S1E2: Half Loop (with Zach Cherry)

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Speaker 7 Adam,

Speaker 8 I want you to close your eyes and imagine you're working in Lumen's HR department.

Speaker 9 Okay, give me a second. It takes me 10 minutes to close my eyes.

Speaker 10 Oh, wait, I did it right away.

Speaker 8 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 9 Let me get into character here.

Speaker 4 I think they'd love it.

Speaker 12 It's efficient.

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Speaker 11 We can search words like cure lover and affinity for long hallways.

Speaker 8 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 21 I'm Ben Stiller. I'm Adam Scott.

Speaker 22 And this is the Severance podcast with Ben and Adam, where we break down every episode of Severance.

Speaker 16 Today we're recapping season one, episode two entitled Half Loop.

Speaker 26 And special treat, we're bringing on Zach Cherry, who plays Dylan George, to go through it scene by scene with us.

Speaker 7 Hi, Zach.

Speaker 27 Hi. Wow, that was quick.

Speaker 22 How did you like that intro?

Speaker 29 Do you think you'd be sitting there for a while?

Speaker 30 Yeah, I mean, that might be the quickest the podcast has ever started.

Speaker 22 That's what we're doing. We're sort of trying to break down some barriers here and, you know, break new ground.

Speaker 18 I love it. Well, we're revolutionizing podcasting.

Speaker 12 You said it, not me, but that's what we're doing.

Speaker 30 I wasn't aware, but yeah, this was history. We made history here.

Speaker 22 Okay. Well, you've obviously done more podcasts than I've never hosted a podcast.
So what would be... Like, what would be a more traditional introduction?

Speaker 30 Typically, the guest of a podcast sits there on their phone for about 30 to 35 minutes

Speaker 30 while the hosts pretend they aren't there.

Speaker 27 It's true.

Speaker 30 They sort of lay out the premise of the show. They often sort of, you know, just get into stuff that has nothing to do with what anyone wants to listen to.

Speaker 30 And then eventually they introduce the guests. So I was planning on having some more phone time, but I can save that for later.

Speaker 23 It's so true.

Speaker 33 I've been on so many podcasts where I'm sitting in the studio with the hosts just sort of waiting for a while.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 22 Well, I'm just happy you're here, Zach, because I feel like you're a ringer.

Speaker 22 You're funny, you're smart, you have like a kind of a cool sort of perspective on the show where you're like of it, but sort of like hovering in some sort of meta way outside of it.

Speaker 22 Am I creating that in my head?

Speaker 28 Maybe, but I appreciate it.

Speaker 22 I always feel like if you like something, I think it's good.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I think Zach,

Speaker 31 if I'm gathering what you're saying, Ben, Zach is always hovering above us.

Speaker 22 Yes. Yes.
Zach, Zach's, I want Zach's approbation.

Speaker 37 Absolutely. Okay.

Speaker 38 I agree.

Speaker 27 Okay.

Speaker 30 Do I have a little bit of phone time to look that word up?

Speaker 39 It means approval.

Speaker 22 I should have just said approval.

Speaker 20 Just consider this entire recording phone time.

Speaker 17 Okay, good.

Speaker 22 So, Zach, we're going to go through episode two of season one today.

Speaker 30 Of Severance.

Speaker 22 Yes. I know you're on a lot of shows.
Okay. So, like, it's not fallout.
It's not.

Speaker 23 It's not episode two of fucking Spider-Man.

Speaker 5 Like, come on, dude.

Speaker 30 Yeah, I'm ready to talk about it.

Speaker 23 Before we jump into the episode, though, Zach, how did you come to Severance?

Speaker 37 How did you get cast?

Speaker 30 My recollection is I sent in a tape first,

Speaker 30 then I

Speaker 30 got a callback. And at the time, I remember I was working on the show The Last OG, and my callback was on a day that I was shooting but they let me leave

Speaker 30 in the middle of the day and then come back so I left and I remember I was sitting in the waiting room and I saw Ben walk by and kind of how the podcast started.

Speaker 30 I thought I would have a few more minutes of alone prep time and then Ben was just like all right you ready and I was like yeah I guess

Speaker 30 And then I went in and read and we we chatted a little bit

Speaker 30 and then I

Speaker 30 as all actors do assumed nothing would ever come of it and and sat in silence for a little bit and then

Speaker 30 then I showed up I guess yeah I mean what I do remember Zach is I said can you do a little improvising do you remember that and then you did like one take where you kind of like made up some stuff yes I do I do remember I do remember that sort of and I remember talking about that because you were asking me about that and and that is sort of how I like to work even if we don't end up using it it helps me kind of just like,

Speaker 30 I don't know, like figure out the edges of the character and like figure out what feels good and what doesn't feel good. So I do like to kind of like play around with it when I have the chance.

Speaker 22 It's funny because in the show, we don't really do a lot of improvising most of the time, but I tend to want you to improvise whenever you feel like it because I always feel like you do come up with great stuff.

Speaker 30 It's hard to stop me.

Speaker 30 Even in contexts where I am not encouraged to do it, it tends to kind of leak out.

Speaker 30 And I actually remember once early on when we were shooting Adam, I remember you encouraging me because I think I said something like quietly during a rehearsal and you were like, you were like, you should say that.

Speaker 30 You should say that again.

Speaker 30 And that sort of helped me like be like, okay, I can kind of try things here.

Speaker 40 Oh, cool.

Speaker 43 Cause yeah, you were constantly saying hilarious stuff that

Speaker 22 shouldn't be in the show. Yeah.

