy, the theme that you ended up with for the episode

was also sort of mirroredmin sounds like not really, you know, not really a tune. And then the other one was this tune that was sort of like a cousin to the Kier hymns.
You were like, that's what we want to move towards. Like you had your finger on it.
And that's our collaboration. Teddy writes something brilliant and I go, great so wait a second wait a second so the theremin music that uh sarah bach is playing that miss wong is playing is that same cure him because i didn't even recognize it as no no no it's not but what it unlocked for me was oh yeah there yeah, there's this whole body of Kier music.
It's like Kier folk tunes. Right.
And when I wrote that and Ben responded to it, I was like, oh, right. There's a world of Kier folk music.
Like it sits next to the Kier hymn. Exactly.
Yeah, him exactly yeah yeah exactly now had you played a theremin before have you had a lot of experience with one so i'm going to admit that uh no i don't play a theremin but i have this instrument called an aunt martineau that's like an early electronic instrument that sounds like a theremin. And I'm not very good at playing it.
It's a little harder than it looks to do it well. Is it a keyboard instrument? So it's a keyboard instrument, but it has this wire that you kind of slide from right to left along the keyboard.
And so like if you slide it up to a c then then it'll play a c with your left hand you press one button that says how loud or soft it is and then with your right hand you do the pitch with this your your fingers in a little is a little ring and you move it up and down and that determines the pitch sounds super easy sounds like you're you're making it up as you go along, actually. I don't believe you.
Yeah. And it sounds like a theremin, essentially.
It sounds like a theremin. And because I'm not that good at it, it seemed like it would work for Miss Huang on the theremin.
So yeah, so that's how I did it. I mean, the theremin is a fascinating instrument.
Yeah. And, you know, we could talk for hours about what a theremin is.

Basically using the force to make music.

I don't even understand how it works.

When you watch Miss Wong play it in the episode, she's doing it, right?

What is she doing?

So, a theremin is like the only instrument where you don't physically touch anything.

Right.

You're using your hand to block, I think i think a wave and that is creating the sound it's incredible incredible i know it's totally crazy and you know what else is amazing is that sarah bach learned how to play the theremin for the episode yeah you can tell she knows what she's doing it looks perfect incredible i Incredible. I mean, I was convinced.
Yeah. This young woman is just, she's such a good actress and so smart and so committed.
And she went and learned how to play it. That's one of, I think, the more interesting scenes in the episode.
And you then, I remember, scored as Milchick's tale gets darker and weirder, you went on to score it with the theremin to get even weirder and stranger as it gets, you know. Exactly.
Yeah. Let's take a listen to that scene.
And he reached up to grasp at his hair, which was suddenly moss that tore easily from his bleeding scalp. Good heavens.
And as the pus from his eye thickened into sap, I turned from my gargling brother and walked to the pool of the hollow, where I knew the waterfall would drown out my brother's cries. That's actually really smart.
And it was here that I first encountered the temper woe. A gaunt bride, half the height of a natural woman.
I just have to say, the theme that you did come up with, that theme, which she's playing on the theremin, to me, that spooky, weird kind of evocative melody is it's so it makes this episode in my mind, you know, because it puts you in this world, which, again, I just can't say enough how much the music is important in our show. It's part of the world of the show.
Yeah, we're so lucky to have Teddy. Yeah, man.
Yeah. Thank you.
I mean, I have to say that there was a particular moment in the show where I thought to myself, this might be the single best piece of footage that i've ever gotten to work on wow which is during the the sex scene between mark and and heli that shot with the red glow the wide shot the wide shot of of the red glow of the two of them where you just kind of see almost their weird animal silhouette yeah the wide shot that's sort of like the end of it right yes yes exactly and the cue that you did there is what it's so funny because we've never talked about this that it's like one of my favorite did i tell you this that moment no i think jeff told me that you said that that you were like because i wrote a chord at the end of that that i really was happy. And the director doesn't always love the thing that you write that you're really excited about.
But in this case, I've heard via Jeff that Ben's like, that chord is my favorite moment of the whole show. And then what you're doing too, Adam, is good.
Yeah, it's fine. Whatever.
All right. Well, we've been asking fans to call in with questions.
We have this hotline set up. So we got one about the music that we want you to help us to answer.
Okay. Okay.
Let's listen. Hey, guys.
This is Don calling from New York. I'm a big fan of your work.
My question was, what was the influence behind the Praise Cures anthem that was sang to the crew at the end of season one i was just wondering what went behind that whole composition and and where what the backstory was with that thank you so much thank you don uh so he's he's asking about the cure him yeah what i remember was at a certain point i think that ifa ifa mccardle who directed the episode mccardle yes you know she had identified um well the cure him was written into the script and the lyrics and i think that ifa gave me a reference of something that she felt would be an interesting reference, and it was this lullaby that was in the movie Night of the Hunter. And so I listened to that, and I sat down at the piano and played and sang the key or hymn sort of as a lullaby.
And then Patricia performed it as a punishment. Yeah.
It's so interesting because Patricia, the way Patricia interprets it is ominous. And like you said, it's a punishment, but the melody and hearing it now in this episode and hearing it kind of travel in different versions, it is sort of lulling and you can see it as being kind of like this soothing song that's kind of gone through the ages.
Yeah, exactly. And you actually hear that theme in the scene where Cobell is in front of her shrine to Kier in, is it 105 or 106? Yeah,6 six and that that's the score so it has this sort of devotional quality there and then devotional yes that's the word yeah anyway i'm just so happy that we got to work together yeah i know it's great and adam you're so great on this show and i'm thanks man amazed by everything that you're doing.
Thanks, Teddy. Well, thanks, man.
Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks, Teddy.
All right. Yeah.
Thanks, guys. Okay, I'm so excited to dive into this episode with you because we shot it now a couple of years ago.
Isn't that crazy? It really has been a couple of years. It was March of 2023.
Yeah. Yep.
Now the entire episode is with innies, but it's out fucking side, which is my favorite line. I think from the season is Dylan's first line when he emerges.
He knew there was no ceiling, but this yeah but this is but this is insane as i don't know whatever um so we're all outside because part of a lumen reform called the ort bow which stands for outdoor retreat and team building occurrence let's listen to milchick telling the innies about it on a DVD. Good morning, refiners.

