Transcript of S2E2: Goodbye Mrs. Selvig (with Dan Erickson)

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.

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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/confluencie. Hey, 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 diving into the second episode of Season 2, Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig, written by Mohamed Al Masri, and directed by Sam Donovan.

First, we'll be joined by the creator of Severance, Dan Erickson, to help us unpack some of your burning hotline questions, which is very exciting. Then Adam and I will talk about a few of our favorite the scenes from the episode and get into it a little.

Finally, Zack Cherry will give us his predictions for what happens in episode 3. My goodness.

It's always interesting. It's exciting. I'm always wondering what Zack has actually read or seen of the show.

I'm always interested in anything Zack is thinking.

It's always a surprise when it comes out, isn't it?

Always. There's always something in there.

Yeah. Also, spoiler warning, we'll be talking about everything and anything from this episode. Make sure to watch the episode of season 2, and then come back to us. Just pause if you haven't watched it and just go right to Apple. You can do it all on your phone now. Everything can happen on your phone.

How weird would it be if you listen to these episodes and then watch the television episodes.

Yeah, that would be probably less fun, I think.

I've done that before with other recap podcasts.

You've listened to recap of shows you haven't seen?

Well, I listened to some like Soprano those recap episodes, and I hadn't seen the episodes in 20 years or whatever, and then went back and was like, Why am I doing it like this?

What was your thinking on that, that you would reacquaint yourself with the episode first and then be able to enjoy it more?

I guess so. I guess I listened to the episode that was recapping the episode I had watched and just let it run and was like, Why not? I like listening to these guys talk, and just got comfortable listening to them. But then watching the episode, I was like, Okay, well, now I know what happens, and I'm distracted by all the behind-the-scene stuff. It's really not the way to do it.

Great. Well, you learned something.

I did, and I'm able to share it with our audience and with you. Great. It's actually dangerous to do that.

Okay. I'm excited that we're going to talk to Dan here. Yeah. I mean, the brain in a jar. Dan Erichsson.

Hey, guys. The jar is back.

That's what we call your head.

I was going to say good to see you both, but the brain has no eyes, but they tell me that you're here.

You can feel us, right?

I can feel you. I can feel your presence.

How was it, Dan? I'm going to ask you as if I was not there at all or around. Just curious. What was it like the writing process for you on season 2?

Oh, man, so easy. It was fun, though. I do remember sitting down with you guys and starting to talk about, Okay, how can we mess with the form of the show and can we play with presenting the episodes different ways? That gets into how episodes 1 and 2 ended up panning out with being this all in-y thing and then this all-out-y thing. I remember being really excited about trying that and trying different variations on the formula.

I was trying to remember back to when that actually took shape, the first episode being Annie's, the second episode being Audi's, because it is a really fun way to kick off the season.

I remember we were thinking about there's so much to deal with, so many loose ends to tie up or just questions to address what happens after you say she's alive. We were thinking, how do you deal with what's going on in the Audi world? How do you deal with what's going on in the any world?

Yeah. Well, it's funny because I think it's a show that lends itself well to a direct pickup, especially the way that we ended season one. It's like you want to know what happened immediately after that. But because of the conceit of the show, you can do two different direct pickups. It It's like, what happens to any Mark immediately after he comes to? And then what happens to Audi Mark when he returns at the party? I always was so excited about that idea of that reverse shot of she's alive, and then suddenly we're back at the party and everyone is looking at Mark. It was just such a fun opportunity to just jump right back in.

Then there was this cool thing of people starting to embrace the show. All of a sudden, it was a very different environment in working on the show because for so long you'd been working on it in a vacuum, and now a world of people out there who were waiting for the next season.

Yeah. I mean, it was so strange because I have all these nerdy entertainment YouTube channels that I like to watch just on my free time, just to decompress. Suddenly, those guys were talking about severance.

Can I ask you a question? Yes. How do you watch them without having eyes? Do you wire them directly into your How do you listen without ears?

These are the existential questions of my brain jar existence.

That's right. It's just a brain in a jar.

But was it fun for you, Dan, to jump back in thinking about episodes one and two? Was it fun to do this new structure, having one fully any episode and one fully outy episode?

I loved it. To me, that was once we latched onto that structure and knew that that's what we were going to do, that's when it started to get fun for me because I remember sitting down and it did feel so daunting because like we said, there's all the questions you have to answer on the Audi side, and then everything on the Inny side. The characters have to get caught up. They have to catch each other up. Like, Devon has to tell Mark what she heard, all of this stuff. It wasn't until we came up with this separation of, okay, any episode, Outy episode, that it started to make sense and take shape for me. But then it is like there's a really fun just procedural pleasure in it's like what immediately would happen if Mark really did wake up, what would his Audi know? What would Milchick be doing? What would Lumen be doing? And all of these pieces having to come together in this It continues the manic pace of episode 109, but in a different way.