Speaker 22 And I remember thinking when you read that you were so uniquely right for the part because a lot of people did come in and read for it who were all really good too, but you had this just kind of office humor vibe thing that you were doing that felt very natural and real, but also you had a have a great sense of humor.

Speaker 22 And I think understanding that, you know, where the space is for the jokes sometimes, even if you're not doing something that's like supposedly a comedy or funny all the time is really important.

Speaker 22 And then, Adam, I mean, do you want to talk about you doing the part? Sure. Because it's, for me,

Speaker 22 this was like such a clear

Speaker 22 idea when I read the script that you should be Mark. Right.
And basically,

Speaker 22 I had talked to you about it already. And then I told Apple, I was like, hey, we got the guy.
It's Adam Scott. And Apple wasn't exactly convinced that you were right for the part.
Right.

Speaker 22 And I said, well, he's definitely right for the part.

Speaker 22 But like in my mind, the weirdness of this show was that we were developing the show for a platform that didn't exist yet. And so, all of it felt a little bit kind of make-believe.

Speaker 22 Like, it's sort of like, okay, I guess this is a real thing we're doing. Right.

Speaker 22 But then they started to, like, you know, they started to pay for stuff. And like, we had offices and we were building sets and stuff and casting it.

Speaker 22 And so it's like, all right, we're going to really do this for this unknown platform that will exist at some point in the future.

Speaker 22 And there was a long process of talking about other ideas that really had basically was not going to do the show if you weren't going to do it. And I kind of kept saying that to them.

Speaker 22 And they were like, okay, but maybe you'd think of this actor. Maybe you'd think of that actor.

Speaker 22 And so then I would think about him. And then I'd say, yeah, I thought about him.
And yeah, I still think Adam's better.

Speaker 22 And finally, it kind of came down to this moment where we really did have to have this talk with the Apple guys who, you know, and I said, look, this is how I feel.

Speaker 22 And they were like, well, we're just not not sure. And then

Speaker 22 I was at sort of at a loss. And then I said to them, just sort of like without even talking to you, I said, like, well, what if the guy read for you?

Speaker 22 And then I went to you and I was kind of like trepidatious about this because I was just thinking myself in this situation, you know, if somebody said to me, like, hey, I want you to do this part and then like told you the part was yours.

Speaker 22 And I said, actually, could you read for the part? Yeah.

Speaker 22 And I, but I asked you and you said yes.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 4 So just to say right off the bat that Apple has been so great to all of us and to the show, and they've been terrific for me.

Speaker 50 And this has nothing to do with that.

Speaker 20 This is just sort of the churn of show business and what happens.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 22 I mean, this is kind of par for the course in doing what we do is that there's always casting decisions being made and people having points of view and that are, you know, really valid a lot of the

Speaker 22 And sometimes those differences of opinions.

Speaker 22 I mean, there's so many stories about people who auditioned for something or who was the first choice, who turned it down, or the studio liked or didn't like.

Speaker 22 But I think it's interesting to talk about because you don't really hear these stories that often, but it's just sort of the process of making something.

Speaker 50 Yeah, and I never held anything against them either because I understand.

Speaker 5 all of that having been you know a part of this business for a long time it just i it didn't even phase me really that that

Speaker 35 it was happening.

Speaker 22 Yeah. And also I think Apple was the second they saw the reading, they were like, we totally get it.

Speaker 7 Right.

Speaker 22 And that I give them a lot of credit for too, because it had been such a long process. And I think they really understood, oh yeah, this is what we didn't see.

Speaker 20 I mean, again, we've never talked about this like publicly before, but I understood why they were feeling this way because the first time I read this script, my first instinct was, there's no way I'm going to end up actually doing this.

Speaker 40 This is too good.

Speaker 34 And if I was Apple,

Speaker 19 I would likely be wanting a giant star to play this role, right?

Speaker 17 So when you came back and said, hey, what if you come and audition?

Speaker 36 Because I remember the email very well.

Speaker 12 And honestly, when I got the email, I was in my trailer.

Speaker 40 I was hosting a game show.

Speaker 24 So I was, I remember sitting there thinking, am I in any position

Speaker 53 to say no thanks to the audition for

Speaker 32 probably the best pilot I've ever written?

Speaker 22 Right, but that's underselling yourself because obviously you've established your work and you've done so much stuff.

Speaker 22 And I just want to say, as an actor, people do get to a certain place, rightfully so in your career, where you go like, it's a thing called offer-only,

Speaker 22 where when you're casting something,

Speaker 22 it says next to the name offer-only, meaning the person won't audition.

Speaker 22 And there are many actors who consider themselves offer-only. And by the way, I understand it because I was an awful auditioner.

Speaker 22 But when you get in that position where you don't have to audition, of course, you don't want to have to do it.

Speaker 22 So for you to have the lack of an ego to be able to say, or the, you know, just the awareness of like understanding the situation, say, like, hey, I want to do this, is, I think, a very rare thing.

Speaker 22 And to Apple's credit, we did the reading and I sent it to them. And to their credit, they were like, we totally get it.

Speaker 22 And which I was very happy about that we were on the same page and we got through that.

Speaker 22 But I have to say, like, that was, you know, that was one of the reasons that I think almost like a year went by of nothing really happening on the show is because we didn't have you in it.

Speaker 22 And I give you so much credit for putting yourself in that position and doing that.

Speaker 22 And I feel like that's sort of, of, for us, going forward from that point forward, we were sort of connected in that way too.