This is Mr. Milchick from work,

and I'm thrilled to welcome you to your first ever outdoor retreat

and team building occurrence.

This port boat is in response to your desire to see the outside world.

With your Audi's blessings, you will spend the next two calendar days walking the meadows, thickets, brambles, and brooks that make up the Dieter Egan National Forest. Who the fuck is Dieter Egan? Dieter Egan? Some of you may be quietly yearning to learn more.
The truth you seek lies within the fourth appendix. Wow.
So, okay, this episode is a complete departure from the innies world, but also the world of the series entirely. Do you want to just talk about where it came from and why you wanted to do this? Yeah, I think it was one of the original ideas for season two was we knew we wanted to do a corporate retreat of some type.
Yeah. And what would that be? So it was really, you know, trying to figure out what the reason would be for that, which felt like it really made sense in terms of Milchick trying to maybe do something.
I think it's probably a good question that, I don't know if there is one answer for it or not, in terms of what his motivation is for it. I think on the one hand, you see that there's some element of compassion that he has for the innies, but this retreat is not really a fun experience for them.
It's meant to, I think on another level, like kind of basically say, okay, you guys wanted to go see the outside world. Yeah.
Well, here you go. Yeah.
Yeah. And it's not so easy and it's not so nice.
Yeah. Yeah.
And you know how it's organized, what he's doing, the okays that he has from his superiors and all that we don't really know about. Yeah.
But it was an opportunity just to, you know, really dig into the weird mind games that Lumen plays with the innies. And, you know, what, you know, we talk about sometimes like, you know, the choices that you guys have to make in terms of like, what's the first thing I'm experiencing? Like, oh, I'm buttoning my shirt for the first time.
You know, I've never done that before. And it's not always appropriate to do that in an episode.
But this was an opportunity for you guys to really take in the outside world in a way you'd never done before. And just as a production, you know, to go off and make this episode was it was like we were making a little movie.
It really was. And, you know, watching the episode again last night, I was like realizing just how expansive it is.
And we were out there. We were out there in the elements for what, five weeks? Yeah.
I mean, we talked about how we were going to make this episode. We, you know, we're not the kind of show that does that kind of visual effects stuff where we do something, you know, with green screen or something like that.
So we knew we wanted to go to real location. At first we started thinking about, you know, we knew snow was really important.
And of course, like in our world with climate change and, you know, finding snow is a really hard thing to do even in the winter. You can't depend on any location at any particular point in the year.
Right. And we're based in New York with the production and it's hard to go very far away.
We talked at one point about going, maybe going to Colorado or going to Canada. And we realized that wasn't really feasible for us, but the Catskills were close by.
We shoot a lot of our exteriors in upstate New York in a town called Kingston.