One thing that's a fun byproduct of this any episode, or then purely Audi episode, is we get to experience the going to work or leaving work from inside or outside as it is for an INI and an Audi, which is just an instantaneous experience. You don't experience that full day of work or that full night of rest or whatever. You see what it's like for an Innie going home at the end of the day and then immediately starting work the next day and vice versa for the Outie.

Yeah, totally. That was something in episode one that we talked about a little bit was the idea of the claustrophobic nature of it that I I felt, directing-wise in episode one, was that idea of you feel more of the weirdness of Mark's experience and all the Annie's experience. I realized, Oh, the show really could never exist just on the severed floor. It just would go crazy.

Right.

Dan, it was really fun for me to see Helena, really, for the first time, except for the video that we saw in the first season. We get to see that there's this new character that Dari Olson plays, who's It seems like he's an important person there who helps bring in Jane Egan when they talk, and we see a new space, some a conference room. It just was fun to introduce this other world for the first time.

Yeah, in a way, it feels like just a whole new arena to play in with all of these strange new characters that are higher in status, but still very much in this lumen world and just trying to figure out what they're doing and what's making them tick.

Also, we had to pick up the thread now on the other characters who've now been exposed to the Audi world in terms of with Irving and with Dylan. Even though Dylan hadn't gone up, but we still were going to see what's happening with Dylan.

I mean, just specifically to Helena, it's just incredible, like you said, getting to see her outside of that one video in season one and see just how different she is from Heli and how great Brit is at playing this other person, and this person that is, I found her to be chilling in this episode talking to cobalt.

An apology is warranted. I apologize. My father apologizes. The board apologizes. We've treated you poorly.

I'm sorry.

I welcome your contrition.

I'm so glad.

Yeah. I mean, the fun thing is to see the flip side of this dynamic that we've seen the whole first season of Cobell, over Now, which is one of the things in the show that only you can do in the show is see two characters in a totally different dynamic. Totally.

Yeah. It's fun in this episode getting to see the of new replacement workers on the outside of Lumen, Bob Balaban and Alia Shaukat.

It was Stefano Cerenante. Yes.

God, Stefano's fantastic, isn't he? All three of them are great.

Great Italian actor. Yeah.

By the way, Bob Balaban needs to be compared to June's band from season one because of how well he shouts, Fuck you, Lumen.

That's exactly what I thought, too. I thought immediately of that band.

If they need a new lead singer.

I love that little callback to episode 6, right? From season 1. The feeling of the Fuck you, Lumen that's out there in the world.

It's out there in the air.

I really enjoyed also the whole sequence of the first team coming back in episode 1, and then as you see them doing the same thing in episode 2, but coming into the locker room. Sam Donovan and I collaborated on that because we knew that we wanted those shots to match each other. Both shots are pretty much the same exact timings that we tried to It was really fun watching Sam choreograph that scene, which I thought you guys... It was very complicated to do.

What you're referring to specifically is the scene in episode 1 where everyone comes back and comes out of the elevator and we greet each one, matches the scene in episode 2 of them getting ready and entering the elevator from their lockers.

Supposedly. I've never really actually checked it, though. We did try to get the timings right when we shot it, but somebody probably will do a YouTube.

Yeah, I'm sure someone will look into that for us.

Yeah, but it was really fun because we had to figure out that shot for episode 1, and then Sam had to really figure out. It was complicated because it's really just one shot, and you see a new section of the locker room Dylan's locker, and you have to believe that they're not seeing each other as they come in, and the timings are all staggered. It was hard to do. Yeah, it was very challenging for both a camera-wise and for the actors, and also to make it interesting. I thought Sam did a great a good job with it.

I love doing stuff like that because it's just so satisfying when you do it, and it requires so much focus and cooperation and concentration from everybody on set. I don't know how many times we went through it a lot, but when you finally get it, it's so satisfying and so much fun and everyone celebrates. It's great.

It was also fun in this episode to see how what we learn about them, having been out for five months, supposedly, that's not true at all.

That's not true at all. Yeah, I think it was just a couple of days.

How did you come up with that idea of the Keir Chronicle?

It feels so specifically Keir and Lumen to come up with this five-month lie and then the bad Photoshop, all that stuff.

Yeah. I mean, Lumen is always telling the innies what they think they want to hear and showing them what they think they want to see. It's like they're a the approximation of what the workers want is often so clumsy and weird, in addition to being dark and sinister. That, to me, is where it gets really funny. It's so funny to me that Lumen wrote the article and then redacted half of it. Half of the article that they themselves had written.

It's a mind game on top of a mind game.

It's mind games in mind games in mind games.

Also, the fact that that actually might work on Mark Yeah. Not because he's not smart, just because of his world knowledge and his worldview. Also the amount of time that Milchick lets him see it for is just like, pulls it out.

I remember the amount of deciding on how long he lets me look at it, we really tried to balance that perfectly. It's timing-wise, the way you guys, you and Jeff, cut it, it's perfect.

But what I love, Dan, is that the solution sometimes for a very complicated question of how do they deal with this? The Indies have been on the outside world. It's such a simple and almost rudimentary device. It's not some high tech. First of all, they're not punishing them. They're going the opposite way, but then they're doing it in a way that's almost so simplistic.

