S1E7: Defiant Jazz (with Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard)

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Speaker 3 Adam,

Speaker 4 I want you to close your eyes and imagine you're working in Lumen's HR department.

Speaker 2 Okay, give me a second. It takes me 10 minutes to close my eyes.
Oh, wait, I did it right away.

Speaker 4 Okay, keep them close. If our partner, ZipRecruiter, was helping Lumen hire for various roles, how do you think HR would feel about ZipRecruiter's ability to search resumes quickly via keywords?

Speaker 2 Let me get into character here.

Speaker 1 I think they'd love it.

Speaker 2 It's efficient. It's targeted.
We can search words like cure lover and affinity for long hallways.

Speaker 4 Okay, you can open your eyes now. Oh, thank you.
So if you were actually a business owner and not an actor who plays a guy who works at a weird company, like you do in the show. Hey, wait a second.

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Speaker 2 You know what? Lumen should make ZipRecruiter a perk. It's way more fun than a finger trap.

Speaker 4 Finger traps are not even fun.

Speaker 2 No, I actually get legitimately claustrophobic when I use a finger trap.

Speaker 4 Yes. I know.
Even the prop ones.

Speaker 3 Totally.

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Speaker 5 I'm Ben Stiller.

Speaker 2 I'm Adam Scott.

Speaker 5 And this is the Severance podcast with Ben and Adam, where we break down every single episode of Severance.

Speaker 2 Today, we're recapping season one, episode seven, Defiant Jazz, written by Helen Lee and directed by Ben Stiller.

Speaker 5 Thank you. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 Applause. Applause.
The one and only Ben Stiller.

Speaker 5 By the way, every time I say we break down every single episode of Severance, there's only nine episodes that people have seen.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 5 And I just want to acknowledge that, okay?

Speaker 3 On this show, we mount the insurmountable. That's right.
Exactly. We climb the mountain of all episodes.

Speaker 2 Okay, we have two very, very special guests here to talk through episode seven with us.

Speaker 2 They're not technically involved in the making of Severance, but if you believe, like we do, that the fans of Severance are spiritually involved in the making of Severance, there could not be two more appropriate guests for this show than Severance Super fans Dak Shepard and Kristen Bell.

Speaker 3 Oh, thank you. Nice.
Yeah. Well, thanks for having us.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
This is as close as we're ever going to get to being on the show. So we're very excited.

Speaker 3 You don't know that.

Speaker 5 You don't know that. And also, by the way, you guys are both expert podcasters in addition to being incredibly talented actors, too.
Thank you.

Speaker 5 And so I'm a little bit like I want to learn from you just by being in your presence, okay?

Speaker 3 Well, that's flattering.

Speaker 3 I got to say, one of the highlights of our last seven years was talking to you sincerely. Really? Well, both of you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 I have this thing, Dax. I'm curious for both of you when you do podcasts.

Speaker 5 Maybe this is just something in my brain, but I will do a podcast and talk and have a great time as a guest and then not remember anything that I said the whole, like I'll remember like bits and pieces.

Speaker 5 Do you remember every, you've done so many of these. You both have done a lot.
Do you remember everything?

Speaker 3 I largely do. And I'll say you are in the minority because most often guests leave and they replay everything they said and then they text me.

Speaker 3 And Adam's sitting right here and he just did it a week ago. Right.
Oh, to try.

Speaker 5 Yeah. I do that too.
I do that replay to my head. But luckily, since my memory is so bad, I can't remember the embarrassing things I said.

Speaker 5 And I just say, okay, it's going to be out there in the world.

Speaker 2 Well, I also find that these podcasts are sometimes like a 90-minute, two-hour conversation.

Speaker 2 So you say so much and then people out in the world say stuff to me like, oh, that's so cool that you used to go to the Del Mar Theater in Santa Cruz.

Speaker 3 I'm like, when would I have ever told anyone how long would I have to have been interviewed before I got to that detail?

Speaker 2 There's just so much that you

Speaker 2 end up saying.

Speaker 6 But Dax is a steel trap. I mean, I've done far, far, I've dipped my toe to podcasting and done his a couple of times, but he's certainly the absolute expert.

Speaker 6 But he's the same way podcasting as he is at home, which is like, well,

Speaker 6 I don't remember any name of any person I went to school with. It just doesn't, I have to see it written down like in a yearbook or something.
I mean, other than my handful of friends.

Speaker 6 And Dax will be able to

Speaker 6 still explain,

Speaker 6 you know, how the speed of sound works from his, you know, intro college class. Or like he, he's, he does not let go of any information.

Speaker 3 I'm so glad I came. I do want to say Kristen's memory is a little more charming than that, if I can say, because we will be meeting someone, and this is an actual example.
example.

Speaker 3 She remembers everyone's dog's name,

Speaker 3 not them. So she'll, Titans of Industry, she'll go, oh, I know that person has a dog.
They have no clue what they're the chairman of, but knows their dogs.

Speaker 2 That is a charming memory.

Speaker 3 It's exactly.

Speaker 6 It is until you're living in it and you're at some event where you need to remember someone who could give you a job.

Speaker 6 But I do genuinely wake up like Groundhog's Day every morning, which is kind of nice for my mental health because I'm like, well, nothing's wrong.

Speaker 6 But then I find out throughout the day what's wrong in the world, what's wrong in my life. But I do not forget a dog under any circumstance.

Speaker 5 People love their dogs, and to remember somebody's dog, actually, that's something that you connect with on some, you know, I think people appreciate that, I'm sure, more than even remembering their actual name, if you remember the dog's name.

Speaker 3 But conversely, if you don't own a dog, Kristen will never remember you. No.
So there's also the flip side of that question.

Speaker 5 That's the other side, yeah.

Speaker 6 Okay, and the other great, here's the great thing about Dax. I remember dogs.
Dax will absolutely mangle everyone's names.

Speaker 6 He cannot tell the difference between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, not on screen or in person. And there's always

Speaker 6 a hybrid of two people.

Speaker 6 But I speak Dak, so I can usually.

Speaker 3 Alan and Glenn do not believe you for one second when you say that.

Speaker 2 Do you guys ever find yourselves being in entertainment?

Speaker 2 You see someone like across the party and you know you're going to run into them and you Google them to remember their wife's name or their husband's name.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yep. Everything's non-stop.
Okay, great. I'm not alone.
I want to steal Seth Meyers as a really funny story about this, where

Speaker 3 he was on a vacation in Israel, and then he got invited to meet the, I don't know, let's say the prime minister or the second in command.

Speaker 3 And so he googled this person to find out and thought, oh, yeah, we should meet them. And then took this kind of awkward meeting, then asked where the bathroom was.

Speaker 3 And as he was told, he walked by the guy's desk and he could see up on his computer was the Wikipedia for Seth Meyers. So it's like, wow, both of them.

Speaker 3 I think so many of us are just having meetings with people. We shouldn't be having meetings.
If you have to Google the person, why is anyone even meeting?

Speaker 5 That's what Wikipedia was created for, for people having meetings with each other.

Speaker 5 Can I just say also, like, I know you guys are friends and we don't really know each other, but it was so cool to hear that you guys are fans of the show because it's always.

Speaker 5 like fun and exciting to hear and people who you know and are fans of are fans of something you work on. And I just think that's so great and so cool.

Speaker 5 And it was just exciting to know that you guys were watching the show.

Speaker 6 We do more than watch the show. This show has been disruptive to our lifestyle.
We've lost many a night's sleep over these cliffhangers, which

Speaker 3 we then assault Adam with. We send all these voice memos to Adam and Naomi at night when we're pissed.
And we're like, God, I hope he plays them for Ben. We want Ben to know, too.

Speaker 3 So it's mutual.

Speaker 2 Well, I covet those voice memos, and we have them. And maybe we'll just play them all at the end of the episode.

Speaker 3 Definitely play them. You absolutely should.
They're very hostile. Yeah.
They're a side of America's sweethearts you don't really want to see. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's really, it will take you aback.

Speaker 2 So what about the show kind of landed with you guys? Let's just start there.

Speaker 3 There's so many things to be. proud of.

Speaker 3 It's a really, really huge accomplishment. And I'm not being hyperbolic.
The tone is so fucking bulletproof, it's almost impossible.

Speaker 3 And I think if we could really geek out, when you're evaluating how much you like a director, I think the key ingredient is like, do they have a singular voice they can inject into the funny scene and the sad scene?

Speaker 3 Like, is it unified? Is it unwavering? Does it create rules that never breaks? Like, the amount of discipline on display in the show is so impressive. The aesthetic is so

Speaker 3 wonderfully boring and brilliant and subtle and

Speaker 6 somehow unique.

Speaker 6 Like you, to be able to strip something down so much and use, you know, there's four pieces of furniture you see throughout the show, but to still have it feel a little unique, like it could only exist there.