Speaker 47 Totally.

Speaker 20 And it was 100% worth it.

Speaker 32 I thought about it for five seconds.

Speaker 7 It was like, yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 And here we are.

Speaker 28 Hey, Zach.

Speaker 4 What do you think of that story?

Speaker 22 What do you know about that?

Speaker 22 Nobody knew that.

Speaker 30 Or I hadn't heard most of that.

Speaker 30 That is fascinating.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 30 It is, it's always so interesting to hear about those. you know, kind of what-ifs and near-misses.

Speaker 30 And then once you see the thing, you can't imagine anyone else doing it. You're like, oh, of course it's Adam.

Speaker 22 Yeah. Right, exactly.
Well, that's the thing. Yeah.
And by the way, I've been like in those situations where like you get offered something and you know like three people were offered it before you.

Speaker 22 Right. Like I had that on Night at the Museum.
I know. Right.
And then I met the director, Sean Levy, to like talk about being in Night at the Museum.

Speaker 22 And he like did this all, and he's a really good friend of mine.

Speaker 38 Yeah.

Speaker 22 But he did this whole sales pitch to me about like how we have to make this movie together. And then I found out after I said yes, that he had just come on the movie the day before.

Speaker 4 Are you serious?

Speaker 17 That's amazing.

Speaker 22 That's amazing.

Speaker 22 You know, like everybody, you know, like it's you have to just take yourself out of it in that way and kind of just like, if you have an instinct about something, you know, you just start from there and you don't, you don't let that other stuff get in your head if you want to do what you want to do.

Speaker 21 100%, of course.

Speaker 39 Okay.

Speaker 18 So

Speaker 3 I'm glad we told that stuff.

Speaker 39 Yeah, too. It's good, too.

Speaker 22 Okay, let's take a quick break.

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Speaker 25 Half Loop, episode two, we start where we get to kind of dive into getting to know Helly's Audi just a little bit.

Speaker 22 We're seeing Helly record this message to her innie, and we're starting on the outside and seeing her record this and then being walked by Milchik over to have the actual severance procedure done.

Speaker 24 That's right. And I remember when I saw the first cut of this calling you and being like, hey, I don't think people are going to buy this.

Speaker 47 The surgery.

Speaker 18 Oh.

Speaker 44 Like that was my biggest note was like, this is crazy.

Speaker 32 And you're like, no, we had like the doctor there.

Speaker 23 This is how they do it.

Speaker 40 Like that is what brain surgery, more or less, is

Speaker 3 like, right?

Speaker 35 That's what it looks like.

Speaker 22 So

Speaker 22 the surgeon who is implanting the chip is an actual brain surgeon, surgeon,

Speaker 22 Vijay, and he was our technical consultant. And so we would talk to him when we were working on the scripts about how the chip could actually work.

Speaker 22 You know, the needle, the drill, all those things are real. And Vijay, Dr.
Vijay, is doing that.

Speaker 22 He's doing it as you would in the actual procedure. The nurse in the procedure was our COVID nurse who was in charge, Amanda, who's in charge of keeping everybody safe.

Speaker 22 Yeah, that sequence, we wanted to show the, you know, the gory details

Speaker 22 to really get the sense, like, this is like a real surgery that is happening.

Speaker 31 It's really striking seeing the drill go in and seeing sort of the

Speaker 5 skull matter kind of

Speaker 12 rise up

Speaker 12 like it's wood.

Speaker 22 And when he's drilling, Milchik is standing there saying, slight vibration now. Yeah.
And it's like, it's vibrating because he's drilling the back of your skull. Yeah.

Speaker 40 And also before the surgery, Milchik takes a picture of her and says, I'm very excited to meet you.

Speaker 21 Always just sort of doing the creepiest thing possible.

Speaker 22 And then we see Helly kind of go

Speaker 22 unconscious.

Speaker 22 And then when she becomes conscious again, we're outside of the door of the hallway, the exit hallway.

Speaker 22 And we're sort of picking up in

Speaker 22 Heli's perspective on the outside

Speaker 22 of what we saw in episode one where Helly was trying to leave. Right.

Speaker 30 This was one of my favorite early moments of the show.

Speaker 30 And I think also for a lot of people, like my friends who have watched it, it was this cool moment of the show kind of doesn't hold your hand with some things.

Speaker 30 You just see something and then you start to go, oh, okay, we're seeing the other side of what we already saw in the first episode.

Speaker 30 And I remember when I read the scripts, I didn't quite like clock how that would play out. But then when I finally saw it, it was like a very, very cool thing to finally see.

Speaker 30 And I don't know if you guys saw, I think a fan made an edit where you could watch they like cut the two things together so you could kind of see it all play out.

Speaker 30 But I do, I do love that moment in the, in the first couple episodes.

Speaker 22 Yeah, we were sort of thinking about that when we were doing it to try to keep them in sync as much as possible.

Speaker 22 And then the end of that little sequence is great because, like, she, the elevator door opens, and Milchit gives her the white flowers, which are the white flowers that Heli is holding when you almost hit her with the car

Speaker 22 in episode one.

Speaker 43 That's right.

Speaker 12 I never put that together till just now.

Speaker 27 Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 30 Oh, that's interesting. That's an experience I've had so many times working on the show, by the way, is not putting something together,

Speaker 30 even a thing that I was part of and was there for.

Speaker 30 And then you've, and then you're like, oh, wow, they really, really, really thought about this.

Speaker 3 Okay, so after we see, oh, this is our first time jumping into the opening credit sequence.