Well, and I think that where the five-month thing comes in to me is like... I mean, there's a couple reasons behind it, but one thing is there is just this intrinsic sense It's like, well, we're not punishing you for what happened, but just so you know, five months has passed. You're now five months older. There's this sense of lost time that it's not us. We would never punish you. But the consequence of your action is that now five months have passed. That would be such a strange thing to suddenly learn. It's like, oh, I just lost half a year of time. Again, it's mind games in mind games with these guys. But it's funny. I was watching the eight sneak peek with my mom, and the moment where Mark goes, I'd like to hear it from them, she goes, Yeah. Because it was such a... It's like that's something that Inymark in season one probably wouldn't have said. He has come back with this more of a sense of being able to call out the bullshit a little bit.

Yeah, for sure. All right. I hate to shut the proverbial door in the listeners' faces, but we got to take a quick break. But you know what they say, When one door closes, another one opens, any Are there any guesses on what scene we'll talk about when we get back?

I don't, but you know what they also say? What? One man's ceiling is another man's floor.

Whoa.

Okay. I don't know how that relates to the door thing.

All right, we'll be right back.

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Dan, before we get to the voicemails, since you're here, we really want to talk about one specific scene from episode 2. Okay. Now, when we had you on from the first season, you told us that you used to work at a door factory. In this episode, we see Dylan interviewing at a door factory. Let's listen to the scene here real quick.

Okay, great. Yeah. I think this is going It would be a really great fit for me, Mr. Saliva. Ever since I was a kid, I've always felt like doors- Hold.

Sorry?

How old were you when you knew you loved doors? 5.

If you could be any tour, what would it be?

Pocket. Just think. Yes. Tell me more. Well, you're doing your door thing, and then when you're not needed, you can just tuck yourself away.

Oh, man. Adrian Martinez is so great.

Absolute national treasure. That was verbatim the exact interview that I actually had at the door factory, word for word. Really? No. It was very different.

I love how... Yeah, he's just like, he really loves doors, this guy. He wants somebody working there who really cares about doors as much as he does.

And just the look of the scene, it's just really beautifully composed and how much Zack and Adrian look like each other. In real life, they don't really resemble each other all that much, but in these shots, you guys really lined them up, so it just almost looks mirror-like.

Yeah, Sam Donovan did a great job. And Jeremy Hindle, our production designer, created this space within this factory. It's actually the location. It's in Brooklyn. It's actually we shot a scene from Escape at Danamora there, too. It's a factory. Which scene? The flashback episode in Escape at Danamora, where we see Patricia Arquette's character, where she's working at-The Shoe Factory? The Shoe Factory, yeah.

You're saying, Ben, that there's a shared universe between these two shows? There is. That they exist in the same continuity.

The stellar verse. Then Adrian Martinez was in Secret Life of Walter Mitty. That's right. You're in that, too. We're connected. Also, Jeremy did this really cool thing where he had the doors on this assembly line hook. It reminds me of Monsters Inc, where they're going by. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I thought that was... It's such a funny scene to me watching that, and also how then he turns on him when he finds out he's severed.

Yeah.

The look when he finds out he's severed and he says, You're a severed, and then Also, the look when Dylan makes the door prize joke, and it's just this, How dare you? How dare you make light of this holy slander?

Yeah, it was going so well until he said the wrong thing.

It's always fun to just get a peek into the the cultural reaction to Severance and how Severance is perceived in the outside world, too.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that's something I always love when we get to do, similar to the non-dinner party in season one, where you just... It's like, How are people actually talking about this out in the world? What are the public perceptions of it?

But yeah, that was just such a great way also to understand Dylan's dilemma in the outside world and what he's doing. Things aren't going great for him and his He's a little unhappy, and Scott obviously has these responsibilities. We see how he ends up coming back to work, really.

He seems to be grasping for an identity of sorts, trying to look for somewhere to put himself and something to latch onto.

Yeah. His is such an interesting dual performance because on the surface, I feel like it's maybe one of the more different portrayals of an Indian and Audi. He There's a little bit more of a natural feel to how he's, or at least a recognizable feel to how he's acting on the Audi side. But at the same time, Zack does such an amazing job of putting the same... You feel some of the same in difficulties, but they're expressed very differently because in the indie world, he knows who he is, and out here, he doesn't have that. There's this sense of being a little bit lost. A lot of the scenes that make me emotional are seeing Audi Dylan and how, like you said, he doesn't have an identity, really, and he's looking for it, and he doesn't realize that he has one at Lumen and has a more rewarding existence there on a certain level.

His innie is very sure of who he is and the parameters of his place in the world. In fact, he's striving and reaching for more. He wants more life to grab onto. Whereas his Audi seems to be shrinking away from life and from these responsibilities and things. It's really interesting. And Zack is just wonderful.

Well, and especially with the grandiose way that he speculates about his Audi.