Yeah.

And this was a little bit

further west

and out there more,

but we have a great location manager

named Ryan Smith.

Yeah.

And Ryan went out

and started searching around

and we found this,

the biggest centerpiece

for the episode

is the waterfall yes

here's twin was always with him that's why we provided the very same for each of you you all i was right mr milchek this is the tallest waterfall on the planet You have followed the path of Kier and Dieter and reached Woe's Hollow. You stand upon sacred earth.
We're starving, Mr. Milchak.
Are you? I thought the waterfall's grandeur would satiate you. I'm teasing, of course.
So finding this waterfall was sort of the key. And Ryan found a Wasting Falls, which is near Lake Minnewasca.
And Lake Minnewasca was where that lake is. But that was the other part of it, too, is the frozen lake, the cliff above it.
Yeah Yeah. Well, this was also like, it was written originally that you guys were in a clearing.
That's right. And then all of a sudden they hear you and they're like, you kind of come out of the woods or something.
And we thought this is something we could really find something that's a little bit more dramatic. And we found this lake that has this cliff over it.
And we thought, well, Wouldn't it be cool if Mark is standing up on top of the cliff and Irving is in the middle of the lake? Yeah. Which we really, I was really up on that cliff.
He was out in the middle of the frozen lake and we were actually screaming to each other. Yeah.
Yeah. That was fun to do.
Look, the whole episode was so dependent on weather, too. We got so lucky.
I remember it was touch and go for a while. And then right before our shooting dates, right before moving up there, there was a big storm.
Am I right? Yes. There was a storm that, like, for the four weeks that we were shooting, basically, we needed snow and a storm happened.
And it only happened, like, at the altitude. The snow was at the altitude that we were shooting at.
But everybody kind of moved up to the Catskills for a while and we're staying in hotels around there. We were based in Accord.
We had a really fun roller skating wrap party. That was really fun.
At a place called Skate Time in Accord, New York. Do you know Bjornkorn, the popcorn? That's where I discovered it and I eat it to this day.
Yeah. So that skate rink is owned by Bjorn of Bjornkorn and Stephanie.
I love Bjornkorn. Yeah.
And they hosted us and we had, I mean, we had a really good time. There were, I mean, it was a huge production in terms of like, you know, having to get up to where the campsite was, was, you know, you had to take these like snow cats or, um, you know, other like kind of vehicles to get up there, especially when the weather hit.
Oh yeah. I mean, just for the actors to get to set, and this means that everything else was 18 times more difficult just for the actors.
We would drive from where we were staying for a while and then arrive at the base of the mountain, get out of the car and get onto a snowcat because there were no actual roads going up to where we were shooting, ride in the snowcat up to the top of the mountain where we had our base camp, which was just a series of tents with heaters in them. And that is where we were all day.
And we would go venture off and shoot from there, sometimes needing to hike for 45 minutes or something to get to where we were shooting. The cave, Scissor Cave was a real hike.
There was no way to reach that little cave except to hike at least, yeah, it was like about 30 minutes. But our camera crew had to literally carry those heavy cameras and camera cases.
It was an ordeal. It was an ordeal.
And the weather was constantly changing when we were filming the episode too. And the other big centerpiece of the episode is Irving's dream.
Yeah. The cliff where we find you in the beginning and where you have the scene with Milchick and then you see the shadow off on the cliff, you know, the sort of faceless version of you.

