Transcript of S2E4: Woe's Hollow (with Theodore Shapiro)

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.

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That 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/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.

And today we're talking about the fourth episode of Season 2, Woes Hollow, written by Anna O'Yung Munch and directed by Ben Stiller.

Yeah, this was a big one for us. And the other exciting thing is that we're going to be joined by Severance's marvelous composer, Theodore Shapiro. True.

Yes. Then Ben and I are going to talk about some scenes from the episode.

And of course, the prophetic Zack Cherry will be back to tell us what he thinks will happen in the next episode. That's right. Zack doesn't watch anything. We don't even know if he reads the scripts except for his lines.

He just feels what he thinks is going to happen. Yeah. He's like an octopus.

Oh, like an octopus? In what way?

Well, he's an octupi tends to intellectualize each one of their arms. I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Does this have to do with my octopus teacher?

Yes, which I didn't see.

Okay. You're saying an octupi, but octupi. Octupi is a plural- That means several. Oh, you're saying octupi, use, they sense things?

I'm just assuming that that movie is about a psychic octopus, and I don't think that's what it's about.

It is not.

Be warned, there are spoilers for episode four here, so learn from my recap pod listening mistakes, and be sure to watch the episode first and then listen to us.

Yeah, definitely, because there's definitely a big spoiler in this episode. Good Lord, yes. Yeah.

How have you been, Ben?

I'm great. I'm great. I'm still buzzing from the experience of the Grand Central Station, Severance Papa, up that happened when we were recording this yesterday.

That was just so much fun.

It was incredible.

It really felt like we were taking a step back and bringing things down to a basic performance level. It was like a happening.

It was like a happening. Yeah, like a fluxus thing, if you know that history of experimental performance art. The idea was to have a cube in the middle of Grand Central Station that had the cubicle with you guys sitting there doing your Severance stuff. Originally, it was a great idea that Apple had. Originally, it was just going to be actors that they hired to look like office workers at the cubicle. Then you said, We should do it. The actor should really do it. You said, I'll do that.

Yeah. I just figured the cast would be game, and lo and behold, everybody was super into it.

It was incredible. It was incredible. You guys just went in there for three hours, and you refined, and you interacted.

I vacuumed the floor.

Well, you did that, the little roller thing, which you do in episode 2, I think.

Not a real vacuum. I'm not convinced it as anything but just move dust particles around.

Then Ms. Cobell came in, and you got in trouble with her at one point.

Many times.

She got upset. She threw a coffee cup. I was talking to my wife and daughter on the outside when the coffee cup got thrown and I was like, Whoa, what just happened? What just happened? It was amazing, though, because nobody could hear you guys on the inside, and people were literally enthralled. It was mesmerizing. When Milchick came in with the red the ball. I didn't even know what he was doing with the red ball, but he didn't look happy. No. At a certain point, Patricia got under the desk. What was going on there?

A couple of the monitors went out, and so Patricia took it upon herself to try and fix them. And then once she started fiddling with the plugs, all of the monitors went out.

That's so Patricia. It really is.

When Tramell walked out, because you had to walk through the crowd to get to the Cube, the whole place got really quiet.

Yeah. And then there were cheers, too. I think when he came back the second time and when Patricia came in, it was so great. It was just people discovered it, nobody announced it. And it was just- Yeah, we just We just walked in and there was no announcement or anything, and people just started stumbling upon it and being like, Wait a second.

Those are the actors from the show. And we just improvised for three hours. But there was a certain freedom to it because no one could hear us, so we could just do whatever we wanted. We decided that it fell somewhere around season one, episode three, just the culture of MDR felt like it fell somewhere in that area.

Yeah, I could not have been more excited or happy watching it. It was so much fun. It was a pleasure. It was fun to also talk. For me, on the outside, I was taking pictures. I got to talk to fans of the show. It wasn't just people who were going home from work. There were people who saw it on Reddit or on social media and came down who were fans of the show.

They made the trip.

Yeah, they saw it. It came up on their feed and they ran over. It was great. I talked to people from Brazil. I talked people from Ireland, from England. It was just great to talk to fans of the show and see how excited they were about the second season. You don't get a chance, really, to interact. I guess when you guys went down to Brazil for the comic Con down there, you got a chance to meet people.

We did. People are so excited for season 2, which is really flattering and so much fun. But this had its own organic feeling to it, because like you said there was no announcement. It was just something. I'm glad we did it for a few hours because people, like you said, were able to make the trip, and we were still there by the time they got there.

Yeah, we wanted it to go on for long enough that people could discover it and you guys would still be there. You guys were troopers and amazing and so much fun. That was great. Well, all right.

Our guest- This is exciting.

Is one of Severance's secret weapons, though he's not really that secret because he won an Emmy for the show. I feel like we're the secret weapon. We're the secret weapon. He's the guy that has the Emmy. Theodore Shapiro, Teddy Shaps, as his friends call him. Teddy, how are you, man?