Speaker 3 And then the cast is so wonderful because there's people we know and there's people we don't know, and everyone is equally brilliant. So

Speaker 3 you want to see the ugliest side of Chris Cinnamon? It is in bed watching TV, which we do all the time because because we've been doing it for 25 years.

Speaker 3 So we'll notice why are they shooting this scene from a bird's eye view? This is not two people talking on a couch. This is an actual example.

Speaker 3 We're watching a show and they're shooting it from high and behind and then they coverage friend the coverage.

Speaker 3 They go to Frenches that are like on the ceiling looking at the floor and finally we play this game where we're on a set so I have my walkie talkie on my and I have mine

Speaker 6 what we're doing for the listener is grabbing our lapel.

Speaker 3 Sarah, can you go to two?

Speaker 6 On two.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm with the director. He wants to know if we're going to be able to look up at any point.
Yes. Where is the ceiling? No.

Speaker 6 Why? So we went to lunch, remember? Yeah. And we're back, and

Speaker 6 we lost the ceiling.

Speaker 3 You lost the ceiling? Yes.

Speaker 6 Somehow at lunch, well, it was there before lunch, and then we're back, and it's so we're locked into shooting the floor for the rest of the day.

Speaker 3 Fortunately, yes.

Speaker 3 Okay, I'm going to try to tell him that you can go back to four. Thank you.
Oh,

Speaker 3 yes.

Speaker 6 Going to two is the most fun part of our relationship.

Speaker 3 Yeah, if it were ever going to two, we would be

Speaker 3 divorced.

Speaker 5 Can I just throw in a couple of little reference points for

Speaker 5 audiences who are not in show business? Frenches are French overs, right? Over-the-shoulder shots that are behind the actors.

Speaker 5 Going to two is the two on the radio, the other channel for like seats.

Speaker 6 And you need to say something other than main information.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you're surrounded on a set with PAs that have earpieces in and microphones on their collar of their shirt, and you'll be mid-conversation with them.

Speaker 3 You think they're listening to you, and they immediately just go, Yes, going to two. And you realize they weren't listening to you.

Speaker 3 And then someone from Wardrobe that has a question about maybe an actor's wearing their personal hat in a scene. That's another thing we'll do.

Speaker 3 We're watching, and some piece of wardrobe looks that has to be a personal item. So we'll go, Gary, go to four.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 is that a personal hat we're seeing? Because we haven't cleared. There's a logo on it.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I tried this morning, but

Speaker 6 Derek, or is it Derek or Daryl? Yeah, the day player.

Speaker 6 And he said he couldn't take it off. There was something about his hair.
And because what we shot yesterday.

Speaker 3 We're going to be in grace if we'll shoot the fuck. Okay.

Speaker 2 You know what one of my pet peeves is with wardrobe? Where if it's abundantly clear that the wardrobe is brand new, that you still see the fold creases. It was just taken off the rack on the actor

Speaker 2 in front of the camera.

Speaker 6 But that's a great bit to go to two with because you asked Wardrobe. You asked Janice from Wardrobe why the steamer wasn't available.

Speaker 6 And you talk about how the trucks weren't allowed to be parked on the street because Transport didn't get here early. The Jenny's down.

Speaker 3 The Jenny's down. Well, how long is the Jenny going to be down?

Speaker 6 We got to steam this shirt. What about the backup, Jenny?

Speaker 3 Okay, all that to say, that was way too long of a preamble. But there's no going to two on Severance, which is almost impossible.

Speaker 3 We even do it, you guys, on the holy of all holies Game of Thrones. But this is more selfish.

Speaker 3 We're watching it, and you'll see this huge wide, and there's 65 people on it, and there's a couple of the main stars, and they're buried deep in the background yeah and we see a scene like that we're like oh fuck they had to be there for

Speaker 3 six times

Speaker 3 in the background

Speaker 3 and that's something

Speaker 6 or wherever they were freezing we've learned freezing from being on set if the camera can see you you have to be there for the entirety of the scene if that scene's going to take a week to shoot you you have to push your body behind someone in the background and be like, well, I just, no, but I was here.

Speaker 2 I was here.

Speaker 5 That's one of the first lessons of show business. If you can see the camera, the camera can see you.

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 2 So find a spot where the camera cannot.

Speaker 3 You have to go home at some point. Yeah.
Most great actors want to talk about their character.

Speaker 3 I'm constantly like, don't you think my character would have run out right before action to grab something? Because this seems like a scene we're going to shoot for three days.

Speaker 5 I feel like I'm very, as a director, I'm very sensitive to that. When I hear an actor go that route, like I can tell right off the street.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 6 You would not like working with us.

Speaker 3 No, you would hate it. We're not.

Speaker 6 We like to be home for dinner.

Speaker 5 In the beginning of your career, you want to be in the scene, or then

Speaker 3 goes by.

Speaker 2 You're like, Is there anything else I could be doing, or is there anything you going up to directors asking for direction? Is there anything you need me to do?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 Well, and I don't think he'd mind me telling this story. In fact, I know he wouldn't.
But I directed Tom Arnold in a movie, and we were between takes, and he was clearly so miserable.

Speaker 3 And I said to him,

Speaker 3 How long have you hated acting? And he goes, Oh, for a long time, buddy.

Speaker 3 Like, what the crazy paradox with actors is, all they want is to get jobs. And then once they have them, they do not want to be doing the job.

Speaker 5 I've had that experience too. An actor just wants to get it done and get out of there.

Speaker 5 Adam Scott.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. Yeah.
No, that's me. God, I wish.

Speaker 3 But anyways, the acting's phenomenal. The writing is so next level.

Speaker 3 It blows my mind that Dan only had a single writing credit on Lip Sync Battle. That's so impressive.

Speaker 3 Truly, you think you're like, you're dealing with someone who's cracked, you know, a trilogy or something. It's, it's really impressive.

Speaker 6 And you're doing so much with so little because it's not like a chatty, bantery show. Like, there's, there's often just stretches of silence, and I'm still riveted.

Speaker 6 I don't like, you know, you can always judge something good about whether or not you think you have to pee during it or you look at your phone. And we just do not.

Speaker 6 We are riveted when they're walking through endless white hallways because the tension and the tone that's built. And every every single character is watchable.

Speaker 6 Because there are a lot of shows we watch where you'll go to a character and it's, they're just not as interesting, but you've developed everyone in such a way that it's just, it's a ball to watch.

Speaker 5 Well, that's that's nice to hear. I mean, you know, it's when you're working on something, when you're in it, you just have no perspective, right?

Speaker 5 When you're working on it, other than you're just trying to do it. And

Speaker 5 we did, you know, we did work in a bubble for so long in the first season.

Speaker 5 The whole thing, I think this whole thing in streaming now of that you do the whole thing without any feedback is what can be like good and bad. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Right. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Cause you're just like doing, like we completed the whole thing, the whole season. And I remember thinking by the end of it, like, okay, this is like, we did this.
Oh my God.

Speaker 5 Is this like any, is anybody going to like it? Is anybody going to watch it? It could just be awful too. Yeah.
You just don't know.

Speaker 2 Sometimes when I watch a show, like the very first season of a show, and that turns out to be a big hit, like Friends or West Wing, I try to pinpoint, and it's usually like four or five episodes in, the moment when they started airing and were a huge hit.

Speaker 2 And you can kind of try to pinpoint the confidence and the kind of swagger of the actors.

Speaker 2 Yeah, when they're just like, we're going to be here for a while.

Speaker 2 And I don't know if it's actually there or not, but I'm always thinking of that because, and on Parks and Rec, it was like this too, where you shoot an episode and it's like, what, five weeks and then it airs?

Speaker 2 It's just wild. It's so wildly different than kind of the modern streaming.

Speaker 5 What does that feel like? Because I've never really had it. Because anything I've ever done on Television has been like this, or if I'm not in it directing it, or was canceled and never went that far.

Speaker 5 So never had that feeling of being on something that's a hit, that's successful, and you're doing it in real time.

Speaker 2 Right. Yeah, Ben Stiller showed, did you guys make the entire thing and then just double-click on it?

Speaker 5 Yeah, we made the entire 13 episodes that then they aired 12 of them and that was it.

Speaker 5 The whole thing was done within like eight months.

Speaker 6 They shelved the finale?

Speaker 3 It wasn't even a finale. It was very interesting.

Speaker 3 I know.

Speaker 5 It was an amalgam of sketches.

Speaker 3 I could bore you by going through every one of my favorite sketches from that. It's such a great show.
But I have a really arrogant question to ask you, Ben.

Speaker 3 I've done some kind of armchair analysis of your recent work.

Speaker 3 And this is, again, this runs the risk of offending you, but I told Adam Adam this.

Speaker 3 I feel like with Tropic Thunder, you were like, let me show you I can make a fucking humongous movie.

