Transcript of S1E6: Hide and Seek (with Geoff Richman)

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. Hi, I'm Ben Stiller. I'm Adam Scott. And this is the Severance podcast with Ben and Adam, where we break down every single episode of Severance. Today, we're recapping Season 1, Episode 6, Hide and Seek, written by Amanda Overton and directed by Efa McArdle.

Ben, before we jump in, how are things? I'm feeling good. I'm feeling good. I feel like we're at episode 6, so we're going to the the back half of the season here as we retrace our steps and our experience as we explore the past, the recent past, that in a weird way, having been working on season 2, I feel like we're a little bit disconnected from the process of making Season 1.

I feel like Season 2 is so fresh in my mind. But I think what I'm excited about today is that we have our editor, Jeff Richmond, with us, who I consider to be a repository of all knowledge and memories, and he just has a mind that just will remember everything that happened. Yeah, Jeff is incredible. And I got to say, there were a couple of moments. I feel similarly that it's been so long since we made season one and we're really deep into it, that there were a couple of moments watching this Hide and Seek where I just got really excited.

I had forgotten these big moments and these rousing moments and us all walking down the hall together. It's all these relatively... When you look at the macro, it's a relatively small moment and small move. But in this world, it's a huge deal. And I just got so excited for these characters, and it's just been fun going through it. We're at episode 6 now, which means we're getting closer and closer to season 2 coming out, which is exciting. January 17th. Yeah, that's right. Very exciting. And Jeff is here. And just by way of introduction, Jeff and I met because we did Escape at Danamora together. Jeff has been nominated for an Emmy three times, twice for Severance, and another time for Tiger King, which I didn't even realize Ries.

Wow. Jeff, when did you do Tiger King? That was... Oh, my God. The years are blurring together. I've just said you have an incredible memory and you're a repository for all knowledge. This is me putting the kibosh on that right away, so we don't have to.

I came on to the Tiger King was being edited for years, and I came on in the last, I don't know, handful of months of the edit. It was the end of 2019 that I was working on Tiger King. Jeff, I met you when we started doing Escape at Danamora, but you have done a lot of projects over the years as an editor.

You have worked in documentaries a lot. You edited The Cove, correct? Yeah, that's right. Academy Award-winning documentary that I think is one of the best documentaries I've seen, Fisher Stevens, produced. I was very happy when we met, and I I think it was Fisher, and you worked also with Mike Berbiglia. Yeah, that's right. The two of them. Both Fisher and Mike recommended you when we were doing Escape, and we've been working together pretty much ever since. Could you explain to people what it is, what your responsibilities as an editor are for people who don't know how it works and putting together a show? Basically, it's the last step in the storytelling process where we're taking the writing, the performances, the camera work, the lighting, the sound effects, the music, and putting it all together so that the story unfolds in the best way possible.

That's the simple version, but then there's the side of editing that's hard to describe even while you're doing it, which is the effect of putting shots together in a certain order with a certain rhythm or putting scenes in a certain order that creates a feeling that was never there before. That's the process. It's finding the best way to put these performances and these scenes in an order that creates the feeling that you're going for so that you're invested with the characters and that you're feeling what they're feeling and you're absorbed in the world of the story. Yeah. So you're either creating something that wasn't there or replicating something that was there and making sure it feels how you guys want it to feel and look and everything. It's taking everything, gathering it and turning it into one essentially.

Yeah. I mean, that's a big part of the thing is you read something on the page and you feel something when you're reading it, and then you put it up on screen in a certain way, and it just doesn't have the feeling that you want.

I'll make it the part of the process is discovering the ways to cut it so that it brings out the feeling that you're trying to go for. Some of that is trial and error. It's this weird, mysterious effect of juxtaposing shots or scenes in a certain way that just creates creates a spark or a feeling that you just can't always predict. That's the fun part of the process. The director-editor relationship, I think, is such a specific and unique one. I think when you're making something as a director, in the beginning, it's three phases.

You have the prep where you're getting ready to shoot that goes on for months and months and months. Then you have the shooting period, which goes on for months and months and months. Then you have the editing period, which also It goes on for a long time. During those different phases, as a director, you're bonding, I think, with different people in the process along the way. In the prep phase, I find you're bonding with a production designer. For first because you have to really be talking about these environments and these sets and the look of what you're going to be filming. Then as you go into shooting, you're really connecting with your cinematographer because you have to work every day together to get these shots. Then finally, when you finish shoot, you are in the room with the editor, and that's the final phase where you are putting it all together, as you were saying. And that relationship is just so... I think it's a very sensitive one, at least from my point of view, because you're in a room. And by the way, post-COVID, we did a lot of editing remotely on the show, where I'd be home, you'd be home, and we'd be going through a server, but we wouldn't be in the same place.

But we've gotten used to editing remotely But you have to have, first of all, the ability just to be with somebody for a long period of time. That's one of the main things, right?