I'm good. How are you guys?

Great.

Yeah, we're good. We're good.

So great having you here.

By the way, Adam and I are in person together in New York here right now, which is fun.

Yeah, we can high five multiple times if we needed to.

Yeah, you've done it already so many times. That's right.

Teddy, you and I go back a while. Do you remember when we first met?

We first met. You called me to try to get me, successfully, try to get me to work on Dodgeball.

That's so funny because I was asking you that question like I knew the answer, and I don't remember when we first met. I know Dodgeball was the first thing we worked on, and I'm wondering, do you remember what you had done?

Sure. I had just done Along Came Poly and Starsky & Hutch.

Oh, okay.

I think you'd seen- Maybe that's where you guys both knew each other.

Yeah, I wasn't involved with either of those movies in any way other than just showing up on the set. But that must be the connection. Yeah, No, I didn't. I mean, Todd Phillips directed Sarsky & Hutsch, and the great John Hamburg, who's a mutual friend of ours, wrote and directed Along Came Poly. Yeah, those scores were great. You came in, and Rossan Thurber, who was directing Dodgeball, I guess I must have suggested that, let's talk to Teddy. You were probably Theodore to us back then before we knew you. Hey, can I ask you something? Can I ask you something? Yeah, sure. It is Shapiro, right? It is Shapiro. I've always wondered that some people pronounce Shapiro, Shapiro. Yeah, what is it?

I think that Shapiro is the correct pronunciation. I think that Shapiro must be just some weird Ellis Island decision that one of my forefathers made. Really? I'm not the only Shapiro. There are others out there, but I don't think it's grounded in anything authentic. I think it must be some Americanization.

It's not like an affectation that you put on it when you came to Hollywood.

I was not trying to make people- Sounds like you may be accusing him of an affectation.

Well, he's a fancy composer, and maybe he's like, I don't know.

It is quite fancy. I was not trying to impress anybody with Shapiro.

I'm impressed with it. I get to impress people when they say, Oh, I really like Theodore Shapiro's work. I'm like, It's Shapiro. Excuse me.

It's Shapiro. For those in the know.

Teddy, you and I know each other completely separate from all of this because our sons, Julian and Graham have been in school together since kindergarten.

Yes. I was thinking about the fact that the first time I ever heard about this show was at a Halloween party where you and I were accompanying our sons and talking about what's going on. You told me about this show, and I was like, Oh, man, that sounds really good. I hope Ben calls me.

Also- That's great. The first time that I ever met you was at our kids preschool in Pasadena. That's right. I remember everyone like, Oh, that's Adam Scott.

I remember just being like, Holy shit, Ben Stiller's here. Holy shit.

Teddy, and we went on to do a few movies together.

Yeah, you did Tropic Thunder together and Walter Mitty. You guys have worked together quite a bit. We have. Is there a particular process you guys fall into together? Or is each project a fresh start?

What do you think, Teddy?

I think that each project has actually been a little different from the last. We've developed a little bit more of a process over time. In particular, I think what I would say is that with MIDI and then with this, the big difference is just me starting to write earlier in the process and having the music exist during Ben's creative process earlier, which I think helped in both cases, which helped the music evolve as an integral part of the project.

Yeah, I remember having some pieces that you had written on set from the very beginning when we started shooting season one, you had some sketches of themes for us to play on set. It was really important to have that.

Yeah. Well, we were lucky on Severance because when we had this delay due to COVID, I think that was around the time you were able to write a lot of music.

Well, yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I think that we found our main theme during the COVID break. I have this fond memory during the summer of COVID in 2020, we had just discovered the main theme, and I was up in Oregon, we drove to Oregon.

Can I just interrupt you? When you say, We had just discovered the main theme, what that means is Teddy wrote the main theme, actually wrote three different... Didn't you send me three different options?

Wow. Well, I said... Actually, I had started writing a bunch of themes and sending them to you, and you were excited about what I was coming up with. Then in February of 2020, I flew to New York and we met up at the set, and you were listening to the music, and there was just this one little part that you kept coming back to. It was the B section of something that I'd written. It wasn't the main part of it, but you kept coming back to that thing. I was like, Oh, first of all, always follow Ben's instincts. That's the cardinal rule. And there's something that Ben is responding to here. In that thing that we were listening to, it was like an electronic piece. Then when I got back to LA, I went home and I sat down at the piano and I played the four cords from that B section at the piano, and it was like, oh, what if it was this?

So wait, when you say it was an electronic piece, do you mean It was... What do you mean? It was that same melody, but...

It wasn't the melody. It was just the four cords. But all of the sounds were more overtly electronic. But when I played it at the piano, suddenly the tone of it changed completely, and it became more of this mystery.

I was like, Oh, wait, maybe this is the whole thing. Because we had been talking about, what if there's one sound for the innies and one sound for the Audis, and the any world is electronic and the Audi world is organic.