Speaker 3 Like, let me show you I can have the action and the explosions and that these comedies can also have this layer. And let me demonstrate I have that skill set.
That was accomplished.

Speaker 3 And I feel like Dana Mora, which by the way, apologies, we just watched for the first time. last month and we fucking loved it.

Speaker 3 But to me, Dana Mora was like, now let me show you I can do a very gritty drama. And that was accomplished, I think, with flying colors.

Speaker 3 I feel like Severance, again, I have no business having this opinion. I feel like you've proven you can do everything.
And now there's this confidence to when it wants to be funny, it can be funny.

Speaker 3 When it wants to be dark, it can be dark. There's no, it's just, it feels like everything's been proven and there's a...

Speaker 3 There's a confidence to this where I feel like the funny side of you gets to come out and all the other sides. It feels really

Speaker 3 just even in that way.

Speaker 5 Thank you for even taking the time to watch that stuff. And I really, and honestly, I appreciate that.

Speaker 5 I think it's sort of what you're talking about is basically severance allows this, you know, this tone and this story allows for that in a great way.

Speaker 5 And maybe there is, look, honestly, I think we've all been working for a long time, right? After a while, there's a certain amount of like, okay, here we are in life. Life's going by.

Speaker 3 We're getting older.

Speaker 5 you know fuck it right i just want to do stuff that i really enjoy and that makes that i want to see and yeah i care about how it's going to be received but at the end of the day i just want to you know express myself and go for it a little bit if i have the opportunity to do that in a way that is not worrying about

Speaker 5 Like I was just saying before, we made it in this bubble. At the very end, I thought for a second, oh, wait, I hope this is good.

Speaker 5 I hope people, but like, we had a great time making it within the bubble of doing it.

Speaker 5 So I think it's just the what Dan created allowed, it was a confluence of events of allowing for a tone that could sort of have all those things in it.

Speaker 5 And I personally think with, you know, when something's in one genre, it's very constricting, right? Because you're not allowed to do certain things.

Speaker 5 And what's great about having humor or comedy in something like this is people aren't tuning in expecting to laugh.

Speaker 5 So you don't have the pressure, as we all know, in comedy, that's a lot of like like to be funny because people even Tropic Thunder people that was a comedy and I remember having a first screening and thinking okay I think we made this really cool kind of like actiony You know kind of thing that has you know some satire and all that But it's like a thing and and people were just like the first audiences were like well They said it's a comedy where the like they wanted the laughs to be there, you know they're that's the first thing that they're looking for in the format they were super yeah but it's just sort of in the framework even not if it's like maybe how it's marketed or how people put it out there, right?

Speaker 5 This is a comedy So there's something that's very freeing about having a genre that is not as defined because then you can just have it be whatever and allow people to find what they find in it.

Speaker 5 And that's been great to work on. And I think that starts with what Dan wrote in his pilot, which got me so excited.
And then we kind of, you know, went from there on it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, because the stupid moment, I think it's in seven, with the doors have been installed.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 our man is, what's our man's name? Milchik. Milchik.
Milchik's checking them, right? But boy, he's checking the fuck out of them. And those doors are clanging.
I mean, the speed is impossible. And

Speaker 3 I'm imagining being at Video Village. It's not lost on you that this is hysterical and what's going on and why are we going to see it close so many times.
Well, those doors were

Speaker 3 effects, right?

Speaker 5 No, they were real, but we sped them up. But it's so funny because I was literally watching this last night, Seven.

Speaker 5 preparing for this with Christine, and she's like, boy, he's really checking those doors.

Speaker 3 Yes, yes. And I'm like, you know, behind the monitors, this is funny.
I mean, it was just something. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And that stuff, like, again, like, there's no, you know, there's no kind of test screening or anything like that.

Speaker 5 So there's just like a freedom to go like, oh, this seems funny or like interesting or whatever.

Speaker 5 And you just kind of go, go with it and try to go with your instincts, you know?

Speaker 3 It's the moment like the dad is using a tie-down strap on something. He's packed some luggage and he gives it like 25 pulls before he goes, yeah, that ain't going nowhere.

Speaker 3 Like that's what it felt like with the doors.

Speaker 2 But it also, it tells you so much about Milchik, too. That's what I loved about that little sequence is that this is that guy.
And we get these further dimensions of

Speaker 3 Tramel's character.

Speaker 5 There's an interesting little part of the story there, which is that what those guys are doing is they're pulling away the, you know, the sort of like, you know, border around the entrance to reveal these doors.

Speaker 5 They weren't installing those doors. Those doors were there before.

Speaker 5 So that's, you know, I mean, when you really think about it, they're not like putting in doors overnight, but they're pulling off the covers.

Speaker 5 So that's just an interesting layer of like, oh, I wonder what those doors were doing before.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. Oh, I didn't catch that.

Speaker 2 Okay, let's pause here and take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll get into episode seven.

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Speaker 8 Hey everyone, I'm Josh Radner, and I am so excited to tell you about How We Made Your Mother, a rewatch podcast looking back at how I met your mother.

Speaker 8 And I'm here with Craig Thomas, who co-created the show along with Carter Bays.

Speaker 9 Hi, Craig. Hey, Josh.
Somehow, it has been 20 years since the show premiered. That's you, I'm going to check the math on that.

Speaker 9 10 years since it went off the air, and we thought that made this a perfect time to look back, see what the hell we did, and why the show still seems to resonate with fans around the world today.

Speaker 8 Follow and listen to How We Made Your Mother, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 Okay, so the first scene is between Mark and who we know as Ragabi, played by Karen Aldridge, the great Karen Aldridge. So they're at the college campus.
Or is it the college campus in the city?

Speaker 5 Yeah, they're at Gans, which is where you used to teach.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Mark used to teach there. And she basically leads you to this sort of like secret little lab that she set up.
down in the sort of the bowels beneath. This is really weird.

Speaker 5 This was during the pandemic. We shot at Pfizer Pharmaceutical in New Jersey while they were developing the vaccine.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 3 Did you try to get an early dose from anyone?

Speaker 2 We just started jabbing ourselves with any hyperdenic needles we could find.

Speaker 6 Breathing deep in every hallway.

Speaker 3 That's right. That's right.

Speaker 5 It was really weird. And then also they had shot other stuff there.
And I actually on the floor, I found like an old little mini sides from the show Manifest.

Speaker 5 And I got really upset that Manifest had shot where we were.

Speaker 2 Ben does not like to hear that any other show or movie has shot at any location we're at.

Speaker 3 I get it. And they love to start telling you when you're there, and you're like, No, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 And whenever we go on a location scout with like my group, like the person who's, when they start saying, Oh, yeah, and we had this shoot there, and that everybody looks at me because they know that that person has just basically made this place a place that we don't want to shoot.

Speaker 2 But the building in Jersey, the old Bell Labs building that is Lumen, was never on film until

Speaker 5 the crazy thing.

Speaker 3 That's the crazy thing. What a jewel.
I mean, there's a few things you guys have, a few assets that you got to wonder what the show is without them. And that's one of them.

Speaker 3 It really grounds the entire, just that wide of that build. It's like the Pentagon.
The wide of that buys you so much into your belief of what Lumen is as like a monolith.

Speaker 5 It was actually the first location that we found, and that was really informed a lot of the design of the inside because it still had all of that mid-century architecture on the inside of it.

Speaker 5 And yeah, so then she takes you down there.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and then she's kind of talking to me and Doug Grainer shows up and the shit hits the fan and he's talking to me and she comes up behind him and hits him over the head with a baseball bat.

Speaker 2 So this was really brutal.

Speaker 2 really brutal piece of violence and kind of the first one of the show, show, right? Yeah. How did you approach that?

Speaker 5 I mean, we knew that we didn't want to ever have the show go into like people with guns and like cloak and dagger-y kind of stuff. And that was something we were really sensitive to.

Speaker 5 So we were trying to figure out some way that she could take him out that would feel messy and kind of shocking. And so that's, that's where the baseball bat came up.

Speaker 5 And yeah, it was weird because we had never had anything like that happen on the show before. And it just felt like, okay, how do we we do this and make it feel believable?

Speaker 5 But, you know, you just do it, like a scene like that, right? You just do it. Like, what would really happen?

Speaker 3 All I was thinking, I got really distracted by thinking of blocking the scene when you guys first showed up. Like, how are we going to, how is it going to be a reveal?

Speaker 3 We saw her on the left side of this set. It's not a set.
It's a practical location. But now there's this exchange.
How are we going to get her behind him?

Speaker 3 And the notion that this practical location you were at had a way for her to walk around that loop around.

Speaker 5 That's amazing. You guys are so observant.

Speaker 3 I know. I'm not kidding.
That's crazy.

Speaker 2 I don't remember if she actually did or if that was just not a shit.

Speaker 6 She came from behind him.