Yeah. It's a very intimate, safe place. I mean, especially for you coming from set where it's just a lot of stress and there's a ticking clock all the time. I think the editing room just is this place where you can put that aside and just focus on trying different things and experimenting documenting, and it's okay to mess up. It's just a different comfort level that I think that you have in the editing room. It's where you're aiming to get to when you're making a movie or a show.

You're aiming to get to the editing room, at least how I feel. You want to arm yourself with enough pieces, shots, to create scenes and sequences so that when you get to the editing room, the editor will look at you and go, Okay, I had a lot of fun playing around with this. You don't want the editor to look at you and go like, I wish I had a shot of Mark opening that door. When you're making it, too, you'll call up sometimes when you see the dailies or say, Hey, I didn't see a shot of Mark opening the door. And then, Oh, yeah, we didn't get that. We have to get it. But for me, it really is my favorite part of the process. I think sitting in an editing room with you working on something that we've been working on with no time pressure that you have on a set of other... How having 150 people on the clock and all those things. It's a very, like you said, warm space. I think it's so much fun to put this stuff together and to figure out what the feeling is of the scene and the music and the performance and going through performance and figuring out the pacing and the tone and all of that stuff is really what we spend a lot of time doing.

What is it about this particular director, editor, their relationship? Why does it work so well? For me, I think it's like there is something that you just gain by working together for a certain number of years, like a level of trust in the other person's... You have the similar sensibilities, so you develop a shorthand. There's also the trust in knowing that you can go down different roads and that you're all still going towards the same place. You're all working on the same film or the same show, the same story. There's a connection that allows you to be a little bit more free and experiment more so that when Ben says he's thinking of a scene in a certain way, I assume he knows that I know what he means by that. I'm speaking for you now, but it doesn't scare you if you see five out of the six things not hitting the mark because it's like you understand what that the intention is there and that we're speaking the same language.

Yeah. That process, I think, is so important to try things. When you're in sync with each other, it's great, but you're also questioning each other, too. Those questions can be talked about in theory, or you can just try them. I've always been much better at just trying something as opposed to talking about the theory of like, Well, maybe we shouldn't cut to Mark opening the door there because it'd be more interesting to see Cobell just watching him. You could talk about that for five minutes, or Jeff could just literally do it in five seconds, and then you can look at it and see. A lot of editors I found like to talk about stuff or theorize. For me, it's like, Well, let's just actually do it. The one thing I'll say about you, Jeff, without embarrassing you or anything, but technically, what I think is so amazing about Jeff is he's so technically proficient and creatively thoughtful that I'm thinking about an idea in a creative way, but Jeff knows how to translate that technically into trying these incredibly complicated things sometimes in terms of music and sounds and imagery. Now Teddy and Jeff have been working together for five years on the show now, too.

They really have a great shorthand and way of Teddy being able to deliver music Jeff being able to separate out some of the tracks, they're called stems, and he can use maybe just one element or take out maybe the low-end sound, or there's some other instrument that he can experiment with to create a feeling. You and Teddy have this other relationship where you're trusting each other and are creatively aligned as well. Yeah.

That is the same thing. It's built up over time. It's like he can a cue that maybe isn't working the way that we want it to for the scene.

It's easy to have a conversation where it's not like, this doesn't work, this doesn't work. It's more like just talking about where it falls apart, and there's an instant understanding. Like, oh, I get what you're saying. Oh, yeah, it was working up to this point. And by saying this is where it falls apart, I completely understand now what's not working and what you're actually going for. That's a Just a synchronicity that's built up over time. And a lack of ego, too, I think in the work, because at this point, we all are headed towards the same goal.

There's no question about whether somebody's doing something that's good or not. We're all just trying to work towards the same end. But Jeff, you have always wanted to be an editor. Just before we start talking about the episode, I'm just curious how you came to this and what made you want to do this. I did. I was editing Getting together like movies with two VCRs in my bedroom growing up.

I went to NYU Film School and entering the film school, I would have had this idea of I'll direct and write. But then very quickly, I just started editing my own films and my friend's films and just being an editor. By the time I came out of school, that's all I was doing. I remember the two VCR editing. That was really hard. Getting the record and the play pause and hitting it so that they start.

Yeah. One of the first things I ever edited that I showed to people after I was a kid, I did that when I was about 20 years old on two VCRs.

I mean, we lived in that era. I mean, it's the severance era, really, right? I mean, in terms of the technology a little bit. Where you see the little glitch on every cut because it doesn't...

What do you think is the most important thing to as an editor?

What is the most important element of being a good editor in your mind? I think the biggest thing you learn over time is the process.

It's like the film and the project could be different drastically, but the process stays the same. Where it's like you have to know that it's okay not to know where you're going. That's like you have to keep trying different things. You keep building the parts, you're putting together in the way that you think works best in that moment, knowing that when you put it together, you're just going to discover what doesn't work about it and then move forward from there. I think the more you do it, the less disheartened you get when things are not playing the way you wanted them to, because that's the process.

