The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller & Adam Scott - S1E2: Half Loop (with Zach Cherry)

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

This week, Ben and Adam unpack Season 1 Episode 2 with finger-trap connoisseur and all-around legend Zach Cherry, aka “Dylan.” Digressions include improvising with or without permission, John Turturro's brief but impactful tenure on USA's "Monk," and how fun it is to be on your phone. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of the Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott is brought to you by Confluence by Atlassian, the connected workspace where teams can create, organize, and deliver work like never before. Set knowledge free with Confluence. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats.

And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. I'm Ben Stiller. I'm Adam Scott.

And this is the Severance Podcast with Ben and Adam, where we break down every episode of Severance. Today we're recapping Season 1, Episode 2, entitled Half Loop, and special treat, we're bringing on Zach Cherry, who plays Dylan George, to go through it scene by scene with us. Hi, Zach. Hi. Wow, that was quick. How do you like that intro? Did you think you'd be sitting there for a while? Yeah, I mean, that might be the quickest a podcast has ever started.

That's what we're doing. We're sort of trying to break down some barriers here and break new ground. I love it. Well, we're revolutionizing podcasting. You said it, not me, but that's what we're doing. I wasn't aware, but yeah, this was history. We made history here. Okay.

Well, you've obviously done more podcasts than I've never hosted a podcast. So what would be like, what would be a more traditional introduction? Typically the guest of a podcast sits there on their phone for about 30 to 35 minutes while the hosts pretend they aren't there. Um, they sort of lay out, uh, the premise of the show. They often sort of, uh, you know, just get into stuff that has nothing to do with what anyone wants to listen to. And then eventually they introduce the guest. So I was planning on having some more phone time, but I can save that for later. It's so true.

I've been on so many podcasts where I'm sitting in the studio with the hosts just sort of waiting for a while. Yeah. Well, I'm just happier here, Zach, because I feel like you're a ringer. You're funny. You're smart. You have like a kind of a cool sort of perspective on the show where you're like of it, but sort of like hovering in some sort of meta way outside of it. Am I creating that in my head? Maybe, but I appreciate it. I always feel like if you like something, I think it's good.

Yeah. I think Zach, if I'm gathering what you're saying, Ben, Zach is always hovering above us. Yes, yes. Zach, Zach, I want Zach's approbation. Absolutely. I agree. Okay.

Do I have a little bit of phone time to look that word up? It means approval. I should have just said approval. Just consider this entire recording phone time. Okay, good. So, Zach, we're going to go through episode two of season one today. Of Severance. Yes.

I know you're on a lot of shows, okay? So like, it's not Fallout, it's not- It's not episode two of fucking Spider-Man. Like, come on, dude. Yeah, I'm ready to talk about it. Before we jump into the episode though, Zach, how did you come to Severance? How did you get cast?

My recollection is I sent in a tape first then i got a call back and at the time i remember i was working on the show the last og and my callback was on a day that i was shooting but they let me leave um in the middle of the day and then come back so i i left and i remember i was sitting in the waiting room and i saw ben walk by and kind of how the podcast started i thought i would have a few more minutes of alone prep time and then ben was just like all right you ready and i was like yeah i guess um and then i went in and read and we we ch a little bit. And then I, as all actors do, assumed nothing would ever come of it and sat in silence for a little bit. And then I showed up, I guess.

Yeah. I mean, what I do remember, Zach, is I said, can you do a little improvising? Do you remember that? And then you did like one take where you kind of like made up some stuff. Yes. I do remember that sort of and i remember talking about that because you were asking me about that and and that is sort of how i i like to work even if we don't end up using it it helps me kind of just like i don't

know like figure out the edges of the character and like figure out what feels good and what doesn't feel good so i do like to kind of like play around with it when i have the chance it's funny because in the show we don't really do a lot of improvising most of the time but i tend to want you to improvise whenever you feel like it because i always feel like you do come up with great stuff it's it's hard to stop me even in context where i am not encouraged to do it it tends to kind of leak out and i actually remember once early on when we were shooting adam i remember you encouraging me because i think i said something like quietly during a rehearsal and you were like you were like you should say that you should say that again and that that sort of helped me like be like okay i can i can kind of

try things here. Oh, cool. Because, yeah, you were constantly saying hilarious stuff that should be in the show. Yeah. And I remember thinking when you read that you were so uniquely right for the part because a lot of people did come in and read for it who were all really good too, but you had this just kind of office humor vibe thing that you were doing that felt very natural and real, but also you had to have a great sense of humor. And I think understanding that, you know, where the space is for the jokes sometimes, even if you're not doing something that's like supposedly a comedy or funny all the time is really important.