Speaker 22 So the opening credits are done by a man named Oliver Latta, who lives in Berlin. And on Instagram, he is called Extra Weg.

Speaker 22 And I was driving to work one day when we were shooting.

Speaker 22 And somehow, I don't know how it came up, but I got, I saw his feed, and it was this crazy, just trippy 3D animation of like people's brains turning into things and globules

Speaker 22 going through portals. And it's just so weird.

Speaker 44 His Instagram is maybe the best Instagram account.

Speaker 22 Yeah. And I just thought, oh, wow, this guy could really, we were trying to figure out what to do for the opening titles.
And I thought, maybe this guy might have an idea about it.

Speaker 22 And so I reached out to him.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 22 And he had never done any titles before. Yeah.
And,

Speaker 22 you know, we basically communicated over the course of the next few months.

Speaker 22 I'd send him images from the set, different ideas of locations and, you know, ideas that we wanted to be a part of the opening credits. But then he just kind of went off and did his thing with it.

Speaker 22 And we had the piece of music that Teddy Shapiro had written. And so he created these animatics, which were like sort of like rudimentary storyboards that then he started to fill out.

Speaker 22 And it was just one of those things as we were watching it come together, I was like, this is just, I could watch this over and over and over again.

Speaker 12 This is so fun and was such a just incredible surprise the first time, first time, because I just went to a studio and went in one of those things with just like.

Speaker 41 hundreds of cameras all around you and stood there for five minutes while they took my picture.

Speaker 31 That was all I had to do for it.

Speaker 22 Right. They were capturing you for the 3D animation.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 22 And

Speaker 22 the cool thing about it, too, is that it's kind of his, I mean, there's something on the show where the production design and the cinematography and the costumes and even the opening credits all kind of feed into the creative process of making the show.

Speaker 22 And by that, I mean ideas are sort of coming from everywhere. And so even in season two,

Speaker 22 there are ideas that were in that opening credit sequence that he created that inform season two images too. And I think that's just part of making the show.

Speaker 22 Our prop designer, Kat Miller, who is just the most incredible prop person ever, you know, she designed all of the consoles and all of the Lumen hardware and all those things.

Speaker 22 So it's all a very collaborative effort, and everything is always feeding everything else.

Speaker 47 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 43 And Oliver won an Emmy for his opening credits sequence, along with Teddy Shapiro for his music.

Speaker 49 So after that, we kind of go back to the workstation, and Dylan is teaching Helie how they do their job and everything.

Speaker 44 But he starts showing off all the incentives he's earned from being so good at his job.

Speaker 20 Zach, how important are these incentives?

Speaker 42 Yeah,

Speaker 30 that's a big thing for Dylan. And I remember when I first

Speaker 30 started working on the show, I didn't ask a ton of like extra questions about what we know about Dylan. So early on, this is kind of it.
You learn that he is the type of guy who

Speaker 30 is really obsessed with with like hitting his marks at work basically and that informed a lot about him to me especially because they're things that are not really um

Speaker 22 things that we would consider valuable but to to him they're like the coolest things in the world so yeah that oh my god he loves these and i i will admit the the um caricatures actually are pretty cool yeah they look pretty awesome it's kind of great that you weren't asking a lot of questions about dylan's backstory, even as an actor, I think, at that point, because Dylan is just so in the world of the present.

Speaker 22 So it's kind of like he never really is even thought about, except that you sometimes think about your Audi.

Speaker 30 Yeah, but it's more that he tells himself a story. He doesn't really like care about what's true at first.
He's sort of just like, oh, yeah, it's probably this, it's probably this.

Speaker 30 And yeah, stays focused on the work, which is, you know, if you can say one thing about me when I'm at work, I stay focused on the work.

Speaker 26 Oh, bro, you are so focused.

Speaker 42 It's nuts.

Speaker 30 Bonding

Speaker 18 every day.

Speaker 22 I always feel like when the phone comes out, I'm like, that's Zach just checking his lines. I know he's just a child.

Speaker 17 Absolutely.

Speaker 30 I don't even have apps on my phone. I just have Adobe script.

Speaker 22 When you first started working with John Taturo, this was like an odd couple to me that was kind of funny because...

Speaker 35 Totally.

Speaker 22 Zach, am I wrong to think that, like, in terms of your experience before doing the show, you you definitely work a lot and done a lot of stuff, but was it mainly in comedy?

Speaker 22 Was this like a different world for you to be in?

Speaker 30 Yeah, definitely. You know, I came up doing like improv and sketch comedy, and that's kind of how I started working.
So, this very much was a new thing for me.

Speaker 30 And I did, I honestly, I learned a lot from John, you know, over the course of making it. And we did get along in a fun, odd couple way pretty immediately.
I'm like a huge fan of the show Monk.

Speaker 30 I don't know if you two have heard me talk about that. John is in, I think, two episodes of it.
And so it took me like a week to be comfortable enough to bring it up.

Speaker 30 But then I just started talking his ear off about Monk. And I was telling him about the show and about they wrote books about his character after the show.

Speaker 30 And he was like, I didn't even know about that. And I do think that sort of kickstarted our little bond.

Speaker 12 For me with John, it was that I had to wait a couple of weeks to get comfortable as I

Speaker 31 wanted to talk to him about all the Spike spikely movies he's been in.

Speaker 50 And then once that kind of barrier was broken, I just never shut up about it.

Speaker 3 And I remember I really, just sort of like getting used to the, like you were saying, Zach, getting used to sort of the pedigree of this show we were doing.