That's right.

When he's down on the floor and that in reality, he's this very different figure.

He's not doing muscle shows.

No muscle shows.

He's not doing muscle shows.

Bummer.

All right. We've been getting some really We have really cool fan questions from our hotline, Dan. Oh, okay. Would you be up for answering some of those with us?

I would love it. I've been waiting to hear these, actually, so this is good.

Us, two, we have not heard these questions.

Yeah, this is our first time, right? Oh, really? Okay. Cool.

All right.

Hi, this is gray.

My question is, what was the biggest difference between shooting Season 2 versus Season 1?

Congrats on the show.

Me and my boyfriend love it.

Thank you. Thank you, gray.

Dan, why don't you start? For you, what was the biggest difference?

Well, certainly, I felt like there was definitely more pressure because Season 1, we were pretty sure that we were doing something cool, but it was worst-case scenario, nobody will watch this and it'll fade away. But this time, you have all of these people who have found it and invested in it and given their time to it and gotten excited about it. You really want to do right by those people, and you don't want to let anybody down. In writing it, I would say, I remember sitting down and the first time I was writing an episode for season 2, it was like, Okay, how do I do this again? Am I even sure I can still do this? Am I even sure what actually worked about the first season? It took actually getting into it and writing a couple of scenes to be like, Okay, no, I can still do this. But it was scarier in a way because the pressure is on a bit more.

Yeah. How about Ben?

For me, it was fun to know that there was an audience for the show going into it. Of course, all along the making of the season, you're always trying to make it the best it can be, and you are still working in a bit of a vacuum because you're making all the episodes and nobody's going to see them until they're all done. That part of it is always what it is. But the fun of it was that we were doing a series now and we were coming back and we We knew what the challenges were. We knew how to work within the sets. We knew we were going to go for some new things and challenge ourselves and try not to stay exactly in the box we had in the first season. But yeah, I'd say definitely there's a feeling of like, Oh, gosh, I hope we can live up to something that people expect. But just the fact that people even expected something was pretty great. Yeah.

I think all of that, and I figured out how to wear more comfortable shoes in season 2 Season one was just dress shoes for 10 episodes, and that really takes a toll. Season 2, I realized when my feet are not on camera, I can wear these super comfortable sneakers, and it just made life so much easier.

Which I was admiring, and you got me as a gift.

Yeah, I got you a pair of them.

They are really comfy. It makes me think of the great Owen Wilson, who I've done a number of movies with back in the day, and he If his feet weren't on camera, you could see him wearing a nice pair of UGGs, usually. Good move. Or foot flops or just barefoot.

It's a great move.

I always wear uncomfortable shoes when I write out of solidarity to the actors because I know that they'll have to. So shame on you, Adam.

Very humane of you.

No more of that, I guess. I guess now you can slip on some bugs.

Yeah, now that I know.

Okay, let's hear another question.

Hi there. I was just wondering what the benefits of packages are like December 4. I was thinking about doing it, but I just want to make sure that I'm going to be able to support myself and get the health care I need.

Thank you. Get back to me as soon as you can. Bye.

It's a good question.

Yeah, it's a really good question. I would say that they are ample. I would say, especially because, as Irving says in this episode, you never know what your innie is going to eat down there. Your innie could drink whiteout or something. So You have to be sure that the company is going to take care of you. They're also a med tech company, so I feel like the health benefits would be pretty good.

Yeah, I was thinking it would probably good medical benefits, but it's probably like Lumen Doctors that they refer you to.

Yeah.

There has to be some disclaimer or release or something for what happens when you're down there in terms of... Maybe or some in case of emergency call this number, right? Yeah. They must have that, like at school or Legally, it must be something ironclad that they have everyone sign.

Although I think any minor injuries can be treated with a visit to Pips, the VIP section at Pips. The food there is very restorative.

Yeah. Delicious Denver omelets.

Oh, man. Should we refer this person? We didn't get the name, but should we refer them to Mr. Milchick? Or who does intake?

Who's the- Yeah, Milchick would be the liaison for that I'm sure he would do a good sales job.

Oh, yeah.

Milchick could probably do some of the medical stuff himself. He's a very handy guy. That's right.

He does.

He does just about everything.

Okay. All right. Now, our next and last question.

Hello. My name is George. I was about to apply for a position, but I have one major concern. How do I pack a lunch? Thanks. Excellent question.

Well, the answer, George, is that you don't. I don't think that we've ever actually explained this on screen, but the way that the lunches work is that if you're in any, you have a lunch in the fridge ready for you every day. You don't get to pick it because those are selected in advance at the start of the week by your Audi, who would be like, Okay, Monday, I want fish picada. Tuesday, I want Jello, whatever. We We don't know yet what's in the lunches necessarily, but that's how that works.

Interesting. No cafeteria down there that we know of at this point.

Well, not that we've seen.

Not that we've seen, yeah. Or food services.

I have to say, listening to that message, I'm not sure that guy's real name is George.

I don't know.

I'm just not buying it.