And then Adam, I mean, do you want to talk about you doing the part? Sure. Because it's, for me, this was like such a clear idea when I read the script that you should be Mark. Right. And basically, I had talked to you about it already, and then I told Apple, I was like,

hey, we got the guy, it's Adam Scott. And Apple wasn't exactly convinced that you were right for the part. And I said, well, he's definitely right for the part. But like in my mind, the weirdness of this show was that we were developing the show for a platform that didn't exist yet. And so all of it felt a little bit kind of make-believe, like it's sort of like, okay, I guess this is a real thing we're doing. But then they started to like, you know, they started to pay for stuff. And like we had offices and we were building sets and stuff and casting it. And so it's like, all right, we're going to really do this for this unknown platform

that will exist at some point in the future. And there was a long process of talking about other ideas but really had basically was not going to do the show if you weren't going to do it. And I kind of kept saying that to them and they were like, okay, but maybe you think of this actor or maybe you think of that actor. And so then I would think about them and then I'd say, yeah, I thought about them

and I still think Adam's better. And finally, it kind of came down to this moment where we really did have to have this talk with the Apple guys who, you know, and I said, look, this is how I feel. And they were like, well, we're just not sure. And then I was at sort of at a loss. And then I said to them just sort of like without even talking to you, I said like, well, what if the guy read for you? And then I went to you and I was kind of like trepidatious about this because I was just thinking myself in this situation, you know, if somebody said to me like, hey, I want you to do this part. And then like told you the part was yours. And I said, I actually, could you read for the part? And I, but I asked you and you said yes.

Yeah. So just to say right off the bat that Apple has been so great to all of us and to the show, and they've been terrific for me, and this has nothing to do with that. This is just sort of the churn of show business and what happens. Yeah. I mean, this is kind of par for the course in doing what we do is that there's always casting decisions being made and people having points of view and that are really valid a lot of the time.

And sometimes those differences of opinions, I mean, there's so many stories about people who auditioned for something or who was the first choice, who turned it down or the studio liked or didn't like. But I think it's interesting to talk about because you don't really hear these stories that often, but it's just sort of the process of making something. Yeah, and I never held anything against them either because I understand all of that having been a part of this business for a long time. It didn't even phase me really

that it was happening. Yeah, and also I think Apple was, the second they saw the reading, they were like, we totally get it. Right. And that I give them a lot of credit for too because it had been such a long process and I think they really understood,

oh yeah, this is what we didn't see. I mean, again, we've never talked about this publicly before, but I understood why they were feeling this way. Because the first time I read this script, my first instinct was, there's no way I'm going to end up actually doing this. This is too good. And if I was Apple, I would likely be wanting a giant star to play this role, right? So when you came back and said, hey, what if you come and audition? Because I remember the email very well.

And honestly, when I got the email, I was in my trailer, I was hosting a game show. So I was, I remember sitting there thinking, am I in any position to say no thanks to the audition for the, probably the best pilot I've ever read. Right. But that's underselling yourself because obviously you've established your work and you've done so much stuff. And I just want to say as an actor, people do get to a certain place at rightfully so in your career. We go like, it's a thing called offer only where you, when you're casting something that

says next to the name offer only meaning the person won't audition. Yeah. And there are many actors who the name offer only, meaning the person won't audition. Yeah. And there are many actors who consider themselves offer only. And by the way, I understand it because I was an awful auditioner. Yeah. But when you get in that position

where you don't have to audition, of course you don't want to have to do it. So for you to have the lack of an ego to be able to say, or just the awareness of understanding the situation, say like, hey, I want to do this, is I think a very rare thing. And to Apple's credit, we did the reading, and I sent it to them.

And to their credit, they were like, we totally get it, which I was very happy about that we were on the same page, and we got through that. But I have to say, that was one of the reasons that I think almost like a year went by of nothing really happening on the show was because we didn't have you in it. And I give you so much credit for putting yourself in that position and doing that. And I feel like that's sort of for us going forward from that point forward, we were sort of connected in that way too. And it was 100% worth it.