And that's what it is. By the way, I feel like that's very akin to what directing is, too, is being aware in the moment of what's working and what isn't working and adjusting from there. I also think you think as a writer, as an editor, too, a lot. I mean, you're very aware, besides just the technical aspects of how a scene is working or not, just in terms of the story. I think that's incredibly important as an editor of movies or television shows, of being able to track the story and really where you are in the story affects what the scene is in terms of how you play the scene, in terms of pacing, in terms of the choices of what the scene feels like. All of that is fit in into a context that's already there that really affects what that scene is going to be.

Oh, my context is everything. You can have a scene that's brilliantly put together that falls completely flat if it's in the wrong context. It's all about the structure of the episode or whatever. Every scene is handing off a feeling to the next scene, and that plays a huge part in the process.

Yeah, just to reiterate what Ben was saying, Jeff, is I found that you're so creatively engaged in the show that going into season 2, just having general story conversations, it was always additive and valuable to have you be a part of those conversations, too, because you just have such a sense of the big macro view of the show, but also just the feelings inside the show and how it looked, just everything. So, yeah, you're a huge part of it.

It was really fun to be part of those conversations.

As an editor, that's an advantage also in a way, because you're experiencing everything without the context of the conversations on set and seeing what's going on. You're just getting this raw footage and knowing what the script is, and you're looking at it and going, I'm like, Okay, is this making sense for me? Not being in those conversations and being a part of that making of it. That's really important because you're really the audience. You're the first audience.

Yeah, it doesn't matter how much money or time time was put into a shot. It's either it works or it doesn't work. And so you see that as soon as you put it in.

Which can be very frustrating sometimes when you put a lot of time and money into a shot and Jeff is like, Yeah, but it doesn't work. Yeah. And Jeff, before we jump into the episode, was there anything particularly challenging about episode 6 that you remember when you guys were cutting it together?

I think it's actually what we were just talking about. It's like finding the right sequence to create that build. When you look at episode 6 now, It's like it seems like a pretty straight line for certainly the first half of the episode and then the second half, it's just like everything feels like it organically hands off from one thing to the next. But I remember me and Erica, the other editor on the show, that was I think we worked a lot at trying to find the right order of things and the right way to present things so that it has that effect.

Yeah, I think it's important to talk about that, too, as we go along, because for people who are fans of the show or and you see it and you go, Okay, I really like that show, just to know that the process on making something like this, it's not simple always, and there's a lot of trial and error. I think something can be written really well, but when you actually see it filmed and you do the scene, sometimes in a show like this where the tone is always something that we're defining and the story we're trying to be both mysterious and also move it forward, that you You have to figure that out as you go along, and it can be a messy process sometimes in terms of creatively, which is okay.

And we'll be right back. At Lumen, things are not always what they seem. Mark, Dylan, Heli, Lee 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 Qs than As in this place.

Yeah, for sure.

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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 at to be.

And we tracked a serial killer in Laredo, Texas.

Just turn around, please.

Turn around.

Now, Gone South is back for a fourth season. But this time, we're doing things a little differently. In Gone South Season 4, we'll be bringing you new stories every week with no end in sight. I'm Jed Lepinsky. Welcome back to Gone The 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.

Okay, so we begin episode 6 in the home of Mrs. Selvig. We learn that she's living in the basement and in a very austere, a '50s military hospital-like bed. We see this shrine, the shrine to Keir, which this was fun because a lot of fans have really pulled out the specifics of what's in this shrine. This was Kat Miller, our props master. At the time, also Jeff Mann was involved in this in terms of creating what this would be and what information we would give the audience, not really knowing that people would delve so deeply into this, but hoping people would. But some of the things that are in the shrine, Adam?

Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff. There a portrait of Cure. There is a canister of Lumen industry's topical salve. There's a photo of a young Cobell outside the Myrtle Egan School for Girls. There are framed awards that Cobell won for being the the Most observant and for best use of mealtime condiments. A tube that says Charlotte Cobell, Date of birth 31744. A model of a building, an old Lumen poster that's a visual depiction of work-life balance that also says, Imagine yourself as a seesaw. Do not allow yourself to snap between the weight of your stressful and unbalanced life.

Isn't that something you say to her in that first episode?

Yeah, I say- When you're doing the intake with her? I'm trying to get back on track with Heli, and I say, Imagine yourself as a seesaw, and then she grabs the book away from me.

Right. Right. Yeah.

So this is all really interesting. The tube, I think it's a tube, like a breathing tube, but then wrapped around it is a hospital bracelet that says Charlotte, cobalt, DO be 31744. So we don't know exactly who this is, although obviously they have the same surname as Harmony.

Yeah. There's some interesting little tidbits in that shrine You get the sense that this is her private space where she prays and where she meditates on her connection to Keir. At the same time as we're seeing all that, we're also getting this call from Greener, who's letting her know that he's tracked the chip to ragabi. Then we're kicked off into the episode. I feel like Cobell's secret life or her personal life is something that... To me, it's always interesting what her actual home life is, why is she being Mrs. Selvig? It's something that we don't ever really give too many clear answers to. I think it's important, though, that you know that what she's doing is obviously something that's her own mission. I think we get the feeling that she's doing this outside of what her her actual official duties are.