But when I played that thing, I was like, Oh, wait a minute. What if the whole show is just a puzzle? This would be the music if the whole show was just one puzzle. So I sent that off to Ben, and I was pretty excited about it and did not hear back from Ben for three weeks. Oh, boy. I was like, Oh, man, that's a bummer. He didn't like it. I thought that I was onto something. Then one day, the phone rang and he was like, Oh, I love this thing. This is great. I'm really into this.

You're like, Where the hell have you been for three weeks?

Was it just sitting in your inbox for three weeks?

No, I had listened to it immediately, and I just didn't want Teddy to feel too good about that he was- Smart. Yeah. Smart. No, I I think I must have gotten preoccupied or something, or I was doing other stuff.

There's also something else unique about this particular theme in that it's not just providing this emotional through line for the series and tying things together. It's also really catchy in its own right, which instrumental themes often are not. Often they're there as background. But this is a really earwormy, really beautiful song. To think that you were sectioning it off as a minor part of another theme is really interesting. It obviously stood out to Ben, but was it like a bridge to something else?

It wasn't a bridge to something else, but it was just the middle... It was like, Here's my main idea. Okay, I'm going to do something here, and then I'm going to come back to my main idea. What's interesting about that is that sometimes when you're not being precious about something, you'll just do something that is simple and memorable, thinking that you're just tossing it off.

The more complicated thing is going to be the main...

Exactly. It was funny because I had these four cords, and the fourth chord demanded that I write this a weird melodic idea. That's where it was the thing that fit with the weird fourth chord. The fourth chord often does that, doesn't it? That's the thing. I have no idea what I'm talking about.

I was just going to say, what are you talking about?

What's amazing to me, Teddy, is you can't emphasize enough how important Teddy's music is for the show. I am such a fan of yours, and I really don't understand how you do what you do in terms of the creative process because you have so many constrictions in terms of what you're having to create, to have something to score a scene and to time that it can take and the notes that you get, the feedback of if it's right for the scene or not, and also just where it comes from and the instrumentation and all these things. I'm just amazed at your process because you also are incredibly fast in terms of how you do the work, and it spoils you for any other process because Teddy will turn things around so quickly. But it's really, for me, any movie we've worked on together, it makes me want to be in this world, to live in this world that the music creates that inspires me visually and just in terms of the tone of the piece. We were really lucky that you were willing to write this music ahead of time when we started shooting season one, so that when we were shooting and on set, we could actually play it during some scenes, and when we were trying to find the tone of the show.

We'd play it in MDR or something, and it would just change the whole feeling.

Walking down the hallways and stuff, you would play it. It did really help.

Yeah. There's so much music in the show. There's so much music in the show.

Yeah, and I agree. It's so integral to the show and the feeling in the show. I actually feel like your music has saved me on a number of occasions in scenes.

Teddy, you're a filmmaker, and what I mean by that is you know movies so well, and you've worked on a lot of movies. I feel like that's another part of our relationship relationship in our collaboration, for me, is the way that you work with Jeff, our editor, you guys have developed an amazing relationship. But when an episode comes in, you get the rough cut of the episode. There's always a little something inside me until I hear from Teddy like, Did you like it? Did not? It's not because I just want you to like it. It's because I really value your opinion as a filmmaker. I feel like that's a big part of what you do.

The way that we work on this show where I feel like I'm talking... Jeff and I do, we have this very close relationship, and I feel like I'm in constant conversation with Jeff, and then it's always understood that you are in conversation with Jeff. And so I feel like the three of us are just making the show in post together in a really interactive and creative way. It's not always like that with every project. Sometimes you're brought in at the end and the film is already edited, and they just want you to put your music on top of it. Sometimes that's just the way their process works. But it's just such a joy to do it this way and to have the music live in the show from the beginning like this.

You've written so much music for the show, and you wrote so much music ahead of time. But then when we get to the editorial process with a specific episode, we'll lay in music that you've written ahead of time, but then there'll always be that crafting of like, Oh, no, this actually needs a new cue, or this needs a new idea here. That's a big part. That goes to episode 2: 04, where obviously the story is in a whole new environment, and that required you to come up with a new theme, just a completely new theme. I think you did that ahead of time, too, the same way you did it for season 1, but for this specific episode, right?

Well, I That was one of the first things that you ever told me about season 2 was about this episode. I feel like from the time that I started writing themes for season 2, I was really focused on this episode in particular and finding sounds. But truthfully, Ben, I should say that the thing with 204 was that this was the episode where I feel like we worked the hardest to find the tone of anything in both seasons. And a lot of those things that I did in advance ended up being part of the episode. But we were working at it for a while.

What was it about this episode that was a bit tricky for you guys to zero in on that particular tone.