I thought about it for five seconds. It was like, yeah, of course. And here we are. Hey, Zach. What do you think of that story? What do you know about it? Nobody knows that story. Or I had learned most of that. That is fascinating. It's always so interesting to hear about those kind of what ifs and near misses. And then once you see the thing, you can't imagine anyone else doing it you're like of course it's Adam yeah right exactly well that's the thing

and by the way I've been in those situations where you get offered something and you know three people were offered it before you like I had that on Night at the Museum and then I met the director Sean Levy to talk about being in Night at the Museum and he's a really good friend of mine, but he did this whole sales pitch to me

about like how we have to make this movie together. And then I found out after I said yes that he had just come on the movie the day before. Are you serious? That's amazing. That's amazing. So, you know, like everybody, you know, like it's, you have to just take yourself out of it

in that way and kind of just like, if you have an instinct about something, you know, you just start from there and you don't let that other stuff get in your head if you want to do what you want to do 100 of course okay so i'm glad we told that's yeah okay let's take a quick break At Lumen, things are not always what they seem. Mark, Dylan, Helly, and Irving in MDR make a great team, but what else lies beyond the four white walls of their department? There seem to be more questions than answers as the secrets of Lumen are slowly revealed. There's definitely a lot more going on than you see. It's a little bit creepy.

I agree. There are more Q's than A's in this place. Yeah, for sure. But luckily, your workplace doesn't have to be so dysfunctional, thanks to Confluence by Atlassian. I feel like something like Confluence could really help those severed workers, you know? They're kind of always organizing and trying to come up with group ideas and things that need organization and back and forth and a lot of creative interaction in the workspace. Confluence is the connected workspace where teams can collaborate and create like never before, where teams have easy access

to the relevant pages and resources their projects call for, while discovering important context they didn't even know they needed. A space where AI streamlines the things that normally eat up their time, letting teams generate, organize, and deliver work faster. In fact, with Confluence, teams can see a 5.2% average boost in productivity in one year. I think any boost in productivity, especially with a group like the Severed group, imagine how many more files they could complete if they had Confluence. Set knowledge free with Confluence. Learn more at Atlassian.com slash Confluence. That's A-T-L-A-S-S-I-A-N

dot com slash C-O-N-F-L-U-E-N-C-E. For the past three seasons of Gone South, we've covered one story per season. We tried to figure out who killed Margaret Coon. She told me, I'm going to kill you. I said, well, do it, bitch. Go ahead and do it. We delved into the violent world of the Dixie Mafia. I'm an outlaw, and I was a thief, but I'm far from being the psychotic nutcase that I've been made out to be. And we tracked a serial killer in Laredo, Texas. Just turn around, please. Turn around.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Now, Gone South is back for a fourth season. But this time, we're doing things a little differently. So, in Gone South Season 4, we'll be bringing you new stories every week with no end in sight. I'm Jed Lipinski. Welcome back to Gone South, an Odyssey original podcast. Listen and follow now on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes every week.

Half Loop, episode two, we start where we get to kind of dive into getting to know Helly's Audi just a little bit. We're seeing Helly record this message to her innie, and we're starting on the outside and seeing her record this and then being walked by Milchik over to have the actual severance procedure done. That's right. And I remember when I saw the first cut of this calling you and being like, hey, I don't think people are going to buy this, the surgery. Oh, really? That was my biggest note was like, this is crazy. And you're like, no, we had the doctor there. This is how they do it. Like that is what brain surgery more or less is like, right? That's what it looks like. Yes, so the surgeon who is implanting the chip is an actual brain surgeon, VJ, and he was our technical consultant.

And so we would talk to him when we were working on the scripts about how the chip could actually work. You know, the needle, the drill, all those things are real. And Dr. Vijay is doing that. He's doing it as you would in the actual procedure. The nurse in the procedure was our COVID nurse who was in charge, Amanda, who's in charge of keeping everybody safe. Yeah, that sequence, we wanted to show the, you know, the gory details to really get the sense, like, this is like a real surgery that is happening. It's really striking seeing the drill go in and seeing sort of the skull matter kind of

rise up like it's wood or something. When he's drilling, Milchick is standing there saying, slight vibration now. And it's vibrating because he's drilling the back of your skull. Yeah. And also before the surgery, Milchick takes a picture of her and says, I'm very excited to meet you. Always just sort of doing the creepiest thing possible. And then we see Helly kind of go unconscious. And then when she becomes conscious again, we're outside of the door of the hallway,

