Adam Scott in Severance. Season 2 premiers Jan. 17, on Apple TV+.Apple TV+
Severance showed up at just the right time. The AppleTV+ series created by Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller, about people experiencing near-violent disassociation from their jobs, premiered in spring 2022, after the pandemic had the public reassessing priorities as far as work/life balance goes.
“That was certainly an unanticipated resonance,” says the show’s star Adam Scott in a Zoom interview with The Globe and Mail. Scott, wearing all black and speaking in his trademark, endearingly droll tone, is seated in an all-white room intentionally mimicking the sterile but (thematically fertile) environments in Severance. With publicists monitoring the interview – and everyone following strict instructions to make sure no secrets from season two, which premieres January 17, leave the room – the cosplay feels complete, though not quite as insidious.
For those not already hooked, Severance’s blend of workplace comedy and dystopian fiction twists the sitcom vibes of The Office and Scott’s old haunt Parks and Recreation into a more sinister take on Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
It follows employees at a mysterious biotech company called Lumon who sign up to sever their minds, creating split personalities for their jobs and their home. When they enter the office, they have no idea who they are on the outside, including whether they have a family, a romantic life or are enjoying the fruits of their labour. In the case of Scott’s Mark, his “innie” – as the half of him working inside Lumon is referred to – spends the first season oblivious to the sadness that his “outie,” a widower, is trying to repress. When the “innies” leave the office, the “outies” don’t just refuse to take their work home with them: They forget who their co-workers are and what it is they do for a living.
It’s an out-there premise, always threatening to collapse on itself should there be the slightest misstep in its plot, but it works brilliantly because of the viewers’ emotional investment in the characters and how the moral quagmires they wrestle with connect to any number of the things we’re experiencing both privately and publicly. Even the way these characters compartmentalize themselves, be it to avoid trauma or shirk responsibility in the face of inhumanity, taps into the zeitgeist and themes shared with graver movies such as The Zone of Interest, Oppenheimer and Killers of The Flower Moon.
“I think we’re all doing it in our daily lives,” says Scott, reflecting on that compartmentalization, and how the series taps into the bigger picture. “I mean, particularly since we have our phones with us. Not to kind of beat a dead horse, but the phones are something that we all carry around with us. … The device is separate from the rest of your physical life, not just the relationships you conduct with the phone, but your relationship to the content you consume is yours alone.”
Scott points to the recent U.S. election as a telling reminder that through the content we consume and the everyday ways we disassociate, people can be living in their own bubbles. “The two candidates and the two parties that were supporting those candidates can be living in two completely separate worlds as far as information and what they define as truth. Completely separate realities.”
Talking about Severance can be tricky. It keeps its cards tight to its chest, and everyone working on the show is committed to avoiding spoilers and protecting the experience for audiences. The series regularly pulls the rug out from under us with cliffhanger twists – like the one that ended the first season and left audiences eagerly anticipating its return. Where that could grow gimmicky with most shows, Severance does outstanding work by sitting in the subsequent complications and feelings, and maintaining our confidence that it knows exactly where it’s headed.
“That’s key to the show,” Scott says. “It’s pacing and the fact that emotionally we really don’t want to get ahead of the audience. … We want to be able to live those beats through the characters and make sure it really lands with the audience before we move on.”
He reveals that the first season wasn’t meant to end where it did, with revelations that upended everything we thought we knew about the characters and their dynamics. Spoiler alert: In that finale, we found out that Mark’s wife is still alive, and that his co-worker, Britt Lower’s Helly, has an “outie” who is far more manipulative than anticipated. The original plan for season one was to include the fallout from those revelations in its final episodes along with more twists, which instead are coming in season two.
“When you choose an end point that’s a little sooner,” Scott says, “then the amount of space you have for the emotional journeys stretches out a bit and you can make sure that the audience is right there with you when that end point comes, rather than skipping ahead to fit more story in.
“You don’t want anything to feel unearned on a show like this. All you have is the audience’s attention, and their feelings. And you don’t want them to feel like you’re taking their feelings for granted and pushing further than they’re ready for.”
Severance season two premieres globally on Friday, January 17, 2025 with one episode, followed by one new episode weekly through Friday, March 21, 2025 on Apple TV+