Speaker 3 It looked practical. And it seemed to be a wanner.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you're right. It wasn't, actually.
And

Speaker 5 we wanted to believe that there was a way to get back there.

Speaker 5 But when we got to that location, we saw, oh, there's this interesting kind of thematic thing where there's like a hallway on one side and then there's the room on the other.

Speaker 5 And Mark's point of view could be looking at this sort of almost severed image, right?

Speaker 5 And then, you know, the surprise of her coming up behind him.

Speaker 5 And we tried to make sure that the way we cut it was that, you know, we don't see her for long enough that you could believe that she came around behind him.

Speaker 6 And she did mention that she severed him as well.

Speaker 6 I think that's an important detail because she says she reintegrated Petey, but she also mentions in that scene that she was the one who severed him, which just gives you a lot more intel on how high up she was and why

Speaker 6 you kind of go like, oh, she must have a reason to use this baseball bat.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and she knows a lot about mark and the procedure and it's kind of the first time you can tell the the way she's kind of poking and prodding mark that he hasn't really given much thought to his any

Speaker 2 he hasn't really considered this person very much and she's kind of poking him saying what about you know this is a person down there well that's the fun philosophical question

Speaker 3 I think. Well, there's many, but the one that I am most intrigued about by the show is this notion that we wouldn't ever relegate someone else to eight hours in a room with no memory.

Speaker 3 But I would do it to myself because I don't pity myself. I don't have any empathy for myself.
I'm a piece of shit and I deserve to suffer and I'm going to suffer at work anyway.

Speaker 3 So it's just interesting.

Speaker 3 I think it begs this question of like, we are meaner to ourselves than we'd be to other people in a way. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah.
And do things to ourselves, right? More self-destructive things or things that are, you know, that, you know, cutting off.

Speaker 5 I mean, there's so many, I think, you know, metaphors or analogies that you could think of for what severance is for in terms of what, how people deaden pain or just want to avoid pain.

Speaker 3 And it's just, I imagine myself, someone saying, you're like, you're being really mean to Dax some eight hours of the day. I go, who gives a fuck? I kind of deserve someone to be mean to.

Speaker 3 Like, I, if they told me I was being mean to a stranger for eight hours a day, it would affect me.

Speaker 3 But I actually imagined being Adam in that scene, and I don't think I'd really give a shit if a version of me was unhappy.

Speaker 5 It's interesting. Right.
And then we see how you're sort of equivocating to in that scene and you're like, sort of like, I'm not a bad person. But it's, you know,

Speaker 5 I mean, Mark is just morally very complicated, I think, the whole first season.

Speaker 2 That's right.

Speaker 2 And the fact that she is the one that actually did the severing is super interesting because it kind of tells us that she's on some sort of redemption path of some sort of a lot of things.

Speaker 6 Yeah, well, that she got so much information that she changed her perspective. That's right.

Speaker 3 it also suggests that the stakes of lumen are much higher than just someone being severed for eight hours of the day if she's willing to a brain a dude there's some there must be something hugely nefarious happening beyond just this the severing of people yeah yeah and i thought karen she's such a good interesting actress and michael cumpsey who plays Grainer.

Speaker 5 Just the way they played that scene, I thought he was so creepy in that scene because he's so like smiling and kind of nice and kind of the way he talks to your Audi. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's just so creepy and so he has a very 80s like video drone, scanners.

Speaker 3 There's something

Speaker 2 fit right in with those movies for sure.

Speaker 2 And he's the sweetest, like gentlest guy too. It's so wild.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Well, he, yeah.
And he's just, we said this before, he has such a great face and understands how to use it and just knows how much power he has and, you know, just being still.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And Karen Aldridge is like you said fantastic and also that was karen's you know as you guys know too like people come in for a day on a show right and they you don't have any rhythm anything you know making you comfortable it's just like you come in and you got to do a scene that was her first day on the show yeah and she had to do that scene I was going to call that exact thing out.

Speaker 3 That would normally be a scene that you got eight episodes to work up to as a character. And she had to rappel in and have her crescendo career, you know, character moment on day one.

Speaker 6 And not make it to, because again, when you have that challenge of like, oh, I got to make this something. This is my first scene.
You can often overdo it and you become arch or some, like,

Speaker 6 I need to be villainous or something. But she wasn't.
She was like serious and driven. And you wanted to take her seriously and you wanted to know more.

Speaker 6 And she kept, she was like very there, but also I felt like kept a lot. to her breast to where I was like, I need this girl on screen again.
I want to know more.

Speaker 2 Totally super specific and different. And because you're right, you could just do like CBS guest spot drop-in exposition and just be uninteresting.

Speaker 2 But she really managed to kind of give it a lot of texture.

Speaker 5 It's great.

Speaker 2 I love her. I love Karen.
She's fantastic.

Speaker 5 Okay, so we come back to MDR and,

Speaker 5 you know, they've got the new doors and everybody's sort of stressed out about that.

Speaker 5 This is when Milchik shows up because Heliar has hit 25% and she's going to get a music music dance experience, which is one of the big perks.

Speaker 5 What I like about the scene is that it's the weirdness of what's going on, but we're also trying to tell the story within it.

Speaker 5 And it was a chance for the actors just to, every actor in that scene is doing such specific stuff. I mean, every single person, I can just go, I'm sure you guys have feelings about it.

Speaker 3 We have a lot. And in fact,

Speaker 3 there's a behind the scenes debate between Kristen and I that this scene created. And this is where you get lucky or you don't, right?

Speaker 3 You didn't, the actor who plays Miltchick, you didn't ask him to dance in the original audition. And then you get to set on this day and you realize, oh my God, we have a fucking professional.

Speaker 3 I could watch him dance for two hours. I said to Kristen, we watched that scene.
I go, okay, my man, let me just tell you, his ass is so good. He has the best ass I've ever seen in pants.
He moves

Speaker 3 suspiciously well, Kristen. I'm like, he has some showbiz in his background.
He's got some Broadway or something.

Speaker 3 And we went and did a deep dive on that actor because we watched him dance. And I was like, there's something going on here.
This guy's too fucking good and funny. He's trained.
He's trained.

Speaker 3 He's got his body. He's incredible.

Speaker 3 Trammell.

Speaker 5 It's crazy. You're right.
He does have a great butt, and he's got a great,

Speaker 5 I mean, the guy is just so talented.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it was a revelation to me. I knew he was good as an actor and I knew he moved well, you know, within the scenes.

Speaker 5 But when, you know, this is episode seven, when we got to this, it was like, okay, let's figure out what we could do here.

Speaker 5 And, you know, we, we, we had a choreographer who came, but like, basically, like, Trammell just kind of went off and said, I got some ideas. I have some thoughts.
And then they just showed me.

Speaker 5 They just showed me this, you know, this dance that he came up with. And I, I mean, it just just makes me so happy watching it.
It's just

Speaker 3 such a big gift he gave you, right? It's like you have all these tools at your disposal. You know, you got the lights.
You know, you can do some inserts of the record player. That's cool.

Speaker 3 You can go to the list. You have these, all these ways you're going to make this interesting.
And this motherfucker shows up and just starts letting loose. And you go, oh, I don't need any of that.

Speaker 3 I'll have that stuff, but I don't need it because this is now all about this guy dancing.

Speaker 5 It's so weird and specific. And it also, I think,

Speaker 5 sort of triggered everybody else in the scene to have their own version of what they would do in this situation. It really just brought out the best in everybody, I think.

Speaker 5 Because I love, Adam, how Mark is, first of all, so curious and excited about the music dance experience, like literally like a kid, almost like, oh, wow, you know, like wanting to see the table and what's there and what are the different instruments.

Speaker 5 And like, you're like a kid.

Speaker 2 Well, it's a huge deal. And we're all in the midst of this whole disillusionment with Lumen and all all of this drama and kind of putting this, you know, the pieces of this.

Speaker 2 Well, we haven't started putting the plan together yet, but we're all kind of it's a little disarray as far as

Speaker 2 Mark's feelings about Lumen.

Speaker 2 But still, something like this comes in and it's like, oh man, the MDE is about to happen. There's, it's like a celebrity walked in the room or something.

Speaker 3 You have like almost the first playful smile you have in the show at work.

Speaker 3 Why do you decide that's how Mark feels about that?

Speaker 2 Well, I think at that point, there had been just a couple little instances of kind of stimuli that come in from different directions.

Speaker 2 And just assuming that stimuli is hard to come by down there, this machine rolls in with 45s and musical instruments. And I figured it was something Mark had heard about but hadn't experienced yet.

Speaker 2 So couldn't wait to get his hands on just the feelings of the MDE.

Speaker 2 One thing I love about the sequences is that it's completely rooted in character because, you know, Milchik is just trying to cover his ass and provide distraction.

Speaker 2 And we should say it's a, the MDE is a creation of Mark Friedman, one of our writers and co-showrunner of season one.