the exit hallway. And we're sort of picking up in Helly's perspective on the outside of what we saw in episode one where Helly was trying to leave. Right. This was one of my favorite early moments of the show. And I think also for a lot of people like my friends who have watched it, it was this cool moment of the show kind of doesn't hold your hand with some things. You just see something and then you start to go, oh, okay,'re seeing the other side of of what we already saw in the first episode and i remember when i read the scripts i didn't quite like clock how that would play out but then when

i finally saw it it was like a very very cool thing to finally see and i don't know if you guys saw i think a fan made an edit where you could watch they like cut the two things together so you could kind of see it all play out but i do i do love that moment in the in the first couple episodes yeah we were sort of thinking about that when we were doing it to try to keep them in sync as much as possible and then the end of that little sequence is great because like she the elevator door opens and milkshake gives her the white flowers which are the white flowers that heli is holding when you almost hit her with the car right in episode one that's right i never put that together till just now oh really yeah yeah yeah yeah that's interesting that's an experience i've had so many times working on the show by the

way is not putting something together until even a thing that I was part of and was there for, and then you're like, oh, wow, they really, really, really thought about this. Okay, so after we see, oh, this is our first time jumping into the opening credit sequence. Oh, right. So the opening credits are done by a man named Oliver Latta

who lives in Berlin and on Instagram he is called Extraweg and I was driving to work one day when we were shooting and somehow

I don't know how it came up but I got I saw his feed and it was this crazy, just trippy 3D animation of people's brains turning into things and globules going through portals. It's just so weird. His Instagram is maybe the best Instagram account. Yeah.

And I just thought, oh, wow, this guy could really— we were trying to figure out what to do for the opening titles. And I thought maybe this guy might have an idea about it. And so I reached out to him. Yeah. And he had never done any titles before. Yeah. communicated over the course of the next few months. I'd send him images from the set, different ideas of locations and ideas that we wanted to be a part of the opening credits. But then he just kind of went off and did his thing with it. And we had the piece of music that Teddy Shapiro had written. And so he created these animatics, which were like sort of like

rudimentary storyboards that then he started to fill out. And it was just one of those things as we were watching it come together, I was like, this is just, I could watch this over and over and over again. It's so fun and was such a just incredible surprise the first time, the first time, because I just went to a studio and went in one of those things with just like hundreds of cameras all around you and stood there for five minutes while they took my picture. That was all I had to do for it. Right.

They were capturing you for the 3D animation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the cool thing about it too is that it's kind of his – I mean there's something on the show where the production design and the cinematography and the costumes and even the opening credits all kind of feed in to the creative process of making the show. And by that I mean ideas are sort of coming from everywhere.

And so even in season two, there are ideas that were in that opening credit sequence that he created that inform season two images too. And I think that's just part of making the show. Our prop designer, Cat Miller, who is just the most incredible prop person ever, she designed all of the consoles and all of the Lumen hardware and all those things. So it's all a very collaborative effort

and everything is always feeding everything else. Yeah, for sure. And Oliver won an Emmy for his opening credits sequence along with Teddy Shapiro for his music. So after that, we kind of go back to the workstation and Dylan is teaching Helly how they do their job and everything. But he starts showing off all the incentives he's earned from being so good at his job. Zach, how important are these incentives? Yeah, that's a big thing for Dylan. And I remember when I first started working on the show, I didn't ask a ton of extra questions about what we know about Dylan. So early on, this is kind of it. You learn that he is the type of guy who is really obsessed with like hitting his marks at work, basically. And that informed a lot about him to me, especially because there are things that are not really things that we would consider valuable, but to him, they're like the coolest things in the world. So yeah,

that, Oh my God, he loves these. And I will admit the, the caricatures actually are pretty cool. They look pretty awesome. It's kind of great that you weren't asking a lot of questions about Dylan's backstory,

even as an actor, I think at that point, because Dylan is just so in the world of the present. So it's kind of like he never really is even thought about except that you sometimes think about your audi yeah but it's more that he tells himself a story he doesn't really like care about what's true at first he's sort of just like oh yeah it's probably this it's probably this and yeah stays focused on the on the work which is you know if you can say one thing about me when i'm at work i stay focused on the work, which is, you know, if you can say one thing about me when I'm at work, I stay focused on the work. Bro, you are so focused.

It's nuts. Bonding? No. Every day. I always feel like when the phone comes out, I'm like, that's Zach just checking his lines. I know he's just 100%. Absolutely. I don't even have apps on my phone.