Well, this is the episode where it's like the Lumen's version of a corporate retreat, but it's in the freezing wasteland where it's called an Orkbow, where Milchick is putting them out in the elements. I always wanted the episode to be very visual and to be not a lot of dialog, at least the way it ended up in the first part of the episode has very little dialog, and to be stark and otherworldly. So, yeah, that was the idea behind it. Just from the very beginning of the episode where we find Irving on the Lake, and then he hears Mark's voice and follows his voice, and he meets Heli on the way up, and they end up on top of this cliff overlooking this big lake, and there's this monitor there with a message from Milchick. It just was surreal. We wanted it to be surreal and eerie and weird. Actually, why don't we take a listen to the Milchick video music that you wrote?

Yeah, like the retro.

That is actually the theme that you wrote.

Patricia sings in season one. That's right.

Exactly. The Cure Him.

The Cure for him from season one.

But the Musack version. I remember, Ben, you just kept saying, Can you make it shittier?

That's exactly right. You kept on coming back. I was like, This has to sound more like really bad Musack.

Yeah, it sounds almost like a grade below Musak, you would actually hear it. It is a grade below Musak.

That's right.

It's some guy quickly doing something for this video.

Exactly.

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Teddy, the theme that you ended up with for the episode was also mirrored in the the Theramon tune, right? Yes.

Well, that was a real breakthrough. I mean, it's interesting because I remember I sent you two versions of Ms. Wang's thereumen music. One was just like, spooky thereumen sounds, not really a tune. Then the other one was this tune. It was like a cousin to the Keir Hymns. You were like, That's what we want to move towards. You had your finger on it.

That's our collaboration. Teddy writes something brilliant, and I go, That's great.

Wait a second. The theremin music that Sarah Bach is playing, that Ms. Wong is playing, is that same Keir Hymn? Because I didn't even recognize it as.

No, it's not. But what it unlocked for me was Oh, yeah. There's this whole body of Keir music. It's like Keir folk tunes. When I wrote that and then responded to it, I was like, oh, right. There's a world of Keir folk music.

It sits next to the Keir him. Exactly. Now, had you played a theremin before? Have you had a lot of experience with one?

I'm going to admit that, no, I don't play a theremin, but I have this instrument called an ond Martinot. It's like an early electronic instrument that sounds like a theremin. I'm not very good playing it. It's a little harder than it looks to do it well.

Is it a keyboard instrument?

It's a keyboard instrument, but it has this wire that you slide from right to left along the keyboard And so if you slide it up to a C, then it'll play a C. With your left hand, you press one button that says how loud or soft it is. And then with your right-hand, you do the pitch with your fingers in a little is a little ring, and you move it up and down, and that determines the pitch.

Sounds super easy.

It sounds like you're making it up as you go along, actually.

I don't believe you.

Yeah.

And it sounds like a theremin, essentially.

It sounds like a thereumen. So Because I'm not that good at it, it seemed like it would work for Ms. Wong on the theremin.

That's how it did. I mean, the theremin is a fascinating instrument. We could talk for hours about what a theremin is.

Basically, She's really using the force to make music.

I don't even understand how it works. When you watch Ms. Wong play it in the episode, she's doing it, right? What is she doing?

A theremin is the only instrument where you don't physically touch anything. You're using your hand to block, I think, a wave, and that is creating the sound.

It's wild.

I know. It's totally crazy.

You know what else is amazing is that Sarah Bach learned how to play the theremin for the episode.

Yeah, you can tell she knows what she's doing. It looks perfect.

Incredible. I was convinced.

Yeah. This young woman is just... She's such a good actress and so smart and so committed, and she went and learned how to play it. That's one of, I think, the more interesting scenes in the episode. You then, I remember, scored, As Milchick's tail gets darker and weirder, you went on to score it with the theremin to get even weirder and stranger as it gets… Exactly. Let's take a listen to that scene. He reached up to grasp at his hair, which was suddenly moss that tore easily from his bleeding scalp. Good heavens. And as the puss from his eye thickened into sap, I turned from my gargling brother and walked to the pool of the hollow, where I knew the waterfall would drown out my brother's cries.

That's actually really smart.

It was here that I first encountered the temper woon. A gaunt bride, half the height of a natural woman. I just have to say the theme that you did come up with, that theme, which she's playing on the theremin, to me, that spooky, weird evocative melody, it makes this episode in my mind because it puts you in this world, which, again, I just can't say enough how much the music is important in our show. It's part of the world of the show.

We're so lucky to have Teddy.

Yeah, man.

Thank you. I have to that there was a particular moment in the show where I thought to myself, this might be the single best piece of footage that I've ever gotten to work on, which is during the sex scene between Mark and really, that shot with the red glow.

The wide shot. The wide shot?

Of the red glow of the two of them where you just see almost their weird animal silhouette.

Yeah, the wide shot is at the end of it, right? Yes, exactly. The cute The way that you did there is... It's so funny because we never talked about this, that it's one of my favorite... Did I tell you this? That moment, that cue.