Speaker 2 And it's a really great path for Milchik, as well as, and then it turns into this sort of

Speaker 2 just showstopping moment in the show. And it's just, like Ben said, it really provides this great pathway for all the characters to kind of come out of their shells a little bit, Dylan included.

Speaker 6 But it also highlights the, like, you see so many specific character traits when you see them have this stimulus. But if you zoom out, it also highlights

Speaker 6 the monotony and the loneliness and the suffering that, oh, a cart, an Ikea rolling cart with a record player on it and a maraca is what is going to get these people to smile.

Speaker 3 It's like a monster truck show.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it really highlights the suffering that they experience on a daily basis that you sort of like, you don't lose track of it all, but you sort of, because you've seen it before, I like that it was highlighted here that like, yeah, they're just in those white hallways.

Speaker 6 There is nothing, there are no labels on the soap in the bathroom. There is everything is just so barren.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And also the other thing I was excited about when we shot it, I remember thinking about as we were going through the season was like, oh, I knew we were going to do this thing with the lights.

Speaker 5 We were going to change the color of the lights.

Speaker 5 And I remember thinking, oh, I hope people, first of all, I hope people buy that and think that's, you know, it doesn't seem too like kind of over the top that or break the reality.

Speaker 5 But it was so exciting to me to think at some point in just seven episodes in, we're going to to see that the lights can change colors and they can do like a Saturday Night Fever in reverse or whatever, like ceiling.

Speaker 2 You saved that, and we didn't know that the lights were going to change until we were shooting the scene.

Speaker 5 I think I tried to hold it back. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 I remember also when we had a test for it, when you guys weren't there with the crew, we did a test and then we had like a little dance party because we were like timing it out to the song and it was really fun because it would get very oppressive on that set because the ceiling is so so low

Speaker 5 and and our set that's literally like the MDR room is in the middle of all the hallways. So it's like you really are like, it's very claustrophobic.

Speaker 5 And I know Toturo used to go crazy because he's the tallest. Like Dax, you would not like it there because

Speaker 5 it's very low ceiling. I mean, I'm assuming you're tall.

Speaker 3 That's how you're getting out of inviting me there. Okay, so I'll be on the spot.
I'm sure.

Speaker 3 We'll be on the show. Dax doesn't need to be on the show.
But

Speaker 5 Taturo is the tallest cast member, and I know he used to get to him.

Speaker 3 That's funny you'd bring up the lights because that was going to be a really nerdy, specific question for you, Ben, which is

Speaker 3 you want the lights for obvious reasons. It'll make the scene more interesting.
And then, though, you've got to play through the logic.

Speaker 3 So you go, okay, Lumen installed these lights to be multicolored. And then you have to maybe create some reason in your mind where you don't feel like you're jumping the rules, right?

Speaker 3 And I just wonder, I can imagine that would be the kind of decision that you'd really mull over a lot more than people might guess.

Speaker 2 Yes,

Speaker 5 we're constantly thinking about things like that all the time.

Speaker 5 And to me, it makes total sense in terms of the world of Lumen that they would do this because it's something that they are able to do to save as a reward that just as the audience would be surprised that the, you know, that the people who, the employees would be surprised too.

Speaker 5 And it's all, we're always thinking about what would Lumen do? How would Lumen approach this?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 But it was really fun. And then I have to say, Adam, your bad white man dance as he's approaching you, it makes me think, I always think of Billy Crystal.
There's like the white guy over there.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 It's just, there's like, first you do one like, like, kind of like stilted move. And then like the second one is like, you kind of like get into it.
And you're kind of like, okay, I can do this.

Speaker 5 And it makes me laugh out loud every time I see it.

Speaker 2 I remember when I started doing that one, like stepping into it, because we were trying to get to me putting my hands in my pockets to discover the key card right and so i started doing a thing like this

Speaker 2 it's a this is great for a podcast demonstrating the dance moves but he's putting his arms up in like sort of a robotic motion yeah and you loved it so much you're like don't forget that do that like you loved the like

Speaker 2 walking in place thing um so i was sure not to forget it um

Speaker 2 yeah that was so fun it was so fun i mean it was an entire day obviously and it was a blast especially watching Trumel dance.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it was two days. It was two days.
And one day it was the dance, and then the second day was Dylan's blow-up.

Speaker 5 And, you know, when Milchik gets behind him and starts sort of like doing this sort of like almost like this devil over his shoulder, it's just crazy.

Speaker 5 And it was really great to see Zach be able to like really own that scene. You know, a guy who's just, he's such a good actor who's never really played scenes like this before.

Speaker 5 Because he gets cast a lot as like the funny guy who's a brilliant comedic actor, but he has so much inside of him.

Speaker 5 And that scene after he's attacked Milchik, where he's just, he's just got so much of that sort of residual energy. It's just, it's so believable and so, so raw.

Speaker 3 This episode could be called Dylan's episode because we've also just learned he's a dad, which is

Speaker 3 really not what I was expecting. He's, you know, he's so blue all the time and adolescent in his humor.
Yeah. Yeah.
To find out that he has a child that loves him

Speaker 3 is kind of a mind-blowing detail all of a sudden. And then, and then that has awoken in him, this now person who's going to get violent at work.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it's interesting because up to this point on the show, there are all these like examples of weaponizing different office supplies around the MDR.

Speaker 2 But this kind of discovery that he's a father turns, you know, it just shifts Dylan so much. There's something primal that shifts in him.

Speaker 2 And then he ends up biting Milchik, like going for tackling him, obviously, but then he bites him. How is that sort of figured out? How did you guys land on that, Ben?

Speaker 5 It's sort of the social experiment aspect of the whole thing. Like, what if you learn this? knowledge that you have a family on the outside.

Speaker 5 You know, like this, it's like, it's just, he can't control it. He's right.
It's just bubbling up inside of him, and he's stuck.

Speaker 5 I think it's like the claustrophobia of being stuck in this place that he can't get out of, knowing that he has loved ones. And

Speaker 5 it's so, you know, it was just like, what can we have him do? And I think, you know, it was probably in the script that Mark had, that he bit him.

Speaker 5 The part I always enjoyed too is Milchik's sort of, he's very upset and, you know, says the music dance experience is officially canceled.

Speaker 2 Oh my God. I remember him doing that and just thinking, Trammell is a superstar, just on point, incredible.

Speaker 3 It's a moment of hopefulness, though, too, because when you're watching the show and you're, that's, I mean, that's why it's a great show.

Speaker 3 You're, you're playing out this fantasy if this was happening to you the whole time you're watching it, or we are.

Speaker 3 And you're wondering, what is the thing that can't be severed, right? That's like the human hopeful thing. You'd like to believe that love for something couldn't be severed.

Speaker 3 That's the hopeful message that kind of is revealed in a very bizarre way. We want to believe there is a part of me you couldn't ever sever.
And I like to think as a parent, that would be the thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now it's not severed anymore because he's immediately in love with this kid.
Yes. He receives that love for an instant and everything changes.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah. And I think that's what's interesting for the actors throughout the show is that they're always able to be asking those questions about what is coming through, what isn't coming through

Speaker 5 for every scene.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, the show is about so much, but it's about identity. It's like all these things we think are intrinsic to us, but really how much of us is this memory we have of the things we've done.

Speaker 3 And we'd like to believe there's some intrinsic quality to us that couldn't be severed. And I don't know, that's always on the table with the show.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
And there is a moment for each of of the four characters in MDR where everything changes once they get a taste of or a feeling for an experience, love of some sort.

Speaker 2 Each one of them, it causes them to

Speaker 2 have a shift and have a need to get the hell out of there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we get two doses of it because Irving also shows a side of himself we would have never thought was in him. through love as well.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Which at first was down there with him. So everything's a-okay.
And then it's taken away.

Speaker 3 You know what it made me think of? I know we're jumping ahead, but I remember listening to this great

Speaker 3 New York Times podcast, Rabbit Hole, and it trapped people. Did you hear that? Yeah.
It had their YouTube history and it could show where they started and where they ended.

Speaker 3 And a lot of these people started with pretty benign people they were following. And then there's this trajectory and it involves Jordan Peterson and Sam Harrison.

Speaker 3 And these people ultimately end up getting, you know, very fundamentalist. Well, most of them white nationalists.
That's where it radicalized, and it leads to there.

Speaker 3 But they're interviewing one woman about leaving QAnon.

Speaker 3 And they were talking about for her when one belief butts up against another belief, that's just a little bit more powerful. So for her, it was she was an atheist.
She started in Occupy Wall Street.

Speaker 3 So QAnon felt right. And it felt right until all of a sudden there was biblical scripture being put out by QAnon.
And her atheism was stronger than the QAnonism, and it broke it.

Speaker 3 And so for Irving, it's like it finally butted up against one thing truer and more powerful than his belief in cure.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay, we are going to take a quick break and we'll be back to talk about the melon party.