Yeah, he's also asking, How do I pack a lunch?

Yeah. I guess we could provide instructions on how to pack a lunch.

George strikes me as someone who's trying to get away with thing, and I don't think we should hire him.

That's why he's using the moniker George.

Also, if he's thinking of getting severed, having a brain chip implanted into his head, it's an irreversible procedure. His one major concern is, How do I pack a lunch?

There's something going on there.

All right. Well, Dan, thank you for joining us.

Thank you, guys.

This was fun. I'm excited that we're off and running on season 2.

Doesn't it feel great to have people finally seeing season 2?

It just feels terrific. It's so cool.

Yeah. It's such a release. I'm feeling very good about it.

All right. Well, we'll be talking to you again. Is somebody going to actually grab your brain or is it what's-Yeah, no, they're going to come.

It's Milchick. He's going to come and take it away and put me away.

Oh, here he comes. Tuck me away.

Tuck me away like a pocket door.

Just take the mic off of the jar, and we'll talk to you next time. If you want to call the post box for Lumen Industries' Severed Floor, call 212-830-3816.

All right, we'll be back in a second to talk about more of episode 2. The MDR team continues to search for answers as they try to piece together memories from the overtime contingency. But luckily, you don't have to take a mind-erasing elevator to work every day. So your workplace productivity can be much simpler with 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 five 2. 2% average boost in productivity in one year. So goodbye, severed workplace alienation. Hello, teamwork with Confluence. Set knowledge free with Confluence. Learn more at adlacian. Com/confluence. That's atlassian. Com/confluence. All right, I'm excited to talk about this episode with you.

But first up, there's something very exciting at the beginning of the episode, which is a new opening credit sequence. Yes. How did this come about? Why did you feel we needed to shift and change a bit?

Well, it was probably because as time was going by, I was thinking, looking at the opening credits, which we all love, and they were created by Oliver Lata, who's a German artist who works with a computer, and Teddy Banks, who works in New York, who does the graphics part of it, but the computer animation is Oliver Lata. It was so, in a way, specific to season one, even though it was created not with specific nods not necessarily story points, but images and different settings. It felt to me that there was an opportunity as time was going by as we were making the season, I thought, Well, people are going to have waited a while for season two. It might be fun to have something else new for them as well. Oliver, I talked to him, and he was totally up for it. I mean, he did. He won an Emmy for that. It's the first title sequence he ever did.

Do you want to talk about how you found all over?

I happened upon his Instagram feed, but he just had this incredible computer animation of these amorphous blobs of humanoid forms that fall into one another and bubbles and the texture of it. It's just something incredibly captivating and satisfying watching his work.

It really feels like nothing else you see out there animation-wise. It feels very singular.

Yeah. It was just like one day on the way to work, I saw it and thought, Oh, wow, this could be really cool for the show. Oliver, the first time I met him was at the Emmys, actually, when he won his Emmies. Really?

In person, you'd never- He came to LA for the Emmies and for the in the after-party where we lost 12 of our 14.

Yes, I remember. But he won. He and Teddy Shapiro won, and both very deservedly. Well deserved. Yeah. It was great to meet him there. He's a young guy. He's super talented, and it was just a great connection that he had with the show. It ended up informing, in a way, imagery for season 2. When you look at you carrying those balloons in episode 1, for For me, that came out of his balloon image. Is that right? That he did in the credits for season 1. Oh, right. I mean, just in my mind, I was like, Oh, it just made me think of that. In that way, it was fun to think about, Okay, what could it be for season 2 that is maybe more specific and has more Easter eggs and more little nods to the season that people might not even appreciate until the season is over and they look back at it. That was a fun process with him. The first one took about eight or nine months, and this one's the same thing. It's been really fun, exciting. A little bit scary on my end because I know people love the season 1 credits so much, but it seems like people have been responding to the season 2.

I love these ones. I also love it because other characters find their way into the opening credits now. Yes. Remember, they were getting the image everyone had to go and get the scan that I had to do for season 1.

Yeah, a 3D scan where they take pictures of you with hundreds of still cameras, and then he can recreate your image. Do you have a favorite image from the credits?

Well, from season one, I really love the balloons with the heads. It's so funny that it didn't even occur to me that that's where the balloons with the faces on them came from, was from the opening credits from season one.

Yeah, it's not really a direct line. No, no. It was just an image in there. For me, for the season two credits, one of the things that I really love is you jumping off of the desk, little you jumping off the desk, and then instead of going into the head that it does in season one, it goes into a painting of your head in season one. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There are other nods to episodes as they go along, as I said, that we can get into maybe as we go along, too.

The ending of the opening credit sequence is super interesting, too. Yes.

When you see a little baby here crawling by. Yeah.

Interesting. All right.

Okay. You know what I want to talk about a little bit is you, because your character is going through a lot in episode 2. Really, you... Audi Mark is deciding whether or not he wants to return to Lumen. We started out with that creepy visit from Milchick. What happened tonight is what we call the overtime contingency. It's a safeguard we employ if we ever need to access your work personage off company grounds.