No, I think Jeff told me that you said that, that you were like... Because I wrote a chord at the end of that that I really was happy about. The director doesn't always love the thing that you write that you're really excited about. But in this case, I've heard Jeff that Ben's like, That cord is my favorite moment of the whole show.

That's so cool. Then what you're doing, too, Adam, is good. Yeah, it's fine. Whatever. All right. Well, we've been asking fans to call in with questions. We have this hotline set up. We got one about the music that we want you to help us to answer. Okay? Okay. Okay, let's listen.

Hey, guys. This is Don calling from New York. I'm a big fan of your work. My question was, what was the influence behind the Praise Cure Anthem that was saying to the crew at the end of season one. I was just wondering what went behind that whole composition and what the backstory was with that.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Dawn.

He's asking about the Cure him. Yeah. What I remember was at a certain point, I think that Efa...

Efa McArdle, who directed the episode.

Efa McArdle, yes. She had identified... The Cure Him was written into the script, the lyrics, and I think that Efa gave me a reference of something that she felt would be an interesting reference, and it was this lullaby that was in the movie Night of the Hunter. It's a small. I listened to that and I sat down at the piano and played and sang the key or him as a lullaby, and then Patricia performed it as a punishment. Yeah, it's so interesting because Patricia, the way Patricia interprets it is ominous.

Like you said, it's a punishment, but the melody and hearing it now in this episode and hearing it travel in different versions, it is lulling, and you can see it as being this soothing song that's gone through the ages.

Yeah, exactly. You actually hear that theme in the scene where Cobell is in front of her shrine to Cier in, is it 105 or 106? Yes. That's the score. It has this devotional quality there.

Devotional, yes. That's the word. Anyway, I'm just so happy that we got to work together.

Yeah.

I know. It's great. Adam, you're so great on this show. I'm so-Thanks, man. Amazed by everything that you're doing.

Thanks, Teddy.

Well, thanks, man. Thanks for joining us.

Yeah. Thanks, Teddy.

All right. Yeah. Thanks, guys.

Okay, I'm so excited to dive into this episode with you because we shot it now a couple of years ago.

Isn't that crazy?

It really has been a couple of years since we shot it.

It was March of 2023.

Yeah. Now, the entire episode is with Innie's, but it's out fucking side, which is my favorite line, I think from the season, is Dylan's first line when he emerges.

He knew there was no ceiling, but this is- Yeah, but this is- whatever.

But this is insane.

Is that what he said? I don't know whatever he said.

We're all outside because it's part of a Lumen reform called the ORTBO, which stands for Outdoor Retreat and Team Building Occurrence. Let's listen to Milchick telling the innies about it on a DVD.

Good morning, refiners. This is Mr. Milchick from work, and I'm thrilled to welcome you to your first ever outdoor retreat and Team Building Occurrence.

He is so perfect.

This ORTBO is in response to your desire to see the outside world. Mr. Milchick from here. With your Audi's blessings, you will spend the next two calendar days walking the meadows, thickets, brambles, and brooks that make up the Dieter Egan National Forest. Who the fuck is Dieter Egan. Dieter Egan? Some of you may be quietly yearning to learn more. The truth you seek lies within the fourth appendix. Wow.

Okay, this episode is a complete departure from the Innie's world, but also the world of the series entirely. Do you want to just talk about where it came from and why you wanted to do this?

Yeah, I think it was one of the original ideas for season 2, was we knew we wanted to do a corporate retreat of some type. Yeah. And what would that be? It was really trying to figure out what the reason would be for that, which felt like it really made sense in terms of Milchick trying to maybe do something. I think it's probably a good question that I don't know if there is one answer for it or not in terms of what his motivation is for it. I think on the one hand, you see that there's some element of compassion that he has for the innies, but this retreat is not really a fun experience for them. It's meant to, I think, on another level, basically say, Okay, you guys wanted to go see the outside world.

Here you go. Yeah. It's not so easy, and it's not so nice.

Yeah. How it's organized, what he's doing, the okays that he has from his superiors and all that we don't really know about. But it was an opportunity just to really dig into the weird mind games that Lumen plays with the innies. We talk about sometimes the choices that you guys have to make in terms of, what's the first thing I'm experiencing, I'm buttoning my shirt for the first time. I've never done that before. It's not always appropriate to do that in an episode, but this was an opportunity for you guys to really take in the outside world in a way you'd never done before. Just as a production, to go off and make this episode, it was like we were making a little movie.

It really was. Watching the episode again last night, I was realizing just how expansive it is. We were out there. We were out there in the elements for what, five weeks? Something like that? Yeah.

We talked about how we were going to make this episode. We're not the show that does that visual effects stuff where we do something with green screen or something like that. We knew we wanted to to a real location. At first, we started thinking about... We knew snow was really important. Of course, in our world with climate change, and finding snow is a really hard thing to do, even in the winter.

You can't depend on any location at any particular point in the year.