Speaker 20 I remember when I got the job, Ben and I were talking on the phone and you had said generously like, hey, if you have any ideas for actors and stuff for the other roles.

Speaker 12 And for Irv, I was like, hey, yeah, I had these, an idea.

Speaker 31 I saw someone did a guest spot on billions.

Speaker 40 I thought they were really great.

Speaker 48 What do you think?

Speaker 31 And I remember you being like, oh, yeah, no, that's, that's great.

Speaker 15 I was, I was maybe thinking John Toturo.

Speaker 3 I was like, okay, yeah, maybe we go with, do that.

Speaker 5 Go ahead. Yes, John Taturo.

Speaker 35 That's probably a good idea.

Speaker 50 You got to ask.

Speaker 39 Just like, oh, shit, this is what we're doing.

Speaker 19 Oh, my God.

Speaker 32 Okay.

Speaker 22 I felt like that when Rachel Tenner, our casting casting director, said John Tuturo to me. Oh, okay.
Because it was her idea. And I was like, okay, John Tutorro said the exact same thing to me.

Speaker 22 I was like, and she's like, come on, we got to ask him.

Speaker 17 Wow.

Speaker 37 And then you went and had like Italian food with John.

Speaker 22 Well, that's a whole other story about how, and then John's idea that he said, what about for Bert? He said, what about Chris Walken? I was like,

Speaker 17 okay.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 22 Oh, my God. It's like one thing leads to another.

Speaker 14 Those two

Speaker 31 meet in this episode, by the way.

Speaker 31 Okay, so here is also when Mark is teaching Helly about the numbers and how to do.

Speaker 49 And so Helly's like learning how to refine numbers from Mark while juggling Dylan's weird interjections and Irv getting kind of caught up in the fact that Mark took the photos away and he can't let go of this.

Speaker 25 And so there's like these three different things juggling around at the same time, right, in this scene.

Speaker 22 Two favorite moments of mine in that scene are you getting under the hood of Helly's MDR monitor. You're fixing something in the beginning.

Speaker 22 Like you're literally like under like a car fixing a transmission. Yeah.
Yeah. Which when I was watching it again, I was like, this is just

Speaker 22 like, what is he doing?

Speaker 17 What is he doing?

Speaker 22 He's making sure the, you know, like the, whatever, it's plugged in the right way.

Speaker 32 And I was under there literally doing nothing.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 22 But what I love about it is just, it's such an image that just, it just feels like, okay, I get what that, what's going on there. Yeah.

Speaker 22 And then the other part of it that I love, there's a, actually, this is another theme of what favorite scenes that I love.

Speaker 33 But every scene is Ben's favorite scene.

Speaker 22 No, but the

Speaker 22 you sitting on the desk when you get up, you decide to sit on the desk

Speaker 22 as like office guy to tell her about like what's going down and like how it works. Yeah.

Speaker 22 And there's just something about your posture and the way you sit there that just feels to me so specific to this world and to

Speaker 22 Mark.

Speaker 20 It's sort of like sort of condescending substitute teacher energy.

Speaker 12 Let's take a quick break.

Speaker 53 And when we come back, we're going to discuss all the debauchery that goes down at a wild and crazy Lumen melon party.

Speaker 4 Adam,

Speaker 8 I want you to close close your eyes and imagine you're working in Lumen's HR department.

Speaker 9 Okay, give me a second. It takes me 10 minutes to close my eyes.

Speaker 10 Oh, wait, I did it right away.

Speaker 8 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 9 Let me get into character here.

Speaker 4 I think they'd love it.

Speaker 12 It's efficient. It's targeted.

Speaker 11 We can search words like cure lover and affinity for long hallways.

Speaker 8 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 8 ZipRecruiter has all these tools and features and more. And they're designed to make hiring faster and easier.

Speaker 8 So see for yourself when you try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash severance.

Speaker 13 ZipRecruiter excels at speed.

Speaker 15 It's smart technology. Starts showing your job to qualified candidates immediately.

Speaker 15 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 8 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 10 You know what? Lumen should make ZipRecruiter a perk.

Speaker 11 It's way more fun than a finger trap.

Speaker 8 Finger traps are not even fun.

Speaker 6 No, I actually get legitimately claustrophobic when I use a finger trap.

Speaker 8 Yes, I know. Even the prop ones.

Speaker 17 Totally.

Speaker 8 Because the finger traps are real.

Speaker 16 It freaks me out when I use it.

Speaker 8 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 14 ZipRecruiter.com slash S-E-V-E-R-A-N-C-E.

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Speaker 31 So before the Mellon party actually starts, we have an icebreaker activity to help Helie get a little more ingratiated with the group.

Speaker 51 And it's us sitting in a circle and rolling this red ball back and forth.

Speaker 42 Whoever gets the ball has to state something about themselves.

Speaker 12 I remember shooting this scene. It was pretty early on.

Speaker 57 And watching it back, I was like, this is so weird because we

Speaker 23 never got to see people without masks on.

Speaker 42 at this point.

Speaker 20 This is November, December of 2020.

Speaker 23 And I would be in this apartment by myself because I was out in New York by myself, go down to my car in the morning, be in a van sealed off by plastic to the driver, get to set, take a COVID test and go up to the room where we were not allowed to be in a room with anyone else with their masks off, sit in your dressing room, then be called down to set with a mask and a plastic thing in front of your face.

Speaker 35 We would rehearse.

Speaker 12 And the only time we actually got to take everything off and be with people was when the camera was rolling.

