‘Severance’ cast opens up about shooting that ‘heartbreaking,’ ‘awful’ season finale — and which of them has a bit of ‘bloodlust’
It's not just you. Even the Severance brain trust admits the explosive Season 2 finale was just as "heartbreaking" to film as it was to watch.
Core members of the Apple TV+ series' creative team and cast reunited on Friday at the jammed-to-capacity Dolby Theater in Hollywood to rewatch the episode "Cold Harbor" and then break down the game-changing season for the opening night of Paley Fest 2025, an annual festival showcasing the best in television ahead of Emmy voting.
"Watching with this audience has been one of my most special experiences with this show," Ben Stiller told the crowd of roughly 3,300 fans. Stiller, who executive produces the series and has directed most of the episodes, including the season finale, was joined by creator Dan Erickson and cast members Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, Jen Tullock, Dichen Lachman, Tramell Tillman, Michael Chernus, Sarah Bock, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, and Gwendoline Christie.
Things got off to an appropriately odd start: As the cast came onto the stage, Tillman was nowhere to be found. Stiller hypothesized that the actor, who plays the zealous Severed Floor manager Seth Milchick, was having difficulty breaking character and probably needed a few minutes to gather himself. And indeed, Tillman arrived leading the USC marching band — just as Milchick did when Mark S. (Scott) completed his Cold Harbor data collection for Lumon, their mysterious corporate overlords. As Tillman approached the stage and greeted his costars, panel moderator Ben Schwartz joked, "There are spoilers for Season 3 based on how he greeted everyone."
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The conversation abounded with spoilers for the series about office workers who have undergone radical brain surgery to separate their work lives from their personal ones, only to find that they've created completely different people filled with their own wants, fears, and desires.
Lore surrounding the series has grown in its second season as fans theorized about the difference between innies and outies, Lumon's real endgame, and why there's that weird goat farm inside the office building. Erickson, for one, wasn't biting when asked what was next for the just-announced Season 3. "I've come to build my whole identity on secrecy," he joked. He was completely open, however, when recounting his experiences "working in a small windowless basement of a door factory" while writing the pilot to Severance.
The cast has been similarly kept in the dark about what to expect in a third season, which is normal considering they're only given scant details about what they'll be doing episode to episode. Even Arquette, who has the added advantage of being an executive producer, was only vaguely aware of what to expect from her character, former Severed Floor manager Harmony Cobel. "There were things they [Erickson and Stiller] had told me about her backstory," Arquette said. But even if she did know more, the Oscar-winning star wouldn't dare reveal it. "In real life, I try to be very honest," she said, "but with this character, I will lie, cheat, and steal." She even hedged as to whether or not her character actually betrayed Lumon to help Mark Scout find his long-lost wife, Gemma (Lachman), who's been trapped below the Severed Floor.
This season has explored the struggle between innies and outies, with the issue of whether or not an innie is an individual in their own right or just an extension of their outie raising ethical quandaries. This comes to a head in the finale, when longtime Lumon employee Mark Scout tries to convince his innie to sacrifice himself to free Mark Scout's wife, Gemma. To pull this off, Mark Scout has a back-and-forth conversation with Mark S. via videotape, each trading messages with the other. "I was dreading it," Scott recalls of the scene, which could have easily gone awry. "I tried to give as many options as I could to the editor so that it would feel like a conversation," as opposed to an acting exercise with just one participant.
Scott explained the final sequence, in which his innie betrays his outie and runs off with his severed love, Helly R. (Lower), as Gemma watches helplessly, was filmed "right at the end of the shoot so we were all kind of depleted and tired — which was good for the scene I guess, but it was heartbreaking, because Dichen [who plays Gemma] was really pounding on that door for hours and hours, and it was awful. It was awful to see her there and what Gemma has come to mean to all of us."
"I think for Innie Mark at the end of the day, [Gemma] is someone he doesn’t know in that way and he crosses that threshold, and the life might be over, he doesn’t quite know," Scott added. "And he’s madly in love with Helly so he had to make a choice for a few different reasons."
Among the new additions to the cast in Season 2 was Ólafsson as hulking Lumon enforcer Mr. Drummond and Christie as Lorne, who runs the Mammalians Nuturable division (i.e., the goat farm). Ólafsson admitted he struggled to get into his character, who sees the severed employees as less than human. "I don't think anyone is a monster," he said, "but we see the real him when he sees Mark S. in the hallway" as he's looking for Gemma, which leads to Drummond nearly killing him. "It wasn't fun, because I like these people," he said of his castmates. It was especially difficult because, he explained, he accidentally "slammed Adam into the wall for real" while filming the elaborate sequence. "That was a bad day."
Christie's Lorne also participates in the fight, making for a sort of miniaturized version of the famous hallway brawl in Oldboy. "I had deliberately avoided combat after Game of Thrones," Christie recalled, but admitted she couldn't say no when offered a role in what she calls her favorite television show. "I found I still have a bloodlust," she joked. Considering her obsession with the series runs so deep that she became obsessed with Scott's hairline, pausing and zooming in to try and see if it was a wig, it's safe to say she would have agreed to do just about anything Stiller and Erickson had asked of her. One thing she wouldn't do, however, was explain what the deal was with the goats, considering she doesn't have the answer: "I found a great feeling in not knowing."
All episodes of Severance are now streaming on Apple TV+.