We're based in New York with the production, and it's hard to go very far away. We talked at one point about maybe going to Colorado or going to Canada. We realized that wasn't really feasible for us, but the cat skills were close by. We shoot a lot of our exteriors in upstate New York, in a town called Kingston. This was a little bit further west and out there more, but we have a great location manager named Ryan Smith. Ryan went out and started searching around, and we found this. The biggest centerpiece for the episode is the waterfall. Yes. Here's Twin I was always with him. That's why we provided the very same for each of you. Fuck you all. I was right. Mr. Milchick. This is the tallest waterfall on the planet. You have followed the path of Keir and Dieter and reached Woves Hollow. You stand upon sacred Earth. We're starving, Mr. Milchick. Are you? I thought the waterfall's grandeour would satiate you. I'm teasing, of course. Finding this waterfall was the key, and Ryan found a Wasting Falls which is near Lake Minawasca, and Lake Minawasca was where that Lake is.

But that was the other part of it, too, is the frozen Lake, the cliff above it. I mean- Yeah.

Well, this was also... It was written originally that you guys we're in a clearing. That's right. Then all of a sudden, they hear you and you come out of the woods or something. We thought this is something we could really find, something that's a little bit more dramatic. We found this lake that has this cliff over it. We thought, well, wouldn't it be cool if Mark is standing up on top of the cliff and Irving is in the middle of the lake?

Yeah, which I was really up on that cliff. He was out in the middle of the frozen lake, and we were actually screaming to each other.

Yeah, that was fun to do. Look, the whole episode was so dependent on weather, too. We got so lucky.

I remember it was touch and go for a while, and then right before our shooting dates, right before moving up there, there was a big storm, am I right? Yes.

There was a storm that for the four weeks that we were shooting, basically, we needed snow, and a storm happened. It only happened at the altitude. The snow was at the altitude that we were shooting at. But But everybody moved up to the Katzgills for a while, and we were staying in hotels around there. We were based in Accord. We had a really fun roller-skating wrap party. That was really fun. At a place called Skate Time in Accord, New York. Do you know Bjorn Corn, the popcorn?

That's where I discovered it, and I eat it to this day.

That skate rink is owned by Bjorn of Bjorn Corn, and Stephanie has left. I love Bjorn Corn. Yeah, and they hosted us. We had a really good time. I mean, it was a huge production in terms of having to get up to where the campsite was. You had to take these snow cats or other vehicles to get up there, especially when the weather hit.

Oh, yeah. I mean, just for the actors to get to set. And this means that everything else was 18 times more difficult. Just for the actors, we would drive from where we were staying for a while and then arrive at the base of the mountain, get out of the car and get onto a snowcat because there were no actual roads going up to where we were shooting, ride in the snowcat up to the top of the mountain where we had our base camp, which was just a series of tents with heaters in them. And that is where we were all day. And we would go venture off and shoot from there, sometimes needing to hike for 45 minutes or something to get to where we were shooting.

The cave, the cave.

The cave, yeah.

Scissor Cave was a real hike. There was no way to reach that little cave except to hike at least, yeah, It was about 30 minutes. But our camera crew had to literally carry those heavy cameras and camera cases. It was an ordeal. It was an ordeal. The weather was constantly changing when we were filming the episode, too. The other big centerpiece of the episode is Irving's Dream. The cliff where we find you in the beginning and where you have the scene with Milchick, and then you see the shadow off on the cliff, the faceless version of you. That at a place called Sam's Point, and in this Peterskill area, which was a little bit away from Lake Minawasca. This is the Shawangunk Mountains. Beautiful, beautiful, a beautiful place. Really, really gorgeous. We had to shoot that dream sequence. Basically, we had to switch our schedule around because one morning we came in to work and it was really foggy and snow had fallen. It was so foggy that if we had shot that scene with you guys on the cliff with the TV, you wouldn't have seen any of that vista. Right. So Jessica, our cinematographer, made the call to say, let's go shoot the dream.

We went over to this burned-out forest area that was at altitude that was near that cliff, and it was foggy and eerie. What you see when Irving walks to the cubicle in the middle, we brought the cubicle out to the middle of this charred-out forest. That's not a set, that's not visual effects. That's all real, real fog.

That was extraordinary because I wasn't there, but you told me about it when you guys got back and looking at the dailies. It looks like it was designed, and it looks like special effect. You never could have asked for better fog placement, for better colors. I mean, it is beautiful, and it was all naturally occurring.

Yeah, we were so lucky. We We were just so lucky with the elements and the ability that we had as a crew to change our plan and just go do that made all the difference. Then we shot in this this blueberry field where you guys were walking through where Irving's reading from the Keir book, the fourth appendix.

It was difficult to walk because we had these boots. We need to talk about the wardrobe, but we had these boots that also had crampons attached to them that were made for walking on slippery ice. Basically almost like straight claws that lift you an extra five inches off the ground. But walking through deep snow and/or blueberry bushes made lifting our feet up and down exhausting, and we were all drenched in sweat by the time we made it across those fields.

