The mind-bending Apple TV+ series Severance, about office workers surgically split between their work and personal lives, struck a nerve with audiences and critics alike. Blending psychological thriller, dystopian sci-fi and workplace satire, the series explores identity, grief and the corporate machine. With Ben Stiller in the director’s chair and Adam Scott leading a stellar cast, the show’s second season continues to captivate and unsettle viewers everywhere.
Hits its come and go, but true TV sensations are rare — the kind that spark endless debates, fuel think pieces and inspire devoted fans to gather online and off, counting down the days until the next season.
The brainchild of Dan Erickson, the Apple TV+ series Severance, about a group of office workers whose minds have been surgically divided between their work and personal lives, struck such a nerve soon after its 2022 debut. Working for the sinister and mysterious Lumon Industries, “severed” employees spend their days on a single floor of a vast, impersonal office building. In the elevator each morning, an employee’s “innie” is activated, creating an alternate personality with no knowledge of anything outside the severed floor. At day’s end, the elevator ride restores the “outie,” who has no memory of what’s happened over the previous eight hours. A unique combination of psychological thriller, dystopian sci-fi, workplace drama and pitch-black comedy, Severance was a decade in the making. In 2012, Erickson was a 28-year-old aspiring screenwriter with no credits. He was working a dull job in office management at a door parts company when he was struck by a thought that would change his life.
“It came from a very organic place,” he recalls, “because I legitimately did have a job I hated. I had moved to L.A. to be a writer and was not a writer yet. I was walking into work one day and had this thought: ‘What if I could just jump ahead to the end of the day and have already done the work?’” By the end of that day, he had a skeleton of what the show could be.
“As a writer,” he says, “you’ll sometimes read a logline of a script that’s been sold, and you’ll think, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ A simple idea that somehow feels inevitable — universal. This was the first time that an idea like that occurred to me, and the rest is history.”
Well, not exactly. Erickson wrote a pilot and a show bible, and then ... nothing. No bites, not even a nibble. Not until 2015, when it ended up on Ben Stiller’s desk.
“There was a tone to it that felt so specific,” Stiller says. “It was very unique and funny, yet also really strange. You don’t read that many things that just jump out at you. There was humor, there was this weird sci-fi element to it and a very intriguing story. A lot of the things I’m interested in.”
Stiller was at his own crossroads. It was around the time that his film Zoolander 2 had a disappointing theatrical run, which ended up being a blessing in disguise. “When I was going through it, it wasn’t the best experience,” he recalls, “but what I realized [later] was, if it had worked, I really would not have given myself the space to explore. So, I was lucky enough to have that time, and I was really grateful for that.”
That exploration led to directing and executive-producing the Showtime limited series Escape at Dannemora, which scored 12 Emmy nominations — including two for Stiller — and gave him the opportunity to develop more dramatic fare. The timing was perfect, but Erickson’s pilot still needed work.
“Ben’s attitude was, ‘I don’t want to lose the crazy, but let’s pull it back so it’s a little bit more emotionally recognizable,’” Erickson says. “That sad concept of disassociating from parts of your life, he wanted that to be the North Star of what the show is about.”
Erickson and Stiller each talk about how in sync they have been from the beginning. For example, there was the matter of casting the lead character, Mark Scout, or as his innie is referred to, Mark S. A former college professor, he chooses severance as a release from the crushing grief he feels over his wife’s death in a car accident. Without discussing it, both men had the same actor in mind, Adam Scott.
Watch the exclusive interview with the cast of Severence during the emmy cover shoot.
More perfect timing: Scott had just completed a six-season run on Parks and Recreation and was ready for something different. He’d landed a role in the Emmy-winning first season of Big Little Lies, but that was only the start.
“When I finished Parks, I purposefully wanted to move in a different direction,” Scott says. “Party Down, Step Brothers and Parks and Rec, those three things gave me a career, but I was seen primarily as a comedic actor. I wanted to try something else and knew that I would have to prove it.”
And, of course, there was Severance’s premise.
“It’s like when you hear a great pop song and you think, ‘How has this melody and this hook never been out in the world?’” Scott says. “It’s so good, you would think that someone would have thought of it before. It was one of those.”
Mark was the show’s center, but a sizable cast was needed around him. Two-time Emmy-winner Patricia Arquette, a frequent Stiller collaborator, had earned an Emmy nomination for her work in Dannemora. When Stiller called her to play Harmony Cobel, the dour manager of Lumon’s severed floor, she jumped at the chance. “I love working with Ben,” she says, and she was intrigued by how different the material was.
“I think all of us are severed,” she says. “There’s a whole interior life going on that we all have that’s motivating us to do what we do, to choose the partners that we choose, to feel shitty about certain things where somebody else wouldn’t at all. We all have these different fabrics that make us who we are, and these subconscious underpinnings.”
Seth Milchik works directly under Cobel in the first season and then takes her position in the second. His character serves not only as an antagonist but as a symbol of the loneliness that pervades the show. “People are really mystified by this guy,” says Tramell Tillman (Godfather of Harlem, Hunters), who plays Mr. Milchik. “I enjoy the fact that there is not a definite line of who this guy is, whether he’s a villain or not. I love the ambiguity, which serves the tone of the show.” He adds with a laugh, “I have serious trust issues, and this show, just ... whoo! It intensifies them.”
John Turturro had done limited series (The Night of, The Plot Against America) and won an Emmy for an episode of Monk, but he’d never been a series regular. Portraying Irving B., Mark’s buttoned-down and by-the-book severed officemate, “was something that I hadn’t really done before: a very regimented person, maybe from a military background or something.”
With Turturro on board, the team needed the right actor to play Burt G., a severed employee in a different division, with whom Irving falls in love. Their scenes are among the first season’s most tender moments, and Turturro knew just the guy to play his costar: Christopher Walken.
“I loved working with everyone else,” Turturro continues, “but that was something special. Chris is like a great jazz player. You’ve got to really be on your toes. I don’t know what instrument he plays, but there’s the potential to create that music between us.”
Lumon’s macrodata refinement (MDR) department also employs Helly R., whose outie is — spoiler alert — Helena Eagan, the Lumon CEO’s daughter and heir apparent. Actress Britt Lower (Man Seeking Woman, Casual) is fascinated by the psychology of playing different sides of the same character. “We all had a lot of conversations about what carries over between the inside world and the outside world, and we all came to an agreement,” Lower says. “These are the same person, with the same shared body; you’re just seeing them in completely different circumstances. They have a shared subconscious.”
Dylan G. rounds out the MDR office quartet. Like Lower, Zach Cherry (Crashing, I Feel Bad) got his start in improv. He hadn’t done much drama but says he had the right guide to get him through. “Having Ben directing a lot of it is really helpful, because he’s a brilliant comedian but has done so much dramatic work.” As a result, Cherry found himself immersed in the Lumon world, sometimes playing on the working computers in between shots — even though, he admits, “The office set is kind of unsettling. The ceilings are low, the lights are weird, they got that green carpet. It makes you feel like you're somewhere else."
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This article originally appeared in its entirety in emmy magazine, issue #3, 2025, under the title "Work/Life Talents."