It does seem like she's living down in this space, right? Does that mean that everything up above is somewhat of a model home, just somewhat of a performance as Selvig, and this is her real living space?

That was my feeling, is that this is an interesting reveal that she's created this very almost esthetic, simple, almost monk-like situation down there. Obviously, we've seen the kitchen upstairs, which is a mess, so she's not really... That's right. I think, yeah, why would she be living alone in that townhouse in the basement other than that's where she feels most comfortable? I think we're trying to tell the audience something about her inner life and her private devotion to Keir and to Lumen in a way, too. I mean, it's Lumen and Keir are connected, but I think that's also a question that comes up during the season is her devotion to Keir versus her devotion to the company or her loyalty to the company, which is an interesting question that we're always thinking about. I guess tonally, when you go from something like this to the next scene, just in terms of transitions, and I think that's something that is really important in the editing of a show or a movie, are the transitions. This transition that goes from here to then Mark finding going to the phone in his basement. In a way, the transition there is almost like a corollary from basement to basement.

Do you think about that, Jeff? You want to talk about just the difference in types of transitions that we do in the show?

Yeah, of course. It's all about trying to feel like you're in a run of an idea. So go Bell in the basement, and then the next scene we see is Mark in the basement just has this feeling of connective tissue. They're completely different scenes, and we're We're following completely different threads, but there's just this feeling of connection. Then when Mark drives off for work, we arrive at Lumen, and it feels like it's handing off to this early morning meeting in the ficus room with Bert and Irving. I remember us trying lots of different combinations in that sequence of scenes up through the kitchenette scene. Because the Bert and Irving scene, you actually used to fall later in the episode and just figuring out a way to enter the story as this creepy moment with cobel, and then we had to reconnect with the phone story thread and then feeling like we're just starting the day. We pulled up Bert Nerving early because it just felt like an early meeting. Then once we're in the kitchenette, that kicks us off on this very straight line of where's Ms. Casey to the confrontation with Gobel and all that comes after it.

Putting Bert and Irving earlier served a couple of purposes, both tonally and just what it provided for the other scenes. Don't forget the actual the Gobel scene used to be the end of episode 5, actually.

Oh, right.

That's right.

Yeah. We had such a great moment in the O&D with Dylan and Irving arriving there. That became the end of the episode, and that bumped cobalt to the next episode, which when you watch it now, it's like, oh, obviously, it's such a great, creepy cold open. But that was not the original placement of that scene.

That's right.

That's right. That's something that we do quite often is order scene sometimes, or sometimes take a scene from one episode and maybe put it into another. I mean, it doesn't happen a lot, and it's never really the plan, but that is part of this process of telling a whole story over the course of a season. It's again, coming back to that thing of even if something on the page seems like, Okay, that's the end. That's the cliffhanger to the next episode. If it doesn't quite feel right, we have that ability, especially since we're editing all the episodes before we put the whole thing out, that we can still look at everything as a whole and go, Wait a minute. It feels like in five and six here that we're missing something to draw people to the next episode, or there's too much information here. That's something that you have to feel free to try and do. I had not thought about that, too, but I remember that was a big deal for us.

That produced one of the best cues that Teddy ever wrote, which is that coming off of Bert's face, that like, da, da, da. It's such a great cue that we use other places now. That was because there was such a feeling of they come to O&D and that feeling of just arriving there, this new space, and that kicks off the credits, and it just felt great.

I always come back to that. It's like one of the obvious things that I learned, even working with you on Dan Amora, is just how important it is to have the end of the episode want to lead you into the next episode. Whatever that version of a cliffhanger or just thought or idea that you want the answer to is going to just pull you to the next to want to watch it again.

I will just say real quick that I think the kitchen scene is really important because it's the first time Dylan really flags something going on between Mark and Haley. You really see Haley's behavior towards Mark really taking him aback. I feel like it's the moment where elementary school feelings like, I don't know what this is, but I like it a lot, thing.

Yeah, she's paying attention to you. She's flirting with you, but tomboy in a way. It's so obvious.

Dylan's like, Dude, what's going on?

Yeah, she's full on firebrand, Helle, and it's exciting. She says the impression of you is like, That sounds just like me. Yeah.

Then her saying, Praise Keir on the way out the door is just the cherry on top. Just like, Oh, he's completely caught up in this.

Yeah. She gets you a little bit riled up to then go and see Cobell. Right. Then you're like the kid in the classroom who started to feel his Oats a little bit, and then you get put right back in your place when you go in to see Cobell.

I push way too hard with Cobell, and it blows up in my face a little bit.

Yeah. Then I love that he gets in trouble. Then Mark goes to Cobell's office because of, I guess, the bad behavior in the last episode, and she's giving him this lecture on accountability. And Mark, you're starting to feel... I think this is, to me, in a way, I feel like this episode is about the radicalization of Mark S.