I mean, Sarah Edwards, our costume designer, just did incredible work. That was the other thing. We knew all we were going to have were you guys out there and the snow. So what are the costume is going to be? What would Louman put you in? I think Dan had this idea that it would be something that would feel like it was from a hundred years ago. She came up with just the most beautiful costumes, these black coats, these black fur hats.

Everything down to the undergarments were period, were from a particular time. It felt like revenant era.

It was just really that choice was really important because we knew we were going to live with that the whole episode.

Yeah, and also the color of the wardrobe that everyone had. It's particularly beautiful and particularly stark when up against the snow. It's really, really just incredible to look at these four figures moving across the landscape.

Yeah. I remember we shot tests of you guys in that, and I remember Milchick's outfit, which is white and...

Yeah, and Ms. Wong as well.

Yeah, Ms. Wong, too. There's like a Jeremiah Johnson vibe going on there.

They look like they're in the Empire Strikes Back, and we look like we're in Jeremiah Johnson.

All right, let's take a break, and we'll come back and talk a little bit more about some of the plot stuff that's going on in this episode. 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, deliver work faster. In fact, with Confluence, teams can see a 5. 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 atlassian. Com/confluence. That's atlassian. Com/confluence. All right. A lot of different things going on in this episode. The big thing, of course, is that since episode one, Irving has been suspicious that Heli is not telling the truth about what went on with her when she had her Audi activated.

Yeah, something about it just hasn't sat right with him since that first episode when they all got back.

You guys are trudging through the snow, and he's suspicious, and he's asking about the Nightgardner comment.

Yeah. He's starting to pick apart Haley's story a little bit. To Mark, it just is out of the blue and feels ridiculous. Like, what are you even talking about?

Yeah. And I think that's also probably because Mark is so into Heli at this point, too, and not maybe wanted to see that.

Thinking about Irving, and Irving being the one who started to pick up on something strange about Heli, I wonder if because he's so heartbroken and he's so emotionally raw and split open, if he's extra sensitive to the vibrations of everyone in the group or something, because he, from the very start, sees something very wrong but can't quite put his finger on it.

That's right. You even see that in episode three, a little bit, too, when you guys go out to look for the goat people.

Yeah, she stops and comforts him and takes liberties that feel a little off.

Yeah. Then you're trudging through the snow, you discover the dead seal. By the way, a moment in time when real snow came down from the heavens just for three hours. Well, we shot that scene in three hours, all of that scene, because we knew the snow was going away.

Just real quick, I remember when we were shooting this with John and I and him asking me about the Nightgardener, we were walking through a raw space where snow had fallen and no one had walked since the snow fell. That's So you were extra excited because there was fresh snow for us, organically fresh.

You were on this little peninsula in this little brook.

Could have fallen into the creek at any moment because who knew?

It was very delicate shooting that scene, but I remember being so excited that we were getting that snow. Then the weird campfire, we could have a whole separate podcast about Milchick's crazy tale of the Temper Woe. That is just one of my favorite- That's amazing. Mel moments in the series. But then Irving pushes Heli about what really went on. Just tell us about him.

Who?

The Nightgardner.

Oh, Irv, come on.

Did he have a flashlight? What was he wearing? What is your deal right now, dude? What color was his shirt?

He really makes a spectacle of it, really embarrasses her in front of everyone. Yes, he does.

Then he goes off into the forest and has this weird dream. At the same time, this huge experience happens in the show, which is that you and Heli sleep together. As that's happening, Irving is having this dream where the temper, whoa, shows up. Maybe for a second, I think you might see an image of just the slightest image of Heli in her face. Then he wakes up knowing that he has to confront her and confronts her out by the waterfall.

It's almost like there have been some random puzzle pieces scattered in front of Irving now for a few episodes. It's this dream that is abstract, but it's the dream that puts them together. He knows when he wakes up, he knows what's going on.

I think he's been trusting his instincts more from these dreams that he's been having from season one, too. But let's take a listen to that scene.

Mr. Milchick.

Come. Mike. Mr. Milchick.

Mr. Milchick.

What? Owie. Turn her back, Mr. Milchick. What are you doing, man?

Turn on back.

Earth, what the fuck?

She's an outage.

Earth, come and help. Stop. She's in and out of the whole time. I'm not going to say she came back. Herbie, you stop now.

Stop it. Earth, stop this.

She's a fucking mode.

What are you doing?

I'm going to kill her, Mr. Milchik.

Stop. The jig is up at this point.

Yeah. This was a scene that was a bear to shoot. You guys are up on a cliff. He to attempt to drown Brit in this icy cold water. So cold. There were so many aspects to shooting this scene to put it all together. But really, it's one of my favorite Irving, John Tutturo moments in the series.

It's beautiful. And do you want to talk about the closeup of Heli being dunked in the water, being shot later at our stages up on a platform?