I just have Adobe Script. When you first started working with John Turturro, this was like an odd couple to me that was kind of funny because- Oh, totally. Zach, am I wrong to think that in terms of your experience before doing the show, you definitely work a lot and done a lot of stuff, but was it mainly in comedy? Was this a different world for you to be in yeah definitely you know i came up doing like improv and sketch comedy and that's kind of how i started working so this very much was a new thing for me and i did i honestly i i learned a lot from john you know over the course of of making it and we did get along in a in a fun odd couple way pretty immediately i'm like a huge fan of the show monk i don't know if you two have heard me talk about that john is in i think two

episodes of it and so it took me like a week to be comfortable enough to bring it up but then i just started talking his ear off about monk and i was telling him about the show and about they wrote books about his character after the show and he was like i about the show and about they wrote books about his character after the show. And he was like, I didn't even know about that. And I do think that sort of kickstarted our little bond. For me with John, it was I had to wait a couple of weeks to get comfortable as I wanted to talk to him

about all the Spike Lee movies he's been in. And then once that kind of barrier was broken, I just never shut up about it. And I remember just sort of like getting used to the, like you were saying, Zach, getting used to sort of the pedigree of this show we were doing. I remember when I got the job, Ben and I were talking on the phone and you had said generously like, hey, if you have any ideas for actors and stuff for the other roles and for irv i was like hey um yeah i had these an idea i saw someone did a guest spot on billions i thought they were really great um what do you think and i remember you being like oh yeah no that's that's great i was i was maybe thinking john tuturo i okay, yeah, maybe we go with, do that.

Go ahead. Yes, John Turturro. That's probably a good idea. You gotta ask. Just like, oh, shit, this is what we're doing? Oh, my God. Okay. I felt like that when Rachel Tenner, our casting director, said John Turturro to me. Oh, okay. It was her idea. And I was like, okay,

John Turturro. Sure. It's the exact same thing to me. I was like, and she's like, come on. We got to ask him. Wow. And then you went and had like Italian food with John Terti. Well, that's a whole other story. Yeah. About how – and then John's idea that he said, what about – for Bert, he said, what about Chris Walken?

I was like, okay. Yeah. Oh, my God. It's like one thing leads to another. Those two meet in this episode, by the way. Yeah. Okay. So here is also when Mark is teaching Helly about the numbers and how to do –

So Helly is like learning how to refine numbers from Mark while juggling Dylan's weird interjections and Irv getting kind of caught up in the fact that that Mark took the photos away and he can't let go of this and so there's like these

three different things juggling around at the same time right in this scene two favorite moments of mine in that scene are

you getting under the hood of Helly's MDR monitor you're fixing something in the beginning like you're literally something in the beginning. Like you're literally like under like a car fixing a transmission. Yeah, yeah.

Which when I was watching it again, I was like, this is just like, what is he doing? What is he doing? He's making sure the, you know, like the whatever, it's plugged in the right way. And I was under there literally doing nothing. Yeah. But what I love about it is just it's such an image that just, it just feels like, okay, I get what's going on there.

And then the other part of it that I love, actually, this is another theme of favorite scenes that I love. Every scene is Ben's favorite scene. on the desk when you get up, you decide to sit on the desk as like office guy to tell her about like what's going down and like how it works. And there's just something about your posture and the way you sit there that just feels to me so specific to this world and to Mark. It's sort of like sort of condescending substitute teacher energy. Let's take a quick break and when we come back we're going to discuss all the debauchery that goes down at a wild

and crazy lumen melon party. So so before the melon party actually starts we have an icebreaker activity to help heli get a little more ingratiated with the group and it's us sitting in a circle and rolling this red ball back and forth. Whoever gets the ball has to state something about themselves. I remember shooting this scene. It was pretty early on. And watching it back, I was like, this is so weird because we never got to see people without masks on at this point. This is November, December of 2020. And I would

be in this apartment by myself because I was out in New York by myself, go down to my car in the morning, be in a van sealed off by plastic to the driver, get to set, take a COVID test and go up to the room where we were not allowed to be in a room with anyone else with their masks off, sit in your dressing room, then be called down to set with a mask and a plastic thing in front of your face. We would rehearse. And the only time we actually got to take everything off and be with people was when the camera was rolling. So this scene was right in the middle of all that. And I feel like it's present in that scene in some way. Yeah, all that stuff really did sort of add to this quality of surrealness for all of us

that kind of made you feel like you were at Lumen. Like, you know, you were, it was a very, very strange time. I remember that scene as well you know for the same reason yeah i mean and that that lasted the entire shoot yeah i mean this was we started shooting november of uh 20 and we went all the way to like i guess it was like april or may maybe and it never let up no in terms of what the protocols were for that and the testing and, and so many things that everybody was dealing with in their lives. But for us as a cast and crew, there were people who like,

basically you never saw the bottom of their face in the crew that at the end, when we had our wrap party, finally, like in May or June where there was like that first break before everything came back again and masks were off. Yes. And I remember seeing people in the crew that I worked with for nine months and not realizing they looked like that. Yes.