For sure. And feelings for Haley start coming more to the surface.

But let's take a listen to this scene where O'Bell reams you out in her office.

It's not your job to play a nurse made to every new refiner. Okay, so what is my job? Are you really asking me that? Yeah. What is it we actually do here? We serve here.

You Child.

And until you get that through your mildude little brain and hit quota, MDR's hallway privileges are hereby revoked. So get your little ass back to your desk and stay there until you're told to move.

Wow. Yeah. What I remember about that scene when we were editing it, Jeff, is that it was such an intense moment and looking at Adam's reactions, that Adam, you were so sensitive and you're almost on the verge of tears. It's almost like a kid being yelled at by an adult, by a parent or a teacher. For me, I think we all probably have memories as a kid when something like that happened to you and you still feel it to this day. Totally. I thought you did such a great job with that.

I agree. I mean, those reaction shots were just so impactful, so intense. I mean, those reaction shots change the trajectory of the story. That is the moment. I mean, all the scenes that come after it and things that come after that, you could point to this moment as a turning point, and the reaction shots was just so strong.

Yeah, but I remember also just trying to figure out the modulation of it because if it was a full radicalization, it would be a little soon because it's episode 6, right? So it needed to be, like you said, Ben, it needed to be this admonishment from a parent. So by the time he gets back to the office, he gels at Irving for what happened. Exactly. What happens. It's a seesaw, for a lack of a better term. He's ebbing back and forth in his allegenses and his mixed feelings about this place and isn't quite sure, but ultimately makes the decision he makes, but he's not fully in on-Not fully.

No, but I think across the episode, it starts to happen more and more. And I really do feel that moment is so much of a metaphor for how the chain of command works somewhere. We see you getting yelled at by your boss, and then you go back and you yell at Irving. It's so clear that you're reacting to the humiliation that you just experienced from her and then passing it along. Totally. That always, for me, was such an illuminating moment of how that works.

You see Irving react to me, and he's startled and It feels terrible. It's interesting.

Yeah. Then you take that in and then you change your attitude a little bit.

Yeah.

Then there's that moment where they all head to O and D and the music kicks in.

It's a great cue.

It's a great cue. I remember we discovered that, Jeff, didn't we? In terms of the structuring of the episode, that was one of the things that we were playing around with.

Yeah. We actually tried a lot of different music there and then ended up just like nothing was living up to the moment. Teddy had to write a brand new cue that is just fantastic.

It's great.

Just for that moment.

It's great. It's almost like a... It's very percussive, and it's almost like a marching. I think, of course, then they go in and discover the back room area that Irving had peaked we had before. This is where we begin to see the organization of the two departments making contact with each other, even though they're both very skeptical of the other. And I really love just when they're talking about what they're doing, their own questions about what they're doing, the O&D people. And Chris Walken is just so great as their leader. You want to take a listen to that? Yeah.

Go on, Shirley. You must have some questions for them. So it's called MacroData Refinement?

What do you refine?

Is that a watering can? We think it might be supplies for the executive weighing upstairs. Then again, last week's output had more of an aggressive feel. The hatchets weren't aggressive. Hatchets.

We've been trying to figure out how it all fits together. We found a department the opposite way from here that's, well, raising baby goats.

Raising Baby Goats. Raising Baby Goats?

Just listening to that, I'm taken by how much space and air there is between lines. We're not exactly a Howard Hawks movie on the show.

Yeah. That's Rachel Addington as Elizabeth and Claudia Robinson as Felicia. They're both great. Yeah.

And then so while that's happening, Dylan sneaks off and steals a little card from one of the areas they've been making stuff, and it looks like an instructional illustration from maybe a CPR or Heimlich maneuver poster or something, but instead it seems almost vaguely violent. How to whip your arms around landing in a businessman's storm.

That's very weird.

Jeff, do you have any theories about what that is, what that card means?

What I was thinking while we were editing this is that it almost feels like Lumen's building an army. They're making hatchets and there's instructions on self-defense or something, and it has a weird militant vibe to it.

Yeah, but yet they're dressed like businessmen in the cards.

Yes. I mean, everything is weird with Lumen.

I remember shooting this scene. I had this little speech at the end of the scene, and I was a little unsure about it. I just wasn't sure how to attack it and how to do it. So I asked if I could go last because we go through and shoot everyone's singles throughout the day. You just pop each person off throughout the day. And I usually like to go last because I like to get as many runs at it before I'm on camera by myself saying my lines. And so John thinks I'm crazy for wanting to do that because he likes to go early so he can have it be fresh and stuff. But I like to wait.

I have I would say that's an interesting... Obviously, I know you like it that way because we've been doing it for a while. It's interesting because I think for me, if I did that, it's a little bit risky sometimes, I think, for me, because I feel like sometimes you're out of gas by the end, too. Not you, me. But you seem to do well with that.