That was at a place called Sam's Point and in this Peterskill area, which was a little bit away from Lake Minnewaska. This is the Shawangunk Mountains.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful place. Really, really gorgeous.
And we had to shoot that dream sequence. sequence basically we had to switch our schedule around because one morning we came into work and it was really foggy and snow had fallen and it was so foggy that if we had shot that scene of you guys on the cliff with the tv you wouldn't have seen any of that vista right so jessica our cinematographer made the call to say, like, let's go shoot the dream.
And so we went over to this sort of burned out forest area that was at altitude that was near that cliff. And it was foggy and eerie.
Yeah. And what you see when Irving walks to the, you know, the cubicle in the middle, we brought the cubicle out to the middle of this charred out forest.
And that's not a set. That's not visual effects.
That's all real, real fog. That was extraordinary because I wasn't there, but you told me about it when you guys got back and looking at the dailies.
It looks like it was designed and it looks like special effect like you never could have asked for better fog placement for better colors i mean it is beautiful and it was all naturally occurring yeah we were so lucky we were just so lucky with the elements and the the ability that we had as a crew to like kind of like change our plan and just go do do that made all the difference. And then we shot in this sort of this blueberry field where you guys were walking through where Irving's reading from the Kier book, the fourth appendix.
And it was difficult to walk because we had these boots. We need to talk about the wardrobe, but we had these boots that also had crampons attached to them that were made for walking on slippery ice.
They're basically like almost like straight claws that lift you an extra like five inches off the ground. But walking through deep snow and or blueberry bushes made lifting our feet up and down exhausting.
And we were all drenched in sweat by the time we made it across those fields i mean sarah edwards our costume designer just did incredible work where that was the other thing we knew all we were going to have were you guys out there and the snow so what are the costumes going to be what would they put what would lumen put you in and i think dan had this idea that it would be something that would feel like it was from like a hundred years ago. And she came up with just the most beautiful costumes, these black coats, these black fur hats.
And everything down to the undergarments were period, were from a particular time. It felt like Revenant era.
And it was just really, you know, that choice was really important because we knew we were going to sort of live with that for the whole episode. Yeah.
And also the color of the wardrobe that everyone had. It's particularly beautiful and particularly stark when up against the snow.
It's really, really just incredible to look at these four figures moving across the landscape. Yeah.
And I remember we shot tests of you guys in that. And I remember Milchik's outfit, which is white and kind of- Yep.
And Miss Wong as well. Yeah.
Miss Wong too. And there's like a Jeremiah Johnson vibe going on there.
They look like they're in The Empire Strikes Back and we look like we're in Jeremiah Johnson. Right.
Yeah. All right, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk a little bit more about some of the plot stuff that's going on in this episode.
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The big thing, of course, is that since episode one, Irving has been suspicious that Helly is not telling the truth about what went on with her when she had her Audi activated. Yeah, something about it just hasn't sat right with him since that first episode when they all got back.
So you guys are trudging through the snow and he's suspicious and he's asking about the Night Gardener comment. Yeah.
He's sort of starting to pick apart Helly's story a little bit. And to Mark, it just kind of is out of the blue and feels ridiculous.
Like, what are you even talking about? Yeah. And I think that's also probably because Mark is so into Helly at this point too and not maybe wanted to see that.
And thinking about Irving and Irving being the one who started to pick up on something strange about Helly. I wonder if because he's so heartbroken and he's so sort of emotionally raw and split open.
If he's extra sensitive to the vibrations of everyone in the group or something. Because he from the very start sees something very wrong but can't quite put his finger on it that's right and you even see that in episode three a little bit too when um you guys go out to look for the goat people yeah she stops and comforts him yeah and takes liberties that just feel a little off yeah and and then you're trudging through the snow.
You discover the dead seal.

Yeah.

By the way, a moment in time when real snow came down from the heavens

just for like three hours.

Well, we shot that scene in three hours,

all of that scene,

because we knew the snow was going away.

Just real quick,

I remember when we were shooting this

with John and I

and him asking me about the night gardener,

we were walking through a raw space where snow had fallen and no one had walked since the snow fell. That's right.
So you were extra excited because there was fresh snow for us to, organically fresh. We were like on this little peninsula in this little brook.
Could have fallen into the creek at any moment because who knew? It was very delicate shooting that scene, but i remember being so excited that we were getting that snow and and then the weird campfire i mean we could have a whole separate podcast about milchick's uh crazy tale of the temper woe that is just one of my favorites tramell moments in the series but then uh ir pushes Helly about, you know, what really went on.