Yeah, you never told me about this.

Otc disclosure can be found in your start paperwork. It's clear that you just don't feel right about it and you don't know if you're going to go back. He lays that little guilt trip on you about your innie and how brave your innie was to do what he did, and you wouldn't want to reward him by ending his life.

He literally lays it out like I would be killing someone.

Yeah. That scene was... I thought Sam, did a great job with that in terms of just the weirdness of that scene, how Ricken admires his helmet.

Ricken in all of these scenes here is so deeply funny.

Yeah. No, it's great because it's also like, how do you deal with that moment of she's alive? You said she's alive, and of course, Ricken goes to the point, well, it had to be the baby, right? Yeah. Also, he's really a little bit more focused on how it affected his book party. That's right.

He's really preoccupied and decides everything's completely fine, and they can just do it over again. Yeah.

But it's a moment of you and Devon connecting in terms of not trusting what's going on. But you're at a point where you don't want to go back. I think until Devon comes to see you in the diner, right? At Pips.

Yeah, I think at the end of season one, Mark had made a decision Or Mark was veering towards a decision to maybe move away from Lumen and maybe, in a way, move on from everything. I mean, he'd come to this party ready to tell his sister he's thinking about quitting his job. That's the last thing he said to Mrs. Selvig at the party before he switches over to his innie in episode 9 of season 1. I think he was heading in that direction anyway, and this just pushes him over the edge. It's just too weird. And Devon now bringing up this idea of she's alive, it's just all absurd noise to to Mark at this point, I think.

Yeah, I think it's also realistic when you think about how someone might react to this in terms of being told, no, that person who died is actually alive, which is such a crazy hard thing to wrap your head around. Also, Mark probably feeling, and I'm speaking for you, but from my point of view, watching this, that Mark all of a sudden was taken out of the equation by his Annie taking over, and then all of a sudden, he's back and he's being told that his Annie said she's alive, and everybody's debating what that means. I think a natural reaction would be this is just digging something up. You're just in the process of trying to get over this in some way. You're grieving. You're at the point where you're thinking, No, I can start to try to really move on from being severed. Then all of a sudden, you're being told, No, wait a minute. She's a lot... I could understand just wanting to... No, no, no, no, no. This is crazy. I don't want to go there.

Yeah, it's ridiculous to even consider it, and ultimately hurtful that Devon keeps coming at me with this. I was, at the time, trying to figure out how to play this with Audi Mark and landed on it had to feel like the most absurd, stupid thing in the world, like someone coming to you and telling you that someone in your life who passed away years ago is actually... I mean, it's just unthinkable and hurtful to even bring up something like that, particularly in this situation where his feelings are clearly still quite raw about his wife who died.

Yeah. Let's listen to that scene with you and Devon at Pips. My thing is, if we could just get a half-step more confirmation, then it's not going to be something that continues to haunt us. You know what I mean? Us? Yes. She was my family, too, Mark. Fuck.

Yeah, but she was my wife.

I know, but you're not the only one her death affected. Oh, really?

It affected you?

Yes.

Did you have to tell her parents that she was dead? How about her students? How about this? Did your sheets smell like her four weeks afterwards? You know what? Honestly, if Ricken died and his body burned, I'd be sad for you, but I wouldn't be affected. This is obscene. I just want to be sure. I am sure. Yeah, it's pretty hurtful language.

Yeah, and a little bit of the tension with Rickon comes through there, too. Yeah, it makes total sense to me that why Mark would say, I'm not into this.

I think one interesting thing there is how Mark goes pretty hard at Devon here talking about, If your husband died, I would be sad but not affected. And talking about his body potentially being burned It's a real peak into, first of all, the brother-sister relationship and how with people you've known your whole life, you can go and poke a little further, and you give each other the permission to go too far sometimes. But also, it's a bit of a shot across the bow. Don't fuck with me because I will bite back harder than you're ready for. Just leave this alone.

I totally got That's what I got that. I totally got that. As I said, I think it's very believable. Also in that scene, we see that that character from the beginning of the episode, who I will come to know as Mr. Drummond, is It's eavesdropping, possibly, on the scene.

It's funny, the last time I watched through the episode, I didn't even notice him there.

Yeah, that was his point. He didn't even notice.

On some takes, I high-fived him as I walked You saw his frolic tattoo on his hand as you high-fived him?

Yeah. We shot that up at the Fanesha Diner in the Cat skills.

As we did in season one for Pips.

Yeah. Every time we shot there, there would always be a discussion. There There are other diners that are a lot closer to New York.

It is quite far.

Yeah, it's totally worth it when you get there.

What is it about this particular diner?

I mean, there's something about that diner. It's been in other things. Usually, I don't like to shoot things that are in other movies or so, but it's so good, and we were able to put our own little spin on it. But it's just a great classic diner, and it's in the middle of this beautiful wooded area. It just felt It just felt right for our... We picked it when we were trying to establish the environment of Keir in the first season.

