Tramell Tillman, who plays an uptight office manager in the series Severance, at the World Trade Center Oculus in Manhattan, New York City, on Jan. 8.ANDRE D. WAGNER/The New York Times News Service
Tramell Tillman’s smile tells a story. As Milchick in Apple TV+’s Severance, his grin, loaded with paradoxical charm, hints at a joke only he knows the punchline to. It’s sharp yet rounded, bright yet unsettling, an optical illusion of warmth. On television, it’s become Tillman’s masterstroke. In real life, it scares him.
“Sometimes, I don’t recognize myself,” Tillman says over Zoom from New York. “I look at this character Seth Milchick and think, ‘Who is that guy?’”
That disconnect – the way his own smile unsettles – is the perfect distillation of what makes the Juilliard-trained actor so compelling in his role as the unnerving supervisor of Lumon Industries. He calibrates everything: every smile, syllable and energy shift. The result is a character who feels too precise, like a scalpel – clean, exacting and just as capable of wounding as it is of saving.
With the latest season of Severance coming to a close, The Globe and Mail spoke with Tillman about his professional journey, the layers of Milchick and the show’s deeper tensions – both its corporate horrors and its unspoken racial politics. (Note: This interview contains spoilers from Season 1, Episode 7, and Season 2, Episode 5.)
Was there a specific moment when you realized acting was where you belonged?
I knew I wanted to act when I was 10, but I was terrified. I was shy and hated performing in public. Then, in a church play, I had one line – “Hi” – and the moment I stepped onstage I felt this electric surge of empowerment.
But I was told I wouldn’t make it as an actor, so I pursued medicine instead. The role models around me were doctors, lawyers and managers – success, as I understood it, meant following their path.
How did your experiences – studying medicine, being one of the few Black students in your MFA program and navigating Hollywood – help you tap into Milchik’s constant balance of dominance and submission?
Just existing in the world as a human being fuelled that experience of dominance and submission. I remember growing up hearing the phrase: “You learn when to speak, and you learn when to shut your mouth.” Those words helped me navigate tough situations as a kid, and even as an adult. That wisdom – knowing what to say and when – ties directly into the balance of dominance and submission.
It also connects to the broader themes of Severance, which is inherently political. The show explores how we communicate, manoeuvre and get what we want from others. My experiences in the corporate world, grad school, non-profit management and working with higher-ups taught me a lot about handling people.
Milchick holds power but operates within a system built, to be frank, on whiteness. It’s hard not to think about the increasing challenges of being a visible person of colour in corporate spaces, especially amid debates around DEI. What are your thoughts on this?
It’s really interesting that the scene where a painting of the founder, Kier Eagan, is recanonicalized as Black aired right around the time DEI was being stripped from corporate speech by the American government. It speaks to where we are right now.
These topics – DEI, being Black in a corporate structure and existing in a white space – are very real. And they’re dangerous. They’re violent. They’re upsetting. They’re painful. What we’re seeing is Milchick navigating all of this.
We don’t yet get the full intricacies of his experience, but what’s rewarding is when these hints are dropped in. We see him meeting with Natalie before his performance review to clarify the paintings. We see him quietly put them away. We see how he responds to Drummond in the moment when Drummond polices his speech, telling him to use smaller words. And then, in a beautiful moment, Milchick finally stands up for himself.
If Milchick lived in 2025, outside Lumon, would he recognize his identity as a Black man, or would the world force him to?
I’m pretty sure it would be in the way the world forces him to. There is a submissiveness that Milchick has toward this company, and I think that has become part of his DNA. If we were to freeze him in time right now and transplant him into 2025, I do not see his story or experiences being all that different.
There are many Milchicks out there. Men, women and people beyond the binary who reduce themselves, put their culture aside, change their vocabulary and wrestle with their identity just to fit into the corporate structure around them. Just to get by. Just to do a job.
Some follow blindly and never question the teachings they were given: “This is what we are supposed to believe. This is how we do it. This is how we carry it out.”
The “defiant jazz” scene blew up online, largely because Milchick’s dance felt so unsettling – almost like weaponized joy. In that moment, he moves between the refiners, the employees under him at Lumon, engaging with each of them individually. What are your thoughts on that and how joy can be commodified?
I love that interpretation – that he was weaponizing joy. I can totally see that. He goes to each refiner with his dance, invades their space, almost like a standoff. And at times, he circles them like a shark.
It’s forced. This is something we sometimes experience. You go to these corporate parties and everyone’s asked to dance, have a good time – and you might enjoy yourself, but you know you’re being watched. You know you’re being judged in some way. Commodified joy in the workplace is very real.
What keeps Milchick lingering in your mind, as you’ve mentioned in the past?
The fact that I haven’t figured him out completely. He’s a mystery to me, and I want to solve it. There are a lot of things he does, or things he endures, that I connect with. I love words; Milchick loves words. He has great taste in music; I have great taste in music, right? [Laughs.] He’s a bit of a people pleaser – I used to be a people pleaser. He’s deeply committed to his work, and so am I.
I’m also thankful to the fans who love him as much as I do. It’s funny – I went on the Colbert show and now there’s a Swedish debate online about a word I purposely mispronounced. It’s caused an uproar! It shows how passionately people care about this story.