Because I assumed they looked different behind their masks. Totally. Yeah. And how weird mouths were. Yes. Forgot that there's like this chasm at the bottom of faces. Okay. So we're doing this kind of get to know you game.

And then Mark mentions that he broke protocol. Yeah, it's like the evolution of Mark where he's starting to kind of starting to feel some things and starting to maybe take a chance and question authority for a second here. Yeah, I think the little he knows about Heli, I think that kind of pushes him to let this piece of information get out there just to see what happens. So then the melon party actually starts. And Zach, why does Dylan love the melon party so much? I think it's all just, you know, he's just focused on what is so like, that's a nice little treat. here we go this rules melon is good it's tasty i think it breaks up the day you know i think he just really is not that concerned about anything other than what's like right in front of him very carefully selecting his pieces of melon yes which

which became a little bit of a of a of a theme he. He's very particular about what treats he selects. That's right. Then it's time for a group photo. We all get over there and take a couple photos. And then Helly decides it's time for her to go. She's like, I'm just going to quit. This is total bullshit. Previously in the Red Ball game, Milchik had told her about the code detectors in the elevators.

You can't have numbers or letters transferred across severed barriers. She thinks it's bullshit. She gets in the elevator. Immediately, the code detector goes off. Alarm bells go off, and Mr. Grainer is introduced, comes in. Michael Kumpsty as Mr. Grainer comes in. Michael is excellent and so scary. I mean, he has an incredible face.

He does. And he knows how to use it. And he's just a really good actor who just knows how to do very little and be really affecting. And such a gentle, sweet person. It's so nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Grainer pulls Helly out of the elevator and seems ready to punish her. Mark kind of steps in front of her and says, this is my fault. And Grainer's like, fine, come with me. And they walk off together. And we do not know what's going on here. And then we see Mr. Grainer bring Mark to the break room,

but we don't go any further than that. So we have no idea what goes on in the break room at this point. And then we cut to Mark on a date in the Audi world with his sister's midwife or doula, Alexa. They talk about his job at Lumen. Yeah, Nikki James is playing Alexa. Yeah, Nikki is so great.

She's a big Broadway star. Very big Broadway star. And I actually had worked with her. She did a small part in Escape at Dannemora also. That's right. Yeah, the total not intuitness that you have in a date. What's kind of, I think, maddening about Audie Mark is also that he's just sort of like really just going through the motions. And I think as an audience, I thought about it when we were making it.

How are we going to connect with Audie Mark? And I didn't ever want us to have to like try to make him sympathetic. Yeah. Because it felt to me like you're just like in a really dark place yeah and it was important not to try to make him someone that we necessarily had to sympathize with yeah and the scene i thought was pretty like you get that in the scene yeah for sure he's kind of being a little bit rude and. And then when they go outside and come across the whole mind collective passing out flyers, Mark goes up to them and confronts them and is just an asshole.

And he's drunk. He gets drunk. And the drinking was, I think also an important part of what's going on with him in the first season. Hey man, you want to benefit off forced labor. Hey man,

forced labor. Fucking really? Yeah. Forced labor. Really? Okay, so people can just like self-imprison. Are you captive right now? No, seriously, because your past self chose to walk you down here to be an infantilizing prick to people.

Severance of subjugation, asshole. Oh, oh, that's nice language for it. What are you, 12? Are you 12 years old? Are you even in high school yet? I will just say, I do love hearing you both talk about these other scenes because it's such a different world.