Speaker 3 Adam,

Speaker 4 I want you to close your eyes and imagine you're working in Lumen's HR department.

Speaker 2 Okay, give me a second. It takes me 10 minutes to close my eyes.
Oh, wait, I did it right away.

Speaker 4 Okay, keep them close. If our partner, ZipRecruiter, was helping Lumen hire for various roles, how do you think HR would feel about ZipRecruiter's ability to search resumes quickly via keywords?

Speaker 2 Let me get into character here.

Speaker 1 I think they'd love it.

Speaker 2 It's efficient. It's targeted.
We can search words like cure lover and affinity for long hallways.

Speaker 4 Okay, you can open your eyes now. Oh, thank you.
So if you were actually a business owner and not an actor who plays a guy who works at a weird company like you do in the show. Hey, wait a second.

Speaker 4 ZipRecruiter has all these tools and features and more. And they're designed to make hiring faster and easier.

Speaker 4 So see for yourself when you try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash severance.

Speaker 2 ZipRecruiter excels at speed. It's smart technology.
Starts showing your job to qualified candidates immediately.

Speaker 2 And if you've got your eye on an exceptional candidate, you can use ZipRecruiter's invite to apply message to personally reach out to them.

Speaker 4 Yeah, see how much faster and easier hiring can be with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

Speaker 2 You know what? Lumen should make ZipRecruiter a perk. It's way more fun than a finger trap.

Speaker 4 Finger traps are not even fun.

Speaker 2 No, I actually get legitimately claustrophobic when I use a finger trap.

Speaker 4 Yes, I know. Even the prop ones.

Speaker 3 Totally.

Speaker 4 Because the finger traps are real.

Speaker 2 It freaks me out when I use it.

Speaker 4 You know what else is real? What? ZipRecruiter.com is real. So go to it, ziprecuiter.com slash severance right now to try it for free.
That's right.

Speaker 2 ZipRecruiter.com slash S-E-V-E-R-A-N-C-E.

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Speaker 5 Before, Dax, you were talking about how Irving's feelings of love kind of overtake anything else in him.

Speaker 5 And I think, you know, that's for this moment when he comes to see the O and D retirement party for Bert is when he really, I think, you know, we've been seeing him sort of slowly become more and more affected and getting to this point.

Speaker 5 But when he sees that Bert is just going to be basically sent off into the sunset, you know, it really triggers something for him.

Speaker 5 And in terms of Chris Walken and Taturo, you talked about that relationship being something that really kind of gives you some respite from the, you know, the starkness of the show.

Speaker 5 I love this scene because it's so much about the pain of a person you wouldn't think was necessarily someone who could fall in love at this point in his life in this environment and an unlikely couple, but really it's a very human thing.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no one would ever predict we would hear Irving say, you smug motherfucker. You're like, oh, Irving knows that word.
I didn't think he did. Yeah.

Speaker 6 I also believed this relationship more, and I said this to you the first time we watched it between Irving and Burt more than I have believed many a relationship I have ever seen on television.

Speaker 3 The only comparable chemistry to theirs is you and Adam Brody's. Yeah, that's right.
Two high watermarks. That's right.
That's chemistry.

Speaker 2 In the great Netflix show, Nobody Wants This.

Speaker 5 That's right. But the Chris Walk and Tatura relationship is based in their their actual relationship in life in terms of their friendship.
And they enjoy working together.

Speaker 5 And Chris was Taturo's idea to play Bert.

Speaker 3 I was going to say that the show is so brilliantly written. We don't need to applaud it anymore.

Speaker 3 But I'll say that I guarantee if you were to just read any of the scenes with them in there, none of what you're feeling is in text.

Speaker 3 Those scenes aren't particularly mind-blowing in what the exchanges are. It's what they're doing around the words.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's

Speaker 2 those guys are unbelievable and you can just when you're just around them even if they're not working in a scene just them as guys you can just feel the affection they have for each other yeah well irving saying you smug motherfucker to me that's such a also

Speaker 5 classic john tatturo line for some reason it just like i just think you know i'm into like you know barton fink and miller's crossing and you know some people can swear at an olympic level and he's always been one of them.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, let's take a look at that scene.

Speaker 10 You're all just gonna stand here

Speaker 3 and let him die.

Speaker 3 I mean, what

Speaker 11 are we being punished

Speaker 11 for defying the guidance of the founder?

Speaker 12 Burt's Audi is retiring,

Speaker 5 it'll happen to you too, someday.

Speaker 10 You smug motherfucker.

Speaker 11 You're not severed.

Speaker 13 You walk out of here with your memories.

Speaker 11 You carry them home with you every night.

Speaker 11 No one can rip them away from you. Snuff them out like they never existed.

Speaker 11 Like you never existed.

Speaker 3 That's enough.

Speaker 1 You will go back to MDR.

Speaker 11 Mr.

Speaker 9 Milcher, please.

Speaker 3 It'll be so wonderful to have him here.

Speaker 14 Don't say anything more.

Speaker 12 You can stay for Bert's party and support his transition,

Speaker 12 but only if you behave in a manner that brings no shame upon yourself, the founder, or his progeny.

Speaker 12 I don't know what's gotten into you people today.

Speaker 3 It's crazy how good it is, just the audio.

Speaker 5 But you know what that made me think just listening to the audio? And John is a fan of his. There's a little bit of Burt Lancaster in there.

Speaker 5 I don't know if you've ever seen Sweet Smell of Success, which is one of my favorite movies, but he's just got his cadence a little bit. It's just something

Speaker 5 in there that reminds me of that.

Speaker 3 Can I just say one thing about the scene prior to that explosion by Irving? We see the video that Bert's Audi has made, correct? Just before Irving's explosion, yeah,

Speaker 10 this is kind of strange, but

Speaker 13 a lot of things about this job are.

Speaker 14 You all know know that better than me, I'm guessing. And

Speaker 11 of course, I don't really know any of you, but the man standing there with you now does.

Speaker 13 He's worked with you for nearly seven years, and I hope they've been good years.

Speaker 14 I don't know what they've been like or what exactly I or he has been doing with you, but I do know how I feel. every day when I come from being with you.

Speaker 13 I come home feeling tired but fulfilled.

Speaker 14 I feel satisfied.

Speaker 3 I must like you very much.

Speaker 10 And though today is my last day with you, I'm certain you will remain with me in spirit in some deep yet completely unaccessible corner of my mind.

Speaker 3 And here's another moment where you're just riding this line. There's so much comedy.
He's on the verge of saying, I don't know any of you guys one too many times.

Speaker 3 It's the perfect amount of him pointing out he has no idea who he's talking to. I mean, he's talking to imaginary people.

Speaker 5 I love that you pick that out because it's one of my favorite Chris Walken moments in the show. And for a couple of reasons.
One, because it's so fun.

Speaker 5 His timing is just brilliant in the way he reads that.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Even though I don't know any of you at all.

Speaker 3 It keeps volating between really sincere and then pointing out the obvious that I have no fucking clue who I'm talking to.

Speaker 5 And I remember, you know, when we shot that, it was, it was also just one of these experiences I'm sure you've had with actors who you're a fan of and, you know, maybe idolize, look up to.

Speaker 5 Like Christopher Walken came in the morning we did that and he just had that monologue down.

Speaker 5 First take, boom, had it. We did it like maybe like, I don't know, like maybe four times, but like he had it from the first one.

Speaker 5 And I was just, I was, I literally like had this moment where I was like,

Speaker 5 oh this is the best thing in the world to have to have christopher walk in reading these lines and he's such a pro at this point in his career the guy comes in totally prepared and nails it it was just i i was i was so happy i was just like this is the reason we do this to have experienced he keeps negating himself i don't know the exact words but but he's like you've been so nice and it's been such although i don't know any of you well he kills it in the end because he says i have no recollection of actually ever meeting you or or no idea of your names or any of your physical characteristics or even how many of them

Speaker 3 there are anyway

Speaker 3 that is the cherry on top or even how many of you there are it's useless but here we are but then he says at the very end he says and Bert I see you congratulations to himself but he also points to the wrong the wrong way on the monitor like yes oh I loved that right he points to military it's kind of reminiscent of his um

Speaker 3 Watch Up the Ass scene, in a sense. Because it's like this weird mix of sincerity.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 One of the most important things. But it's also monologues.

Speaker 2 It's also the first time it's kind of introduced in the show that when someone leaves the job for any reason, they're effectively dead.

Speaker 2 For all intents and purposes down here, they are dead and buried.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's like the ultimate Munchausen, where it's like they've convinced them to celebrate

Speaker 2 this. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But they won't experience it.

Speaker 2 They're gone.