The parking lot figured prominently in season one as well.

Yeah, and we didn't want to do... When we were figuring it out in the beginning, we wanted to make here feel a little bit desolate and not too urban and not too developed. We didn't want to do a diner that was in a town. That one came up much to the chagrin of our wine producer.

It is beautiful out There.

Yeah. Much to the credit of our Ryan Smith, our amazing location manager, who also did some second-unit directing work on season 2, and he's got an amazing eye. Meanwhile, we've been tracking Milchick, who has had to clean up a little bit and go and find out what people know, what the innies who were activated know or the outies know of what their innie did. Then we know that he has this directive that they have to get Mark to come and we don't quite know how that plan has been working. We get a little insight into where the new team came from.

Which is super interesting.

Yeah, very interesting in that we learned that there were other branches, which we knew there were a little bit from probably the first episode from the Lumen animated special that they made.

I mean, according to the primetime animation special, there are offices all around the globe. That's right. Even out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on one point. But you never know what's real and what's not. But here they're having this internal conversation and they're talking about overseas offices and also offices that may have shut down for one reason or another. It's interesting.

Yeah. We get the sense that Lumen strung this together last minute to try to create a team around Mark that's going to keep him being productive. You get the sense that maybe the other people aren't as important as Mark. We've always known that Mark is special and a very good refiner. Obviously, from season one, we know the Mark and Miss Casey interaction. We got the idea that Cobell was up to something with that. But I think we get a sense when Milchick gets to see Mark and to try to talk him in, he comes with a pineapple, a special pineapple plate that apparently is meant to entice you.

Going all out.

Yeah. He sits down with you and he that does a little bit of... Attempts a bit of a sales job here. You want to listen to that? Yeah. You said since she died, every day feels like a year. That you felt like you were choking on her ghost. Do you still feel that way, Mr. Scout? The mark I've come to know at Lumen is happy. He cares for people, and he's funny. He knows nothing of the pain I see in you right now. He's found love.

Love? With who?

The solace you have given him down there will make its way to you. It just takes time. I hope you'll give us that time, Mr. Scout. First of all, just want to say that listening to it, not watching it, the sound design, I want to just give credit to Jacob Rybekoff and Bob T'Avalas, our sound designer and mixer, the bubbling of the fish tank. Yeah.

I got to say, my favorite part, the sound of the leather jacket throughout the episode. Tramell wears it incredibly well. He looks beautiful in that leather jacket, but also that jacket sounds great.

Yeah. I think that's a case of turning the bug into a feature type of thing. Yeah, I would imagine. It was an amazing Sarah Edwards leather jacket or costume designer that was not going to be denied. Not quite. Yeah. But no, that scene is also really interesting to me because Milchick, for the first time is actually talking about your inny in a way and his well being, and I think it's the first time it's ever even insinuated that his feelings would somehow benefit you on the outside.

Well, I think that for Mark, he probably isn't really considering going back seriously. But I think the fact that Milchick is doing what you just said, is talking about these feelings will rise up and come and meet you, and you'll feel better because of what a good place your innie is at that will transfer to you, shows some measure of desperation. At least we, the audience, can sense that. But I think the fact that he brings up Gemma after all of this absurd noise he's been hearing from his sister and Rickon, it just piques his interest. I don't think he's anywhere near believing that she's alive, but it's just too much of a coincidence.

Yeah. I mean, also, I think it's picking up on the guilting that he started with you a little bit when you were at Devin Rickens, where he says you're going to end his life. But it's really great the way you play that scene, I think, because we're seeing how much all of that is weighing on you. You're putting this all together, and it really feels very effective.

Tramell is just so, so great. Just this whole episode of him riding around on the motorcycle. What is that motorcycle? Was there a particular motorcycle you really wanted Milchick to be riding?

It was an idea that Dan Dan and I discussed, I remember when it came up, it was an idea that came up at one of the events when we were in Los Angeles for season one, when we were all together. I remember I said to Dan one night, I said, Wouldn't it be cool if Milchick rode a motorcycle. He was like, Yeah, I like that. Then it went from there. It just seemed to me like we've talked a lot, and this came out of really what Dan's idea of Milchick's outer life is, which we have yet to see. This is a little glimpse into what his personal style is and what his vibe is in the outside world. He's a cool guy, it seems, who rides a motorcycle. Yeah, the motorcycle itself is a Royal Enfield, but we customized it, but that's the make of the bike. It's really cool. It's tricked out.

Well, it fits Milchick so perfectly to be riding around on a motorcycle, a fast motorcycle. He's like a singular guy. He's always armored up and isolated from everyone around him. Now, he gets this opportunity to step up and be the floor manager and his first job is to clean up Cobell's mess, in a sense. And so he's going to do it, and he is out there on a mission, and it just feels so right to have him on a motorcycle on that mission.