Like, I didn't even interact with Audi World for so much of the season that I love hearing about all this stuff because I was in that little uh low ceiling basement were you reading these parts of the script I was I was reading everything but I would I always say about this show more than any other the experience of reading it and even being there shooting it there's such a gap to when you finally see it like it really comes alive when you see it in a way other things i've worked on it's felt more similar to the experience of making it so even though i was reading it once i finally saw this stuff and

then now learn more about it i am always a little like oh whoa there's so much more there than i even picked up on. Yeah, it's interesting because it's sort of like the amalgam of all the different things that are going on in the show too. Yeah. Okay, so this date does not go well, obviously. He yells at the whole nine collective kids and Alexa is clearly embarrassed. Got to Mark at home after blowing it on the date and Mrs. Selvig comes over and knocks on the door

visiting Mark super late at night. With cookies. With chamomile cookies. Tells a weird story about her late husband who promised to build a house in the afterlife for them. Then she says, I have the blueprints in my bag. That she has with her. First of all, you know, we're trying to figure out who Mrs. Selvig is in relation to Cobell at this point. And, you know, Patricia is so funny. I know she had this idea in her head of wearing that scarf. Patricia and I are the same age-ish and we come from the same generation and the show, I know the show in her head, she mentioned Bewitched that there's something like kind of witchy about Selvig

and also there was like a neighbor in Bewitched, I think it was Mrs. Kravitz who used to come over and was always snooping. Anyway, that was something she was influenced by. And then she had like sort of the Valerie Harper from Rhoda and anybody of a certain age will know that that look is what she was going for. And yeah, and then, you know, she was kind of just like – again, it's like we're trying to figure out what Selbig is wanting to learn here, what she's really all up to.

Is she obsessed with Mark himself or is she just surveilling him? Like what is going on? The next day, Mark decides, I'm going to take the day off and go down this potential rabbit hole and go see this Petey guy. Yeah, which is interesting because, like, Audi Mark and Innie Mark are both sort of being prompted to step outside of their comfort zone in different ways. That's right, by these new figures in their lives. Yeah.

And this is also a fun opportunity to see MDR, you know, with Mark gone, it seems that Dylan is kind of stepping up into a quasi-leadership role. Yeah, I think he takes the chance to kind of be the big dog. Also, he spends a lot of this early part of the show sort of like not quite trying to undermine Mark, but pushing him on his leadership. Oh, totally. And so now that he's out, it's like, okay, well, let's see what I can do. Yeah. Also, Dylan in MDR tells Helly that he believes their job has to do with cleaning the sea floor.

And Zach, do you remember that was the audition scene? Yes. Yeah, yeah, I do. That one was really burned into my brain by the time we got around to it. And I do think that is such a big part of Dylan's character is stories he tells himself about what the outside world is like. That's like a huge part of what he does down there.

Like these fables he's created, like his persona. And talking about his Audi and what he must be like. It's very important to Dylan. He's big into self-mythologizing and, yeah, just telling a story about the outside world that makes him inside feel important, I think. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Later, Irving is admiring an oil painting at the Wellness Center waiting room,

and Bert enters, played by Christopher Walken. Heard of him? The head of optics and design. I mean, this is what the term meet cute was invented for. I mean, this is just lovely in every way. It is, and Dan wrote this beautiful scene of them sort of appreciating the art. Yeah. And it introduces the idea of the art that hangs the job was sitting there when we weren't shooting

and just watching them get a kick out of each other. They were like laughing all day, telling insane stories about, because between them, they've worked with everyone and on everything, you know, so just that was like such a fun part of the job was just sitting there and watching them giggle, basically. They really do have such a special dynamic. Yeah. Ms. Gacy interrupts the Irving Burt flirtation and calls Irving in for his wellness session. We can listen to a clip here.

Your Audi likes films and owns a machine that can play them. Your Audi is splendid and can swim gracefully and well. I'm sorry. Please try to enjoy each fact equally and not show preference for any over the others. That's ten points off. You have 90 points remaining. Points? Please don't speak.

Great. And that's so, again, Dan Erickson ideas and dialogue. Yes. It's just so interesting and fascinating. And you start to think, oh, wow, if someone being told these little snippets about their outside life, which, as you were saying, Zach, Dylan doesn't know anything and they just can imagine things. So it's almost a reward or a

treat for them to be told some reality about or supposed reality about their outside life. And we do lay some actual facts in there that down the line we learn about. Yeah. Your Audi likes the sound of radar. That's one that I particularly like. Yep. Deach and Lockman is playing Ms. Casey, who is absolutely incredible. Yeah. I remember her self-tape audition that she sent in was just fantastic. And I remember thinking, this person seems like they're just from another planet or something. On the outside world,

Mark goes to the address that Petey gave him. He finds an abandoned greenhouse. Petey's there waiting for him. And that was another thing to decide on the day, like when we were doing the scene. Like, Mark still needs to be skeptical of this guy. He drove all the way out here but it's still outlandish the shit this guy's saying but then he plays that tape and Mark is pretty much

in at that point yeah and I think also there could be an argument that whatever sort of permeates the severance barrier yeah whether it's friendship, love, affection, the things that would make people friends, maybe somehow there's an instinctual thing that you trust them enough to want to take them to your house. Continually approached by the show of is this something that can be affected by your brain and barriers of any kind. Right, right. What is that? What is the essence of that? But then you guys end up going back to your basement, right? Yep. He sleeps in the basement there.