Oh, no, it's backfired a few times, that's for sure.

But with this- It's a strange thing with that, isn't it? It is weird.

It's rolling the dice a little bit, especially with a scene like this, because there are so many people to get singles of. But I was also freaked out because Christopher Walkin was there, and I had this speech that wasn't long or anything, but it had to have a certain quality to it, and I wasn't sure how to do it. But throughout the day, we were doing it over and over again, and I finally thought I figured it out. And finally, we do it and the scene is over. And I remember feeling like it was okay, but I wasn't sure. And Walkin walked by me. He walked behind me as he was passing me. And as he did, he just grabbed my elbow and gave it a squeeze and kept going. And that was everything. That was all I needed. It was incredible. Just the best. That's the best. Yeah.

Yeah, that's the best. All right. Well, that feels like a good place to take a break. We'll be right back after this.

Severance examines the relationship between employers and employees and the concept of separating one's work self from their outside of work self. Our partner, ZipRecruiter, connects companies with people who are looking for a job they actually enjoy, not one they just want to forget about at the end of each day. So what if Lumen used ZipRecruiter to connect with potential employees? Ziprecruiter would have to find candidates with very unique skillsets, like grouping numbers into buckets. Ziprecruiter is the hiring site employers prefer the most. Let ZipRecruiter connect you with the right talent for all your roles. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. No special skills or security badges needed. Just go to ziprecruiter. Com/severance to try ZipRecruiter for free. Again, that's ziprecruiter. Com/severance. S-e-v-e-r-a-n-c-e. Ziprecruiter, the smartest way to hire.

Basically, Milchick shows up after that in the back room at O&D, and then you guys all get in trouble with Cobell, and she sings to you, which is one of my favorite Patricia moments. She sings the Keir him to you in a way that's meant to be punitive. Then later, hums as she's comforting the baby. Oh, that's even weirder. Yes. I mean, that's full on hand that rocks the cradle. Yeah. She's Rosemary's baby. It's all different things going on with her holding that baby. But then we see you in the Audi-verse, and you're on a date with Alexa, who's Devon's doula.

Nikki James.

Yeah. She's giving you a second chance, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. She's pretty kind, I think.

Surprising.

Based on the way you treated her. Yeah. And she notices your swollen knuckles. So we see that something happened in the break room maybe that involved your knuckles.

Yeah, and Mark says it's some accident involving a water jug, or at least that's what they tell me. So he seems to have some awareness that there might be some bullshit coming his way from Lumen. At least that's the way he's playing it off to her.

Yeah. I mean, it's pretty weird and chilling that cut from your hand on the door to the break room to your swollen knuckles. It's just an intimation that there's definitely some violent thing is happening. From there with you. Then you guys end up at a punk show in Keir, an outdoor punk show in Keir that June, PD's daughter, her band is playing at.

Yeah. I recognize her on a poster, and for whatever reason, Mark wants to go to this. And it's this weird need that brought him to Pee Dee's funeral in the first place. He's just drawn to this family. I think it's a bunch of mixed up feelings of guilt and all kinds of stuff that's making him want to continue contact with this family.

Then you get to this punk show where the punk band is singing basically this anti-Lumen song, Fuck You, Lumen.

This is, to me, also another place where we start to see you, again, getting more and more indoctrinated into this idea of being willing to And this is Audimark, but still, it's like I look at both Audimark and Itimark are going through this process concurrently in different ways.

But you're starting to be able to say out loud, Fuck you, Lumen, in a group of people.

Yeah, there's hints of it on the date when he seems self-aware about Lumen and how creepy it might be. And then, yeah, at this punk show, he fully starts yelling, Fuck you, Lumen. And I feel like part of it is you're there and you don't want to seem uncool. So of course, you're going to say this, but I think there's something to it that he starts repeating it in Alexa, and he starts yelling it out loud, and it feels good for one reason or the other.

And you connect over that, really. Yeah. And you end up going home together, which feels like there's a little bit of a breakthrough there.

It's a big deal. It's a big deal for Audiemark to be moving on like this. I think the rock show itself looks really cool, and this is something that I think shows get wrong or movies get wrong all the time of live music and a punk band or whatever. Sometimes it just feels cheesy and off. But this has a really... I always thought this felt authentic and cool and had a feeling to it.

Yeah, that was Efa, Efa McArdle, who directed the episode. She's from Ireland. She comes out of music videos and commercials. I think it was very important for her to find a real band and to be able to just make sure all the atmosphere of the people who were there at the concert felt authentic in this version of what a punk band in the town of Keir would be in the world of our show. I love that idea that there's this cultural awareness of severance and this antipathy that's coming out in the rebellion that's happening within the culture towards severance.

I just love that side of the story. That's like in the dinner scene in episode one or the whole mind collective, just this sense that there's an opinion about the severance procedure in the public, that it just makes the world so much bigger seeing it from that perspective.