Speaker 41 So this scene was right in the middle of all that.

Speaker 31 And I feel like it's present in that scene in some way.

Speaker 30 Yeah, all that stuff really did sort of add to this quality of

Speaker 30 surrealness for all of us that kind of made you feel like you were at Lumen. Like, you know, you were,

Speaker 30 it was a very, very strange time.

Speaker 30 I remember that scene as well, you know, for the same reason.

Speaker 22 Yeah, I mean, and that, lasted the entire shoot. Yeah.
I mean, this was, we started shooting in November of 20, and we went all the way to like, I guess it was like April or May.

Speaker 17 May, maybe.

Speaker 22 And it never let up in terms of what the protocols were for that and the testing and

Speaker 22 so many things that everybody was dealing with in their lives. But for us as a cast and crew, there were people who like basically you never saw the bottom of their face in the crew.

Speaker 22 At the end, when we had our rap party, finally, like in May or June, where there was like that first break before everything came back again and the masks were off. Yes.

Speaker 22 And I remember seeing people in the crew that I worked with for nine months and not realizing they looked like that because I assumed they looked different behind their masks.

Speaker 47 Totally. Yeah.

Speaker 18 And how weird mouths were.

Speaker 35 Yes. Forgot that there's like this

Speaker 43 chasm at the bottom of faces.

Speaker 23 Okay, so we're doing this kind of get to know you game, and then Mark mentions that he broke protocol.

Speaker 22 yeah it's like the evolution of mark where he's starting to kind of starting to feel some things and starting to maybe

Speaker 37 take a chance and question authority for a second here yeah i think the little he knows about helly i think that kind of pushes him to let this piece of information get out there just to see what happens

Speaker 30 so then the melon party actually starts and zach why does dylan love the melon party so much i think it's all just you know he's just focused on what is. So like, that's a nice little treat.

Speaker 30 So here we go. This rules, melon is good.
It's tasty. I think it breaks up the day, you know.
I think he just really is not that concerned about anything other than what's like right in front of him.

Speaker 31 He's very carefully selecting his pieces of melon.

Speaker 30 Yes, which became a little bit of a... of a of a theme.
He's very particular about what treats he selects.

Speaker 7 That's right.

Speaker 19 Then it's time for a group photo.

Speaker 29 We all get over there and take a couple photos, and then Helly decides it's time for her to go.

Speaker 20 She's like, I'm just going to quit.

Speaker 35 This is total bullshit.

Speaker 44 Previously in the red ball game, Milchik had told her about the code detectors in the elevators.

Speaker 51 You can't have numbers or letters transferred across severed barriers.

Speaker 23 She thinks it's bullshit.

Speaker 12 She gets in the elevator.

Speaker 34 Immediately, the code detector goes off.

Speaker 23 alarm bells go off, and Mr.

Speaker 41 Grainer is introduced, comes in, Michael Cumpste, as Mr.

Speaker 43 Grainer comes in.

Speaker 51 Michael is excellent and so scary.

Speaker 22 I mean, he has an incredible face. He does.
And he knows how to use it. And he's just a really good actor who just knows how to do very little and be really affecting.

Speaker 23 And such a gentle, sweet person.

Speaker 22 It's so nice. So nice.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 12 So Grainer pulls Helie out of the elevator and seems ready to punish her.

Speaker 37 Mark kind of steps in front of her and says, this is my fault.

Speaker 20 And Grainer's like, fine, come with me.

Speaker 44 And they walk off together.

Speaker 25 And we do not know what's going on here.

Speaker 43 And then we see Mr. Grainer bring Mark to the break room, but we don't go any further than that.
So we have no idea. what goes on in the break room at this point.

Speaker 58 And then we cut to Mark on a date in the Audi world with his sister's midwife, Ordoula Alexa.

Speaker 44 They talk about his job at Lumen.

Speaker 22 Yeah, Nikki James is playing Alexa.

Speaker 24 Yeah, Nikki is so great.

Speaker 44 She's a big Broadway star.

Speaker 22 Very big Broadway star. And I actually had worked with her.
She did a small part in Escape at Danamora also. That's right.

Speaker 22 Yeah, the total not intuiteness that you have in the date, what's kind of, I think, maddening about Audi Mark is also that he's just sort of like

Speaker 22 really just going through the motions. And I think as an audience, I thought about it when we were making it.

Speaker 22 How are we going to connect with Audi Mark? And I didn't ever want us to have to like try to make him sympathetic. Yeah.
Because it felt to me like you're just like in a really dark place. Yeah.

Speaker 22 And it was important not to try to make him someone that we necessarily had to sympathize with.

Speaker 22 And this scene I thought was pretty

Speaker 22 like you get that in the scene.

Speaker 39 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 22 He's kind of being a little bit rude.

Speaker 48 Yeah.

Speaker 37 And then when they go outside and come across the whole mind collective passing out flyers, Mark goes up to them and confronts them and he's just an asshole.

Speaker 22 And he's drunk. He gets drunk.
And the drinking was, I think, also an important part of what's going on with him in the first season.

Speaker 1 Hey, man, you want to benefit off forced labor?

Speaker 4 Hey, man, and that's up to you.

Speaker 1 Forced labor?

Speaker 4 Fucking really?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Forced labor.
Really? Okay, so people can just, like, self-imprison. Are you captive right now?

Speaker 1 No, seriously, because your past self chose to walk you down here to be an infantilizing prick to people.

Speaker 2 Severance of subjugation, asshole.

Speaker 1 Oh, oh, that's nice language for it.