Yeah. We He thought he's going to be traveling around the whole episode, going to each person's house. It might be fun to have this cool vibe of these motorcycle shots going through Keir. Then he has to basically come back around and realizes that his other plan of the new team wasn't working, and he catches some shit for that and has to basically bring a pineapple to everybody to get them to come back because that's the only way that you're really going to come back, we've learned in episode one. That comes back to the parallel events of episode one and two, which are there, and we really were very aware of how to have both episodes work in concert with each other. They're not exactly time frame in terms of beat to beat because we're seeing different things happen. But there are places where you can correlate what happened in episode one, like when any Mark made the recording to the board, and then you hear him playing the cassette recording of the recording to the board for Helena and Mr. Drummond. We see these little touchstones that happened in episode one and how they happened on the outside in episode two.

That was the fun thing about putting both these episodes together. Even the title, Goodbye, Ms. Cobell, Hello, Mrs. Selvig, for episode one and episode two, work together also. But that was fun. We talked about with Dan, putting together that shot of you guys coming back to work which matches the shot that we see in episode one.

It's really great. Sam did a great job with that, too.

Then we should talk about the scene between you and Mrs. Selvig.

Oh, yeah. The confrontation that Mark certainly has been waiting for and gearing up for this whole episode.

I feel like as an audience, you have all these questions you want to ask, What are you doing? What are you up to? Why are you doing this? You get to ask all those questions. She is at a point where basically she's just decided that she's getting out. We don't really know, as we always don't know, what her agenda is.

She has this scene with Helena, where Helena tries to give her a promotion, which feels to Cobell like bullshit.

Yeah, it's a job that doesn't really exist, a new position. She senses that they are scared of something that she could do or say, and she decides to walk. Then when she runs into you, she's basically packing up her rabbit and getting out of there. We don't know where she's going. But you stop her and you demand to know what's going on. I just love Patricia's response in this scene.

Me too. Who are you? I thought you were quitting. I trusted you. I told you what I'd gone through these past two years. You... You were in my house. I ate your shitty fucking cookies.

They convinced you to stay. Was a pineapple involved.

You're so easy to sway.

The truth comes out.

The chamomile cookies weren't particularly really good as it turns out.

She knows all the lumen moves of the pineapple.

Yeah, and she knows how to manipulate. I mean, she's been studying this guy, and insulting him in this way is the perfect move.

We really don't know what her agenda is. So then when you say, Do you know something about Gemma? It's where that scream comes from. It's obviously part frustration, part anger, part... I mean, we don't know what it is.

Yeah, I mean, there are cracks in her loyalties and in her armor that we saw the last thing she said to me in episode 9 was, Get away from them, whispered it in my ear. Her not answering holding the company line when I ask her some of these questions is super interesting.

Yeah. It almost feels like she knows something that she's not telling you.

Yeah. And Mark derives quite a bit from this.

Yeah. And then she just lets out the primal scream. The long pause that she takes.

I mean, I I think she is really trying to communicate something to Mark there.

Yeah. Before she runs you down.

Before she tries to murder me. Great relationship they have.

Oh, man. All right. Well, Before we go, we should just check in with our friend Zack Cherry. Oh, yeah. To find out what he thinks is going to happen in episode three.

I can't move on from episode to episode without getting his predictions.

I'm so interested in what he's going to say here. Let's talk to Zack. Hey, Adam. Hey, Ben. Thanks for having me back. As you know, it's my job to analyze and go deep and calculate everything that's going on and spit out a prediction about what's going to happen next. I'm sorry I didn't get it 100% right last time, but this time I'm definitely going to nail it. Next time on Severance. Based on that last scene where Ms. Cobell and Mark have their little interaction with a car, I think Ms. Cobell is going to be mandated to some court-ordered anger management classes, and she's going to end up coaching a group of rapscallions who go by the name of The Mighty Ducks, and she's going to take them all the way to the title. Let's find out on episode 3 of Severance.

Wow. Well, I mean- Never disappoints. Now, and who can argue with that? All right.

That's it, right? Yeah.

The Severance podcast with Ben and Adam will be back next week to talk about Season 2, Episode 3.

That's right. In real time here as the episode is play out. You can stream every episode of Severance on Apple TV Plus with new episodes coming out every Friday.

Then make sure you're listening to our podcast, which drops right after the episode airs. 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 Malowski, Gabriele Lewis, Jenner Weiss-Bermann, and Leah Reece Dennis. This show is produced by Zandra Ellen, Ben Goldberg, and Naomi Scott. This episode was mixed and mastered by Chris Baisal. We had additional engineering from Javi Kruisas and Davie Subner.

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, Matt Casey, Kate Rose, Kirt Courtney, and Hilary Shuff.

And the team at Red Hour, John Lesher, Carolina Pesecob, John Pablo Antanetti, Martin Valderuten, Aswin Ramesh, Maria Noto, John Baker, and Oliver Acker.

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

We had additional production help from Kristen Torres and Melissa Slaater. I'm Ben Stiller.

And I'm Adam Scott.

Thank you for listening.

And thank Kabelvig for not running Mark S over.

Good reaction there.

Well, I'm lightning fast.