Yep. And Hallie finally figures out refining in the sense that she does get scared by some of the numbers. She says they were scary. The numbers were scary. And Britt's fantastic, of course, in the scene. talking about that bert's a you call him a fuck yes yes oh yeah yeah dylan is uh has bought into the you know we don't we don't know if it's real but this sort of propaganda slash mythology of his department is uh is dangerous and then we see you also at the vending machine trying to choose what you want to uh eat at some point too which I think is like we sort of have a little runner like Dylan can't choose the melon ball. He can't choose which shriveled raisins or which snack he wants to get.

Which I think sort of in some ways connects to why he likes these rewards. He likes to be given a thing, but choices may be too much sometimes. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah. That's like's interesting. Yeah, yeah. That's like overload almost. Yeah.

It's sort of like the rat in the cage that doesn't want to leave his environment. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So back at the basement, Petey ignores a phone call on his cell phone and then starts having reintegration sickness and his nose begins bleeding

and suddenly there are two of him in the bathroom and that's a crazy sequence yeah he starts hallucinating and starts seeing himself in the shower and start it's we start to see his realities are you know kind of intermingling and his office reality and his outie. And we wanted to play around with different ways of doing that, which we continue on in the next episode in terms of the language of that. And yeah, and then that's it. That's the end of the episode. We don't know what's happened as Petey sort of like goes still in the bathtub on the floor. That's right. Zach, you now have more phone time.

I can't wait. I can't wait. I can't wait to get back on my phone. Thank you for doing this, Zach. Thank you for hanging out for so long. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah, it's good to see you, man. Next up is episode three in perpetuity. Stream all episodes of season one on Apple TV Plus right now. And season two, again, premieres January 17th, 2025.

I have to say episode three is one of my favorite episodes. Is it? Yeah. Wow. Huge surprise from Ben Stiller. Late breaking news. I'm a huge fan of one through nine.

No way. The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott is a presentation of Odyssey, Pineapple Street Studios, Red Hour Productions, and Great Scott Productions. If you like the show, be sure to rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts, the Odyssey app, or your other podcast platform of choice. Our executive producers are Barry Finkel, Henry Malofsky, Jenna Weiss-Berman, and Leah Reese

Dennis. The show is produced by Zandra Ellen and Naomi Scott. This episode was mixed and mastered by Chris Basil. We have additional engineering from Javi Crucis and Davy Sumner. Show clips are courtesy of Fifth Season. Music by Theodore Shapiro. Special thanks to the team at Odyssey, Maura Curran, Eric Donnelly, Michael LeVay, Melissa Wester, Matt Casey, Kate Rose, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Shuff. And the team at Odyssey... And the team at Red Hour... And at Great Scott, Kevin Cotter, Josh Martin,

and Christy Smith at Rise Management. We also had additional production help from Gabrielle Lewis, Ben Goldberg, Stephen Key, Kristen Torres, Emmanuel Hapsis,

Marie-Alexa Cavanaugh, and Melissa Slaughter. I'm Adam Scott. I'm Ben Stiller. And we will see you next time. Hey, Adam. Yeah? Is your experience at work a bit dysfunctional lately?

I don't know. I think it's... It's... Okay, I'll take that as a yes. Your team could undergo a highly controversial surgical procedure that would mercifully sever any and all memories of that work experience from your home lives. Or, you could try Confluence by Atlassian. Oh my god, well, if it's a choice between those two things, I think I would 100% choose Confluence by Atlassian. Confluence is the connected workspace where teams can collaborate and create like never before. Where teams have easy access to the relevant pages and resources their projects call for

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Well, I'm doing the math in my head right now as we speak, and I think that's great. So why not keep your team unsevered in Confluence, the connected workspace where teams can do it all. Set knowledge free with Confluence. Learn more at Atlassian.com slash Confluence. That's A-T-L-A-S-S-I-A-N dot com slash C-O-N-F-L-U-E-N-C-E.