Speaker 1 What are you? 12? Are you 12 years old? Are you even in high school yet?

Speaker 30 I will just say, I do love hearing you both talk about these other scenes because it's such a different world.

Speaker 30 Like, I didn't even interact with Audi World for so much of the season that I love hearing about all this stuff because I was in that little

Speaker 30 low-ceiling basement.

Speaker 22 Were you reading these parts of the script?

Speaker 30 I was. I was reading everything, but I always say about this show more than any other, the experience of reading it and even being there shooting it, there's such a gap to when you finally see it.

Speaker 30 Like, it really comes alive when you see it in a way. Other things I've worked on, it's felt more similar to the experience of making it.

Speaker 30 So, even though I was reading it, once I finally saw this stuff and then now learn more about it, I am always a little like, oh, whoa, there's so much more there than I even picked up on.

Speaker 22 Yeah, it's interesting because it's sort of like the amalgam of all the different things that are going on in the show, too.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Okay, so this date does not go well. Obviously, he yells at the whole mind collective kids, and Alexa is clearly embarrassed.

Speaker 47 Got to Mark at home after blowing it on the date and Mrs.

Speaker 54 Selvig comes over and knocks on the door

Speaker 52 visiting Mark super late at night.

Speaker 48 With cookies.

Speaker 23 With chamomile cookies.

Speaker 20 Tells a weird story about her late husband who promised to build a house in the afterlife for them.

Speaker 22 Then she says, I have the blueprints in my bag.

Speaker 39 That she has with her.

Speaker 22 First of all, you know, we're trying to figure out who Mrs. Selvig is in relation to Cobel at this point.

Speaker 22 And, you know, Patricia is so funny.

Speaker 22 I know she had this idea in her head of wearing that scarf. Patricia and I are the same age-ish, and we come from the same generation.

Speaker 22 And the show, I know the show in her head, she mentioned Bewitched,

Speaker 22 that there's something like something kind of witchy about Selvig. And also, there was like a neighbor in Bewitched.
I think it was Mrs. Kravitz who used to come over and was always snooping.
Right.

Speaker 22 Anyway, that was something she was influenced by.

Speaker 22 And then she had like sort of the Valerie Harper from Rhoda. And anybody of a certain age will know that that look is what she was going for.
And yeah.

Speaker 22 And then, you know, she was kind of just like, again, it's like we're trying to figure out what Celbig is wanting to learn here, what she's really all up to.

Speaker 40 Is she obsessed with Mark himself or is she just surveilling him?

Speaker 44 Like, what is going on?

Speaker 31 The next day, Mark decides, I'm going to take the day off and go down this potential rabbit hole and go see this PD guy.

Speaker 22 Yeah, which is interesting because like Audi Mark and Indie Mark are both sort of being prompted to step outside of their comfort zone in different ways.

Speaker 42 That's right.

Speaker 23 By these new figures in their lives.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 37 And this is also a fun opportunity to see MDR, you know, with Mark gone, it seems that Dylan is kind of stepping up into a quasi-leadership role.

Speaker 30 Yeah, I think he takes the chance to kind of be the big dog. Also, he spends a lot of this early part of the show sort of like not quite trying to undermine Mark, but

Speaker 30 pushing him on his leadership.

Speaker 30 Oh, totally. And so now that he's out, it's like, okay, well, let's see what I can do.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 44 Also, Dylan in MDR tells Helly that he believes their job has to do with cleaning the sea floor.

Speaker 22 And Zach, do you remember that was the audition scene?

Speaker 30 Yes, yeah, yeah, I do. That one was really burned into my brain by the time we got around to it.

Speaker 30 And I do think that is such a big part of Dylan's character is stories he tells himself about what the outside world is like. That's like a huge part of what he does down there.

Speaker 23 Like these fables he's creating, like his persona, and talking about his Audi and what he must be like.

Speaker 42 It's very important to.

Speaker 30 He's big into self-mythologizing and yeah, just telling a story about the outside world that makes him inside feel important, I think.

Speaker 58 Yeah.

Speaker 43 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 52 Later, Irving is admiring an oil painting at the Wellness Center waiting room, and Bert enters, played by Christopher Watkin.

Speaker 7 Heard of him?

Speaker 20 The head of optics and design.

Speaker 34 I mean, this is what the term meet-cute was invented for.

Speaker 59 I mean, this is just.

Speaker 39 lovely in every way.

Speaker 22 It is. And

Speaker 22 Dan wrote this beautiful scene of them them sort of appreciating the art. Yeah.

Speaker 22 And it introduces the idea of the art that hangs on the walls in this weird, sterile office environment that becomes a very important element in the story, too.

Speaker 30 I will just say one of the best parts of the job was sitting there when we weren't shooting and just watching them get a kick out of each other.

Speaker 30 They were like laughing all day, telling insane stories about, because between them, they've worked with everyone and on everything, you know, so just that was like such a fun part of the job was just sitting there and watching them giggle, basically.

Speaker 30 They really do have such a special dynamic.

Speaker 46 Yeah.

Speaker 52 Miss Casey interrupts the Irving Burt flirtation and calls Irving in for his wellness session.

Speaker 35 We can listen to a clip here.

Speaker 63 Your Audi likes films and owns a machine that can play them.

Speaker 63 Your Audi is splendid and can swim gracefully and well.

Speaker 63 I'm sorry.

Speaker 63 Please try to enjoy each fact equally and not show preference for any over the others. That's 10 points off.
You have 90 points remaining. Points? Please don't speak.