Yeah, it's creating its own culture and its own backlash and all of this. We should also say the great Cassidy Leighton as June. It's terrific.

Yes. She's playing guitar and Michael Cazzo is the lead singer of the punk band. He's really good. He's great. Yeah. I think that's an important part of the world of the show is the awareness of severance in the society and in culture. We've always talked about that a lot, about how much to balance that in the story in terms of being the awareness of it in the world, but also not wanting to go down paths that would take us away from the core story of the characters. Because there's a version of it where you could really go and follow the state senator and what's going on and all of that. And that's important. But at this point, we're really wanting to stay with Mark's story. And then we're in the closet, and Milchick is basically awakening Dylan's inny in Dylan's closet, which we see for the first time Dylan's outy world in some way. We see a little kid watching television, watching a cartoon, and then all of a sudden Dylan is awake in his closet. That's a very startling moment. Dylan. I've awoken you at home. I need to know where you put it.

Where I put what? The ideographic card you took from O&D. I saw the footage of you taking it. Did you smuggle it out? Is it here?

Holy shit. Is this my house?

Dylan, listen.

You have no idea how sensitive this information is. If someone paid you to smuggle out that card. No, I put it in the bathroom. Second stall behind the toilet. Thank you. I didn't even know what it was. That's fine, too. Daddy. Daddy.

What the fuck?

We told you to count to a thousand and wait outside. Is that my kid?

End it.

Count to a thousand? Jesus.

That's probably why the kid came in because he couldn't get up to a thousand.

Yeah, this is such an important scene. We learned that Dylan has a son, that the card he took was incredibly important and sensitive, obviously, and that the severance transition can actually happen outside of the building. That's a huge, huge moment for all these reasons.

It's really jarring, I think, too, because all of a sudden, there's this intense Milchick in his face, and it's just so disorienting. Of course, this is an important story point that's going to kick off a lot of events that happened in the last part of the season. But I just love this scene because it was so scary, really, that all of a sudden, when something goes wrong, it reminds me a little bit of when Grainer finds Heli when she's trying to hang herself in the elevator and the way that he's just in this emergency mode of just getting Mark out of there. It's like when something goes bad in this world with this whole system at Lumen, it can get messy quickly and it can get very intense quickly. It goes from the nice, cool, calm, Milchick to It's super intense.

Now, Ben and Jeff, can you walk us through putting this scene together and the challenges of making this scene work?

I think it's important to keep in mind that you're in Dylan's perspective The very tight coverage, staying very tight and staying in Dylan's POV and only revealing a wider shot for a moment. But it's very much claustrophobic and a where am I feeling that puts you in Dylan's head for this very mysterious new moment.

Also, Zack is doing such a good job in that scene of really just being overwhelmed with this space that he's in. Imagine Dylan is all of a sudden he's probably in the elevator, and then all of a sudden he's in his closet. He's taking that in the whole time during the scene, and he's answering these questions, but he's never not tripping out on the fact that he's in this world. Then all of a sudden, this little kid comes in and hugs him. It's like, oh, what is going on? Then Milchick pulls the kid away. And I love the look that the kid does, When he looks up at Milchick, you could just tell he doesn't like him.

Yeah. I mean, not only has Dylan never been anywhere but MDR before, he's never seen a kid before. It's all huge.

Right. Yeah. And there's another moment in this scene where Mark is telling O&D that they saw a department with baby goats. Then I just remember you really feeling very strongly that it was such a funny moment between Dylan and Helly, that we had to have some reference to that in that moment. We had to actually dig through the takes and just create a moment. We find a reaction from Dylan. We rolls his eyes where it's like, Okay, fine. It wasn't a room with baby goats, and then a moment from Helly reacting. But it's all just in facial expressions that we just had to find in the edit to create them, both Dylan reacting to that there was a baby goat room and Helly reacting to the fact that Dylan now sees that she was telling the truth, just to tie it back to their previous conversation.

Then basically, Mark wakes up in bed with Alexa and has this moment of wanting to get that phone out of the garbage. What do you think is motivating that?

Well, after seeing June at the concert, PD is on his mind. I think it's refreshed this guilt that he feels and this unanswered question in his life. I think that all the stuff Pee Dee was saying about Lumen, episode one and two, has just been in the back of his mind. He's compartmentalized it away He's severed it in a way, but it's in his consciousness in life and putting it away, but this refreshed it. And so he's thinking about Petey. He wakes up thinking about it.

That's a good example of editorially, we just put in this quick shot of Pee Dee dropping down to his knees.

Oh, it's hugely helpful.

Yeah, and it's with no sound. And I always find that really affecting editorially when you can put in an image, sometimes if it is a flashback or a memory or something, just literally with no sound design behind it. It makes it feel like a thought that's happening in that person's head that you're watching. That really makes a difference there.

Yeah, the no sound thing, I think I remember. Initially, it was like a little thing. Taking out the sound, I remember, it makes such a difference because it almost makes it more internal.

Yeah. Then you go downstairs and you fish the phone out of the garbage and you basically I talked to Ragabi for the first time. Yeah.