Speaker 5 All right. So let's check in with Kobel Selbig

Speaker 5 up at the house. And she's been at Devin's house as Mrs.
Selbig in her Hand That Rocks the Cradle mode, where she shows up as

Speaker 5 the lactation consultant, which I just

Speaker 5 love everything Patricia does in this little sequence.

Speaker 5 How insane she is.

Speaker 3 And I would be mad at myself if I didn't say in public, we're just coming off of Dan Amora.

Speaker 3 The fucking delta between those two performances is so huge.

Speaker 3 She is such a queen. God fucking bless you, Sharket.
My God.

Speaker 6 They're also that one of my favorite moments of the whole show is when she's doing the lactation example. And I do like this, a soft breeze.
And then she's doing it so sincerely and seriously.

Speaker 6 And then this smile comes over her face and she takes the rubber baby and flings it to the side,

Speaker 6 ostensibly looking like she's broken its neck. No, you try.

Speaker 6 And there's this huge smile on her face, but she's whipping the baby with such a level of violence.

Speaker 3 Now's a great time to introduce that in addition to going to two when we watch things, Kristen is an incredible mimic. I am world

Speaker 2 mimic.

Speaker 3 And there's always a character in a show that she latches onto. And so I hear Patricia Arquette's dialogue twice every single time.
She says a line, then Kristen next to me in bed says it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a tick. It's it's really

Speaker 6 your inefficiency in free-range chicken roaming is ultimately your responsibility.

Speaker 6 I mean, she, her,

Speaker 3 she's mine, guys. She's

Speaker 3 her omar.

Speaker 6 Her omars are,

Speaker 6 I live for them.

Speaker 5 And when she sees him outside, by the way, the scene between the two of you outside in the snow where you, you know, where she says, hey, let's have some lavender tea later.

Speaker 5 And you're like, I'm just going to see how the date develops.

Speaker 6 And she says, Jack Frost needs a new dandruff shampoo.

Speaker 2 I was trying to remember where that joke came from. It's so ridiculous.

Speaker 5 It was either an improv or a pitch in the moment, I think.

Speaker 2 I think I remember you coming up with it then and

Speaker 5 she came up with, but she came up with in the episode where she says,

Speaker 5 open or close when you're leaving, and she says both.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, that was her improv.

Speaker 5 I mean, she's just brilliant. That's an amazing impression.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's only one of a thousand she can do.
No, but we go around our house saying, Mark, Mark, everywhere.

Speaker 2 And this story she's telling when we kind of come into this scene with she and Jen is so insane.

Speaker 5 Oh, yeah. And when she's talking about aiming her boob like an angry fire hose.

Speaker 6 It's insane if unless it's happened to you. I found it very on the nose.
I've expressed in a public bathroom into the

Speaker 1 vapor.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but yes, absolutely. You have to, well, it's like, you guys, it's a faucet.
There's a reality and a practicality to it. It is a faucet.
And if you don't let it out, your skin will pop.

Speaker 3 So can I pitch something to everybody? To lighten the load on Patty's plate, which has got to be immense, let's have Kristen do all of her ADR. Oh, that's a good idea.
I love that.

Speaker 2 I'm sure Patricia would love it.

Speaker 6 That's my favorite place, is that ADR booth.

Speaker 3 Watch this. Oh, I feel like Kobel might have some relatives or something.
I don't know. Time travel element.

Speaker 6 Watch this.

Speaker 3 Oh, that would be

Speaker 5 great. All right.
Yeah. And anyway, and then she also has in that scene where she's basically, you know, Devin's telling her about, you know, meeting the state senator.

Speaker 3 And then Patricia's like, oh, wow.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 6 What does she say?

Speaker 3 She's so

Speaker 3 funny.

Speaker 2 Should we play the scene?

Speaker 3 It's a great line. Why? We have Kristen right here.

Speaker 3 What a snoot.

Speaker 6 That was it.

Speaker 3 What a snoot. Wait, can you read?

Speaker 2 Can you read the Clark Gable line?

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 Well, I don't think I'd remember even Clark Gable if I'd just given birth.

Speaker 3 You guys already know. That's wild.
I'm having a lot of time. This is like the dancing.
This is like Milcek's dancing. You had no idea this was coming your way.

Speaker 3 Why do you think Mark did it? Oh, my God.

Speaker 5 It's like the combination of your impression, and it's like one of my favorite scenes that Patricia does. It's just perfect.

Speaker 2 And Clark Gable is such a weird, it's so

Speaker 3 reverence.

Speaker 6 Jack Frost's Dandruff and Clark Gable.

Speaker 7 Like, who the fuck?

Speaker 6 Where are we pulling these things?

Speaker 6 Just your zeitgeist.

Speaker 3 It's so weird. Jack Frost

Speaker 3 Dandre, though, to me, is this is the first time we've seen her. She's lost, she's losing control.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Like, I don't think she makes the Jack Frost Dandreth joke any other time, but she's like, she's she's losing control for sure. That is correct.
That's a desperate joke she's making. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 So, okay, so back at Mark's house, Mark is pretty drunk. And, you know, again, I just want to say, Adam, you never have tried to make Audi Mark someone that the audience is endeared to.

Speaker 5 You just play him as a real human being. And I feel like that's so important.
I mean that in a good way.

Speaker 5 The audience cares about you because they see a real person, but Mark is not in a good place here.

Speaker 5 here and uh actually this is probably that one of the toughest scenes i think to feel for your character because when alexa shows up to get her phone right yeah you're a real

Speaker 3 being gross you're awful to her it's very uncomfortable that scene is very uncomfortable you you do drunk really really well

Speaker 2 it's so hard to do drunk yeah yeah yeah people get sometimes people get real happy when they're feeling the exact opposite the drink kind of provides that for them.

Speaker 2 I remember in acting school, there was a teacher that told me to play drunk, all you have to do is pretend you're balancing a bowl of water on your head.

Speaker 2 And that's not what I do.

Speaker 3 That also sounds harder to me to do to imagine than being drunk, which I've done 10 million times.

Speaker 6 Oh, I like that practical trip. I was doing it right now.
I don't know if you're not going to be able to do it.

Speaker 3 Exactly. Fucking nuts, if I can call out that acting teacher.

Speaker 3 Anyway,

Speaker 3 so

Speaker 5 she, it's pretty, it's, it's really hard to watch, really, because it's, you're, and you do this awful thing where you pull out a picture of Gemma and you tear it up in front of her.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 even in re-watching that, I was, you know, taken by like, we also put that picture like right in front of the audience. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And I remember just having to trust that it would be out of focus and people wouldn't be able to see.

Speaker 5 And, and then you, you know, and then you immediately feel awful about what you did and come back in and start to tape it back together.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And you chose I'll Be Seeing You by Billie Holiday for this sequence for him taping the pieces back together.

Speaker 3 And that's because you own a piece of that library, right?

Speaker 5 Exactly. That's how I make all of my musical choices.

Speaker 3 Sure, sure. It's just whatever's going to bring in the green.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 For old Ben.

Speaker 5 My grandfather produced that track.

Speaker 5 But yeah, Adam, you just are so good in that scene where

Speaker 5 you're putting that picture together. I love how the scene looks to Jessica Lee Gagne, our cinematographer, did a great job.
It's just very kind of stark.

Speaker 5 And when we're making the show, we don't really have anybody to show it to when we're in that bubble of making the show. So the only people I showed it to was my kids and Christine.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 And I remember showing them the rough cut of that episode as we were in process, you know, and them going like, whoa, and then having that reaction.

Speaker 5 That was the first time I saw anybody react to that, you know, twist. I felt, okay, well, maybe this is going to be something people, you know, respond to.

Speaker 5 But I, it's also like, you know, when you do make a choice like that, I also am so, I always think like, are people going to go along with this too?

Speaker 6 Right. We did.
We absolutely did. We were shook.

Speaker 6 You're also coming off of one of the most uncomfortable scenes because you're, the smile on your face when you think that ripping up this picture in front of her is is going to land and just her grounded reality of ultimately kind of like sad

Speaker 6 pity and a little bit of disgust.

Speaker 3 You're pathetic.

Speaker 6 So hard to watch because you have a smile on your face when you're ripping it. And it's like, oh my God, he's ripping a picture of his dead wife and bro, this new girl.

Speaker 3 Oh my God, this is so uncomfortable.

Speaker 6 And then you take, you guys really take your sweet ass time when you tape that picture together, waiting, waiting, waiting. So you almost don't know what to feel, which I loved because there's no

Speaker 6 there's always a sort of a tip of the hat you can get from the director of like I know here's the the music is swelling now you're about to feel this or you know and when you're taping that picture there's just kind of this

Speaker 6 pause of of watching it and going like is something gonna happen or am I just gonna watch him what there's a nothingness which I think actually it packed when we first watched it a huge punch because you didn't know that you were going to see the picture.

Speaker 2 Directorially, it wasn't teed up. Like, we're about to reveal the long-asked question, who was

Speaker 3 at all.