Speaker 22 Great. And that's so, again, Dan Erickson ideas and dialogue.
Yes. It's just so interesting and fascinating.

Speaker 22 And you start to think, oh, wow, if someone being told these little snippets about their outside life, which as you were saying, Zach, you know, Dylan doesn't know anything and they just can imagine things.

Speaker 22 So it's almost a reward or a treat for them to be told some reality about or supposed reality about their outside life. And we do lay some actual facts in there that down the line we learn about.

Speaker 58 Yeah.

Speaker 31 Your Audi likes the sound of of radar.

Speaker 51 That's one that I particularly like.

Speaker 37 Deechin Lachman is playing Ms.

Speaker 42 Casey, who is absolutely incredible.

Speaker 22 Yeah, I remember her self-tape audition that she sent in was just fantastic. And I remember thinking, this person seems like they're just from another planet or something.
Yeah.

Speaker 31 On the outside world, Mark goes to the address that Petey gave him.

Speaker 12 He finds an abandoned greenhouse.

Speaker 41 Petey's there waiting for him.

Speaker 19 And that was another thing to decide on the day, like when we were doing the scene.

Speaker 31 Like Mark still needs to be skeptical of this guy. He drove all the way out here, but it's still outlandish the shit this guy's saying.

Speaker 20 But then he plays that tape and Mark is pretty much in at that point.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 22 And I think also there could be an argument that whatever sort of permeates the severance barrier.

Speaker 58 Yeah.

Speaker 22 Whether it's friendship, love, affection, the things that would make people friends, maybe somehow there's an instinctual thing that you trust him enough to want to take him to your house. Yeah.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 38 Love is one of those things that's continually approached by the show of, is this something that can be affected by

Speaker 19 your brain and barriers of any kind?

Speaker 18 Right, right.

Speaker 22 What is that? What is the essence of that?

Speaker 22 But then you guys end up going back to

Speaker 22 your basement, right? Yep. He sleeps in the basement there.

Speaker 34 Yep.

Speaker 20 And Helie finally figures out refining in the sense that she does get scared by some of the numbers.

Speaker 51 She says they were scary. The numbers were scary.
And Britt's fantastic, of course, in the scene.

Speaker 22 Yeah, and she's interrupting the argument between... you and Irving about, you say that, because you're talking about that Bert's, you call him a fuck.

Speaker 46 Yes, yes.

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 30 Yeah. Dylan

Speaker 30 has bought into the, you know, we don't know if it's real, but this sort of propaganda slash mythology of his department is

Speaker 30 dangerous.

Speaker 22 And then we see you also at the vending machine trying to choose what you want to

Speaker 22 eat at some point too, which I think is like we sort of have a little runner of like Dylan can't choose, like you can't choose the melon ball.

Speaker 22 He can't choose which shriveled raisins or which snack he wants to catch.

Speaker 30 Which I think sort of in some ways connects to why he likes these rewards.

Speaker 30 He likes to be given a thing but choices may be too much sometimes oh that's interesting yeah yeah that's like overload almost yeah it's sort of like the rat in the cage that doesn't want to leave his environment yeah yeah

Speaker 41 so back at the uh basement pd ignores a phone call on his cell phone and then starts having reintegration sickness and his nose begins bleeding and suddenly there are two of him in the bathroom and that's a crazy sequence.

Speaker 22 Yeah, he starts hallucinating and starts seeing himself in the shower and start it's we start to see his realities are, you know, kind of intermingling and his office reality and his Audi reality.

Speaker 22 And we wanted to play around with different ways of doing that, which we continue on in the next episode in terms of the language of that. And yeah, and then that's it.
That's the end of the episode.

Speaker 22 We don't know what's happened as PD sort of like goes still on the, you know, in the bathtub on the floor.

Speaker 35 That's right.

Speaker 21 Zach, you now have more phone time.

Speaker 27 I can't wait.

Speaker 30 I can't wait to get back on my phone.

Speaker 23 Thank you for doing this, Zach.

Speaker 51 Thank you for hanging out for so long.

Speaker 30 Yeah, it was fun.

Speaker 22 Yeah, it's good to see you, man.

Speaker 31 Next up is episode three in perpetuity.

Speaker 12 Stream all episodes of season one on Apple TV Plus right now. And season two, again, premieres January 17th, 2025.

Speaker 22 I have to say, episode three is one of my favorite episodes.

Speaker 17 Is it? Yeah.

Speaker 17 Wow.

Speaker 26 Huge surprise from Ben Stiller.

Speaker 32 Late breaking news.

Speaker 30 I'm a huge fan of one through nine. No way.

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 22 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 22 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 22 This episode was mixed and mastered by Chris Basil. We have additional engineering from Javi Crucis and Davey Sumner.

Speaker 50 Show clips are courtesy of fifth season. Music by Theodore Shapiro.

Speaker 50 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 22 And the team at Red Hour, John Lescher, Carolina Pesikov, Jean-Pablo Antonetti, Martin Valderuten, Ashwin Ramesh, Maria Noto, John Baker, and Oliver Ager.

Speaker 50 And at Great Scott, Kevin Cotter, Josh Martin, and Christy Smith at Rise Management.

Speaker 22 We also had additional production help from Gabrielle Lewis, Ben Goldberg, Stephen Key, Kristen Torres, Emmanuel Hapsis, Marialexa Kavanaugh, and Melissa Slaughter.

Speaker 41 I'm Adam Scott, I'm Ben Stiller, and we will see you next time.

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