Just tell us about him.

Who?

The night gardener.

Oh, Irv, come on.

Did he have a flashlight?

Hmm?

What was he wearing? What is your deal right now, dude? What color was his shirt? He really kind of makes a spectacle of it, really embarrasses her in front of everyone. Yes.
Yes, he does. And then he goes off into the forest and has this weird dream.
At the same time, this huge experience happens in the show, which is that you and, um,

Heli sleep together.

Yeah.

And. weird dream at the same time this huge experience happens in the show which is that you and um heli sleep together yeah and as that's happening irving is having this dream where the temper woe shows up and maybe for a second i think you might see an image of like just the slightest image of heli in her face and then he wakes up knowing that he has to confront her and confronts her out by the waterfall.
So it's almost like there have been some random puzzle pieces scattered in front of Irving now for a few episodes. And it's this dream that is abstract, but it's the dream that sort of puts them together.
And he knows when he wakes up, he knows what's going on. Yeah.

And I think he's been trusting his instincts more from these dreams that he's been having.

Yeah.

From season one, too.

But let's take a listen to that scene.

Mr. Milchak!

Come!

What?

Mr. Milchak!

Mr. Milchak!

What? Oh, wait! Turn on back, Mr. Milchak! Mr.
Milchak! What? Hey! Turn her back, Mr. Milchak! What are you doing, man? Turn her back! Irv, what the fuck? She's an outie! Hey! Irving, stop! She's been an outie the whole time, ever since she came back! Irving, you stop.
No. Stop it.
Erving, stop this. She's a fucking mole.
What are you doing? I'm going to kill her, Mr. Milkshire.
The jig is up at this point. Yeah, yeah.
And this was, I mean, what a, you know, this was a scene that was a bear to shoot. I mean, you're, you know, you guys are up on a cliff.
He had to attempt to drown Brit in this icy cold water. So cold.
There were so many aspects to shooting this scene to put it all together. But really it's, you know, it's one of my favorite Irving John Turturro moments in the series.
It's beautiful. And do you want to talk about the close-up of Heli being dunked in the water, being shot later at our stages up on a platform of sorts? We had to create a tank, a little mini tank that we could put the camera under and have a camera person, a scuba diving camera person underneath so that they could see the close-up on Brit's face when she transitions and separate transitions.
But I have to say, John's reading of when he says, she's a fucking mole. Yeah.
It's this, you know, aspect of Irving. It's just like this strong, dark, incredibly, you know, forceful version of Irving that we've never seen before.
And whole scene as as challenging as it was to shoot just it's the acting I think is is just so great there where Milchick you know banishes him and it's I think it's pretty emotional. John is world-class and you see it here he's a heavyweight yeah he's one of the greats and and I love that that when Zach is yelling out, you know, because he's like, you just hear the pain in his voice.
That was emotional. I remember it being emotional on set watching John walk away.
I remember we were off camera just being there for eyeline for John, but we were all weeping watching him turn around and walk away. It was really because also, you know, Irv, from the moment he smashes the egg in the book in season one, he has not only defined for himself what right and wrong is, but I think he's been a living definition of right and wrong for the rest of us.
And him being excommunicated in that moment was heartbreaking. Yeah.
Your workspace will be cleared and any personal items discarded. Your file, including any and all professional interactions and personal relations, will be purged and destroyed.
It will be as if you, Irving B., never even existed nor drew a single breath upon this earth. May Kier's mercy follow you into the eternal dark now and i remember thinking about how milchik could do this because we had discussions about well how is he gonna you know turn him off how is he gonna yeah are there gonna there going to be security guards that come and drag him away? What's going to happen? And we came to the conclusion that something in Irving is probably accepting this.
And the strength of the mind control that Milchick has and they have over these innies is so strong. But I think ultimately there's something in Irving that accepts his fate and maybe on some level, the lovesickness for Bert or something in there, he has to somehow.
And watching John come to that realization is pretty amazing. Yeah.
I think the moment he makes the decision to out her as who she is, he knows he's done for,

and he's doing it for his brethren there, his compadres.