Speaker 6 It's not like you showed it three times in an insert with Adam's finger over it. It was blurry.
It was just there.

Speaker 6 If you had ended the episode on Adam taping it together, looking at it and crying, I still would have thought that was a decent ending.

Speaker 6 But the fact that you gave us that twist, I think, makes it worth it.

Speaker 3 Well, it has a really implicit motor to it, which is, of course, he's going to tape a picture back together of his dead wife. Like, you have a red herring or something.

Speaker 3 You know, like you're certain you already understand what this is about. So you're not, your radar is not up for that moment.

Speaker 6 Yes, that's what it was.

Speaker 3 But we did miss a moment to go to two. That could have been the only moment we would have gone to two on Severance.

Speaker 6 Taping of the picture.

Speaker 3 Mike, can you go to two?

Speaker 6 Yeah, on two.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the mag just ran out.

Speaker 3 So they're bringing a new mag in.

Speaker 3 I didn't think this was going to go on for 12 minutes as a shot. I don't think anyone on camera knew.
Right, right.

Speaker 6 Can you let me talk to props real quick? Because last they said we had one roll of scotch left. One roll of scotch tape.
And if we, if you get a little bit of a message, well, what's the reset?

Speaker 3 I need to know what the reset is because they're bringing a new mag in right now.

Speaker 6 It's 1.45 in the morning, so the Dwayne Reed is closed. But listen, we have, what we have is double-sided.
Can we make that work?

Speaker 3 I'll ask Ben, but there's no way Ben's going for double-sided on this.

Speaker 6 Can I pitch you? Can I get you Greer for one more pitch? Yeah. We got a ton of gaff tape, all different colors.

Speaker 3 Is there a way?

Speaker 3 He might buy that. Okay.
We'll just put the mag on, and then I'll talk to Ben about the gaff gaffer.

Speaker 6 Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 I'm pretty sure it was 1.45 in the morning, by the way.

Speaker 5 I'm hiring a new AD team.

Speaker 6 Nothing gets by us.

Speaker 3 Nothing.

Speaker 3 Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 Also, the voiceover is this listing of stuff about his wife, almost like from the point of view of, it's like something Ms. Casey would read off about.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. What does it say? She

Speaker 2 should wear it.

Speaker 3 She would sneeze twice. Yeah, she would sneeze twice.
Should we play that? Let's play that.

Speaker 3 My wife was allergic to nutmeg.

Speaker 2 And when she sneezed, she only sneezed twice.

Speaker 2 My wife liked other people's dogs.

Speaker 3 I'll always

Speaker 2 think of My wife thought cardigans looked ridiculous.

Speaker 3 I'll find

Speaker 3 you.

Speaker 2 I loved all these things about her.

Speaker 2 Equally.

Speaker 6 Also the resonance of equally. Yeah.
When you've severed something because you're trying to get rid of the bad. Because everything in life is both, right? Yeah.
It's happiness and sadness.

Speaker 6 It's all the things. And you like them equally.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 All right.

Speaker 3 Well, I think that's it. I think it's it's it's it sucks.
I don't know if it's aerable to be honest.

Speaker 2 Oh, you know, we should play

Speaker 2 these voice messages you guys sent.

Speaker 5 Oh, we really can hear them?

Speaker 3 Seriously? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 I would kind of love to see that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, okay. Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 I believe this is the first one, I think.

Speaker 3 All right, you son of a bitch. You wanted the compliments? Well, here comes the fucking complaints.

Speaker 3 Belle and I just sat here on the edge of our seat, waiting to find out what happens when you guys come to.

Speaker 6 You fucking prick.

Speaker 3 You piece of shit prick. And that goes for Ben, too.

Speaker 6 Losers.

Speaker 3 Oh, buddy. Are we fucking pissed that this episode just ended? So you wanted the fucking cake, and now you got to take the rat poison too, you piece of shit.

Speaker 3 Okay, here's another one. Oh, my goodness.
Quick update: you'd probably find funny. My wife just ran through a plate glass window off the second story of our home and was rushed to the hospital.

Speaker 3 You probably want to know if she's still alive. I will tell you next week.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 That's my favorite one.

Speaker 5 That really brings home the pain of the

Speaker 5 cliffhanger. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Here's another one.

Speaker 3 If you're listening to this message and you're not on set,

Speaker 3 fuck you.

Speaker 2 That was

Speaker 2 like a hurry up and make the second season type.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you got to play your response, though, where you had us over a barrel. That's a really good one.
All right. Dax, just in response to your unbelievably ridiculous and insulting audio message,

Speaker 3 not only am I not filming right now,

Speaker 3 I'm sitting

Speaker 3 in a jacuzzi relaxing

Speaker 3 so so far

Speaker 3 so far away from even being close to filming

Speaker 3 so I guess what I'm trying to say

Speaker 3 is again

Speaker 3 eat

Speaker 3 shit

Speaker 3 Adam's go-to is always eat shit. It's really male.

Speaker 6 There's a great one when you digest. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Having us over a barrel. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Ben, do you want to give us your phone number? Would you like to be included in it? Do you want to be in on this? I so want in on this. I want in on this relationship.

Speaker 6 We send a lot of voice memos from bed at night, especially, and it usually comes from us watching someone on TV that we know and we'll be like, wait, let's tell them.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we're like, oh my God, we know these people. We can tell them we love this.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 I want it. Yes, you're getting my number.

Speaker 3 This is so good.

Speaker 2 This might be.

Speaker 3 Okay, this is Adam's response.

Speaker 3 So I'm here in New York

Speaker 3 working on the show, and

Speaker 3 it'll be ready

Speaker 3 when it's ready. Okay?

Speaker 3 I heard your message on February 25th. I listened to it.

Speaker 3 And then I brought it in. I played it for Ben.
We listened to it together. And you know what we decided to do?

Speaker 3 We decided to slow the fuck down.

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 3 We're going to take it real easy.

Speaker 3 So you're just going to have to wait a little bit longer, you fucking assholes. Eat shit.

Speaker 3 Secondly, how dare you, how dare you conduct a perfect interview with David Letterman? God damn you.

Speaker 3 To hell.

Speaker 3 I'm going to listen to it several more times. Fuck off.

Speaker 3 Where did you?

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 2 I think that

Speaker 2 when season two starts airing, we have to continue this tradition.

Speaker 3 Well, without question.

Speaker 6 Oh, it's going to happen from us. It's just whether or not you're going to want to play still.

Speaker 2 Oh, I will.

Speaker 3 I will.

Speaker 2 Cannot thank you guys enough for coming all the way over here. And it makes such a difference that you're here.
It's so fantastic. So thank you.

Speaker 3 Honestly, we're flattered to have been invited.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you guys are awesome. This was so much fun.

Speaker 3 So fun.

Speaker 6 We like liking things and we really like severance.

Speaker 2 And the detail that you guys are thinking of, it's just so smart and just lovely. So thank you.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And now I'm going to be saying go to two to people and they won't know what I mean.

Speaker 3 I know. That's such a good bit.
That's why you can only marry someone else who's been on set for 20 years. Yes.
Because what else do we talk about?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 And that brings us to the end of episode 7 of the Severance Podcast with Ben and Adam, Defiant Jazz.

Speaker 5 Next up is episode 8, What's for Dinner?

Speaker 2 Stream all episodes of season 1 on Apple TV Plus right now.

Speaker 5 And season 2 premieres on January 17th.

Speaker 3 Eat shit. Shit.

Speaker 2 The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott is a presentation of Odyssey, Pineapple Street Studios, Red Hour Productions, and Great Scott Productions.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 Our executive producers are Barry Finkel, Henry Malofsky, Jenna Weiss-Berman, and Leah Rhys-Dennis. The show is produced by Xandra Ellen and Naomi Scott.

Speaker 5 This episode was mixed and mastered by Chris Basil. We have additional engineering from Javi Crucis and Davey Sumner.
Show clips are courtesy of fifth season.

Speaker 2 Music by Theodore Shapiro. Special thanks to the team at Odyssey, Maura Curran, Eric Donnelly, Michael LeVay, Melissa Wester, Matt Casey, Kate Rose, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schuff.

Speaker 5 And the team at Red Hour, John Lescher, Carolina Pesakov, Jean-Pablo Antonetti, Martin Valderudin, Ashwin Ramesh, Maria Noto, John Baker, and Oliver Agar.

Speaker 2 And at Great Scott, Kevin Cotter, Josh Martin, and Christy Smith Smith at Rise Management.

Speaker 5 We also had additional production help from Gabrielle Lewis, Ben Goldberg, Stephen Key, Kristen Torres, Emmanuel Hapsis, Marialexa Kavanaugh, and Melissa Slaughter.

Speaker 2 I'm Adam Scott. I'm Ben Stiller.
And we will see you next time.