Severance is back for a second season on Apple TV Plus on Friday, January 17 and trouble is brewing for the employees of Lumon Enterprises.
Directed once more by Hollywood star Ben Stiller, the new run of the darkly comic drama will explore the emotional new difficulties faced by the company's workers who have chosen to have their office and home existences surgically "severed" from each other.
In the last season, the office-based "innie" versions of Mark Scout (Adam Scott) and his colleagues took a risky glimpse at their lives outside and Mark discovered that he was married to Lumon’s wellness advisor Ms Casey (Dichen Lachman), and that she may not be dead, as his "outie" believes.
But how will Mark and his comrades deal with all their newfound knowledge and will there be consequences for their previous actions?
What to Watch caught up with Zoolander and Nutcrackers' star Ben Stiller to find out more about Severance season two…
Severance has been such a hit. Have you been pleased with the reaction to the show from viewers and has that changed how you developed season two?
“I'm so happy that we're here at this place with it [season two] about to come out. It's definitely been a long road to getting the season out. But it was creatively a great experience making the second season and being able to figure out how to keep telling this story in a way that felt true to what we had set up in the first season, but also expand it, and have it evolve.
“It's a different experience because we know that there's an audience for the show. The fans are so committed to it and so attentive to every single detail that's in there. That's a great feeling as a creative person who's making something, to know that people are paying attention and that there is an audience out there waiting for it. That's a wonderful thing.”
What can you tell us about season two?
“Story-wise, we wanted to expand on where we left off the first season. The visual aspect of the show has always been important to us, and we're trying to create some new environments to the story, that still maintain the vibe and the feeling of the show. And that was a fun aspect of working on this season, having established and understood now what our language was for the show, and building off of that.”
Where do we find things?
“It was fun to figure out what the opening of the first episode would be, and it relates back to the story. There’s the idea of this news that innie Mark got at the end of the last episode, so Adam and I talked about it and I remember saying, ‘Well, what would you do?’ The first thing you would do when you got this news and you find yourself back at Lumon, is to try to find the Wellness department, try to find Ms Casey. And so that sparked the idea for him to be running [in the opener].
"We build off the first shot we saw of Mark when he went to work in the first episode of the first season, and the audience can have fun with the echoes of that, but in a more hyped-up way because this is going to be on another level of energy. It was great work by the camera operators.”
What journey does Mark go on this time then?
“Mark’s innie knows that his wife is alive, and that would just spur so many things in the story. What does innie Mark do? What does outie Mark do about that? I think the focus for the season is, how does this news affect both innie and outie Mark in terms of his quest. He's grieving his wife, and then finds this news out, but is it even true that his wife is alive? And how can he somehow harness things?”
Will questions be answered?
“Part of the season is questions about what they're doing there [at Lumon]. And I think it's an important part of the storytelling in season two to hopefully give some answers to some things and hopefully pose some new questions, too…”
What do you think Severance says about workplace culture?
“It picks up on a lot of different themes and there are different metaphors and analogies and areas in which it resonates. And I think the idea of a faceless corporation is definitely one of them. But what is cool about the show is that there's a lot of things that people can read into the show and pick up on.
"We've been making the show for a few years, and it’s interesting where it times out with the zeitgeist, and what's going on in the culture when it comes out. And, it'll be interesting to see how the show interacts with what's going on in the culture now.”
You have reportedly provided the voice of Lumon founder Kier Eagan in Severance, would you like a bigger acting role in the show?
“I don't know if we've ever confirmed that I'm the voice of Kier Eagan, Lumon employee agreements are very airtight! Every once in a while there's been a thought or question about being in the show. I feel like it's such a fun, cool show, of course I would want to be in it. But I also feel like doing what I do on the show keeps me really busy. And I am often jumping into frames, so with the outtakes, you can see me anyway!”
Has your work-life balance changed since making the show?
“It's an interesting thing, because working on the show has kind of taken over my work life, but it's also been something I've been able to do a lot of the time being at home, except when we're on location, since I live in New York. So even editing the show, a lot of times we are working remotely, so it kind of crosses over, and sometimes it's still hard to find that balance.”
Does your family watch Severance?
“I do feel my family has been an important part of Severance, even with just showing them episodes, because there are few people when we're working on it to get feedback from as a focus group. And so my kids and my wife, I'll get feedback from them. That's been a nice part of the work process on this!”
Severance season 2 begins on Apple TV Plus on Friday 17 Jan and airs weekly.