Right, but he does tell Dylan to hang in there.

Yep.

All right, before we go,

it's time to check in with our telepathic friend,

Zach Cherry, to find out what he thinks. The octopus of us all.
The octopus that is Zach Cherry. What he knows deep in his heart will happen in episode five.
Let's hear it. Hello again, it's Zach here.
You know what time of the episode it is. This is your favorite part of the episode.
The feedback has been coming in and people are saying they skip right to this part. Sorry, Ben and Adam, but it's what I've heard.
Anyway, you know what's coming. Next time on Severance.
You know, we've seen the innies have one field trip, and now I think it's time to see them have another.

They're going to go to the mall and watch a movie.

Wow, their first movie. That's exciting.

What was your first movie?

Call in and tell Ben and Adam, what is the first movie you ever watched?

For me, it was the movie Meet the Parents, starring my friend Ben Stiller.

I watched that. It was the first movie I ever saw.
20 years old. Okay.
All right. Wait a minute.
You know what? Wait a minute. So much of that just doesn't add up.
His first movie at 20? Yeah. His first movie was at 20 years old.
He's just trying to get to me. Yeah, he is.

He's trying to make us feel old.

It's not going to work, Zach.

All right?

I'm sure your first movie was probably like Madagascar or something like that.

Exactly.

Something else Ben Stiller created or is a part of.

Yeah, right.

It's nice.

Isn't it nice to be at that point in your career where people come up and say, I grew up watching you.

It happened to me in front of you. saw you and you were so happy that i experienced that i was like welcome to my world it was someone that came up and said i've been watching you since i was a little kid and you mean so much to me which was lovely and so kind of them to come up and say but it's a a particular chord when someone says, because you know, when you're out acting in front of cameras, you were a grown up, which means you are now an old person.
It's also the person telling you, when you look at the person, you go, this person's like maybe like almost middle aged. Exactly.
Yeah. That's the infuriating part.
And you're younger than I am, but I have come, I've been dealing with this for a while now and I've come around to like appreciating it. Like I don't even have any weirdness about it now when people, I really do appreciate it.
Yeah. Like, you know, no joking, but it was fun to watch you really experience it for the first time and just like the pale kind of wash of, uh, that's like, oh my God.
I didn't even know it was apparent what I was going through, but then I just turned my head and you're like, yeah, see? Zach Cherry is 48, by the way. Yeah.
He's older than both of us. All right.
We did it. We did it, man.
We did. We, uh and that is it for this episode.
The Severance Podcast with Ben and Adam will be back next week to talk about season two, episode five. And you can stream every episode of Severance on Apple TV Plus with new episodes coming out every Friday.
And then make sure you're listening to our podcast, which drops right after the episode airs. The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott is a presentation of Odyssey, Pineapple Street Studios, Red Hour Productions, and Great Scott Productions.
If you like the show, be sure to rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts, the Odyssey app, or your other podcast platform of choice. Our executive producers are Barry Finkel, Henry Malofsky, Gabrielle Lewis, Jenner Weiss-Berman, and Leah Reese-Dennis.
This show is produced by Zandra Ellen, Ben Goldberg, and Naomi Scott. This episode was mixed and mastered by Chris Basil.
We had additional engineering from Javi Krustas and Davey Sumner. Show clips are courtesy of Fifth Season.
Music by Theodore Shapiro. Special thanks to the team at Odyssey, Maura Curran, Eric Donnelly, Michael LaVey, Melissa Wester, Matt Casey, Kate Rose, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schuff.
And the team at Red Hour, John Lesher, Carolina Pesikov, John Pablo Antonetti, Martin Valderutin, Ashwin Ramesh,

Maria Noto, John Baker, and Oliver Acker. And at Great Scott, Kevin Cotter, Josh Martin,

and Christy Smith at Rise Management. We had additional production help from

Kristen Torres and Melissa Slaughter. I'm Ben Stiller.
And I'm Adam Scott.

Thanks for listening. And how dare you, Mr.
Milchick, for throwing out my marshmallows.

I am a team player.