The second I put the battery in the phone, it's just ringing. Yeah.

I love how Efa shot that, too, where it's a high, wide shot above you that slowly pushes in, and we hold for a very long time. I think tension and mounting feeling of what's going to happen by holding a shot for a long time, that sometimes it's right, and sometimes it's not right to do, depending. I think in our show, we have bought ourselves the space to be able to do something like that sometimes, where in this world, where attention spans are a lot shorter, you have to buy into the fact that people are going to be drawn in and want to go along with the pacing of the show, which sometimes is not the quickest on the show. Yeah. Do you think about that a lot, Jeff? Just as an editor, in terms of how pacing on this show works? Yeah.

The pacing on the show feels always very deliberate, which is not an easy thing to pull off because if you have moments where you want to hold, you have to earn it in a way, and it depends on a lot of the stuff that's leading up to that. It's all great to have a great shot that can hold, but if the stuff surrounding it isn't allowing you to pause and hold, then there's a rhythm to the whole thing beyond just the rhythm within the scene itself. The flow has to allow you to do that. I feel like on the show, we're always striving to make it feel very deliberate.

Right. To make sure everything's earned and there for a reason. Sure.

Yeah. And I think there's something in our show, too, where it's the builds that happen on a macro and a micro level. You could say on the macro level of the first season, it starts slower and then ramps up. I think that's something within a show that has suspense and a thriller aspect to it. You have to figure out when you're building up to something and then when we're then resetting, recalibrating, and letting it build again, because you can't just do one build the whole time.

Oh, yeah, especially on this show in particular, when we're balancing comedy with this darker vibe. The two things sometimes are happening at the same time, which is really interesting in itself. But then a lot of times it's figuring how we are handing off from one to the other so that it doesn't have this whiplash feeling of like, Wait, what is the show I'm watching now? It all feels like part of a hole where it's a release to go into the comedy at just the right moment and a welcome return to the darker, mysterious stuff at the right moment. A lot of that is structural, the ordering of the scenes. The back half of this episode in particular, it's not one continuous build. It's not like you're following one character doing a thing that takes you from one scene to the other. It's a lot of different characters doing different things and trying to find a way so that it feels like one continuous build.

Right. That they're interconnected somehow. Yeah.

I remember trying to find that order that gives that feeling. Just trying something and seeing where the flow breaks and then trying something else.

That comes back to the trying stuff where it's just as opposed to talking about it, just trying stuff and feeling free to just try things that don't work until you hit on something that feels right and that being part of the process.

Yeah. When it clicks and it's like, of course, you have to go from this to that, and of course, you feel it. It's like a spark that goes off.

Well, thank you so much, Jeff, for doing this. This was so great. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me on. This was really fun.

That does it for episode 6 of the Severance podcast with Ben and Adam, Hide and Seek.

I'm Ben Stiller.

And I'm Adam Scott.

Next up, very exciting, episode 7, Defiant Jazz. We have some cool guests.

Yeah, who are the guests?

It's Dax Sheppard and Kristen Bell. Whoa.

Okay. Okay. All right.

I mean, the master podcaster himself.

I love that just as a rhyme, the master podcaster.

Master Blaster Podcaster.

Master Blaster Podcaster and KB. Those are their morning zoo crew names. Yes. You You can stream all episodes of season one of Severance on Apple TV Plus right now.

And Season 2 is premiering January 17th.

You can listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, The Odyssey app, or wherever else you'd love to listen to us. 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 other podcast platform of choice. Our executive producers are Barry Finkel, Henry Malowski, Jenna Weis-Burman, and Leah Reece Dennis. The show is produced by Zandra Ellen and Naomi Scott. This episode was mixed and mastered by Chris Baisal. We have additional engineering from Javi Kruisis and Davie Sumner.

Show clips are courtesy of Fifth Season. Music by Theodore Shapiro. Special thanks to the team at Odyssey, Maura Curren, Eric Donnelly, Michael Lavey, Melissa Wester, at Casey, Kate Rose, Kirek Courtney, and Hilary Shuff.

And the team at Red Hour, John Lesher, Carolina Pessacoff, Jean Pablo Antanetti, Martin Valdiruten, Ashwin Ramesh, Maria Noto, John Baker, and Oliver Agger.

And at Great Scott, Kevin Cotter, Josh Martin, and Christie Smith at Rise Management.

We also had additional production help from Gabrielle Lewis, Ben Goldberg, Stephen Key, Kristen Torres, Emmanuel Hapsis, Maria Alexa and Melissa Slaater.

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...

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 while discovering important contexts 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.

So What would equal out, if we're playing with, let's just say 100%, 5. 2 of those percentage points, that's the improvement.

I mean, I'm not great at math, but that sounds very close.

Well, I'm doing the math in my head right now as we speak, and I think that's great.

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/confluence. That's atlassian. Com/consider. Com/consider. Com. Atlassian. Com/confluencie.