We had to create a tank, a little mini tank that we could put the camera under and have a camera person, a scuba the diving camera person underneath so that they could see the closeup on Brit's face when she transitions and several transitions. But I have to say, John's reading when he says, She's a fucking mole. It's this aspect of Irving, it's just this strong, dark, incredibly forceful version of Irving that we've never seen before. That whole scene, as challenging as it was to shoot, it's the acting, I I think is just so great there where Milchick banishes him, and I think it's pretty emotional.

John is world-class, and you see it here. He's a heavyweight.

He's one of the greats. I love that when Zack is yelling out because you just hear the pain in his voice.

That was emotional. I remember it being emotional on set watching John walk away. I remember we were off camera just being there for an eyeliner for John, But we were all weeping watching him turn around and walk away. It was really... Because also, Irv, from the moment he smashes the egg in the book in season one, he has not only defined for himself what right and wrong is, but I think he's been a living definition of right and wrong for the rest of us. And him being excommunicated in that moment was heartbreaking. Yeah. Your workspace will be cleared and any personal items, discarded. Your file, including any and all professional interactions and personal relations, will be purged and destroyed. It will be as if you, Irving B, never even existed nor drew a single breath upon this Earth.

May Keir's mercy follow you into the eternal dark. Now, I remember thinking about how Milchick could do this because we had discussions about, Well, how is he going to turn him off? How is he going to... Are there going to be security guards that come and drag him away? What's going to happen? We came to the conclusion that something in Irving is probably accepting this. The strength of the mind control that Milchick has, and they have over these innies, is so strong. But I think ultimately, there's something in Irving that accepts his fate. Maybe on some level, the love sickness for Bert or something in there, he has to somehow... And watching John come to that realization is pretty amazing.

Yeah, I think the moment he makes the decision to out her as who she is, he knows he's done for, and he's doing it for his brother in there, his compadres.

Right. But he does tell Dylan to hang in there. Yep. All right. Before we go, it's time to check in with our telepathic friend, Zack Cherry, to find out what he thinks.

The octopus of a soul.

The octopus that is Zack Cherry, what knows deep in his heart will happen in episode 5. Let's hear. Hello, again. It's Zack here. You know what time of the episode it is. This is your favorite part of the episode. The feedback has been coming in and people are saying they skip right to this part. Sorry, Ben and Adam, but that's what I've heard. Anyway, you know what's coming next time on Severance. You know, we've seen the innies have one field trip, and now I think it's time to see them have another. They're going to go to the mall and watch a movie. Wow, their first movie.

That's exciting.

What was your first movie? Call in and tell Ben and Adam, what is the first movie you ever watched? For me, it was the movie Meet the Parents, starring my friend Ben Stiller. I watched that. It was the first movie I ever saw.

I was 20 years old. Okay. All right. Wait a minute. You know what? Wait a minute. So much of that just doesn't add up.

His first movie at 20?

Yeah. His first movie was at 20 years old.

He's just trying to get to me. Yeah, he is.

He's trying to make us feel old.

It's not going to work, Zack. All right? I'm sure your first movie was probably Madagascar or something like that.

Exactly. Something else Ben Stiller created or is a part of.

Yeah, right. It's nice. Isn't it nice to be at that point of your career where people come and say, I grew up watching you.

It happened to me in front of you. I saw you. And you were so happy that I experienced that.

I was like, Welcome to my world.

It was someone that came up and said, I've been watching you since I was a little kid, and you mean so much to me, which was lovely and so them to come up and say. But it strikes a particular chord when someone says... Because when you're out acting in front of cameras, you are a grown up, which means you are now an old person.

It's also the person telling you. When you look at the person, you go, This person is maybe almost middle-aged. Exactly.

That's the infuriating part.

You're younger than I am, but I have been dealing with this for a while now, and I've come around to appreciating it. I don't even have any weirdness about it now. I really do appreciate it, no joking. But it It was fun to watch you really experience it for the first time and just the pale wash of... That's right.

Oh, my God. I didn't even know it was apparent what I was going through, but then I just turned my head and you're like, Yeah. See?

Zack Cherry is 48, by the way.

Yeah, he's older than both of us.

All right, we did it. We did it, man.

We did. We are done, and that is it for this episode. The Severance podcast with Ben and Adam will be back next week to talk about Season 2, Episode 5.

And you can stream every episode of Severance on Apple TV Plus with new episodes coming out every Friday.

And 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 Oasis 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 Krustas 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 LeVay, Melissa Wester, Matt Casey, Kate Rose, Kirek Courtney, and Hilary Shuff.

And the team at Red Hour, John Lesher, Carolina Pesecob, John Pablo Antanetti, Martin Valderutten, 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 Slawter. I'm Ben Stiller.

And I'm Adam Scott.

Thanks for listening.

And how dare you, Mr. Milchick, for throwing out my marshmallows. I am a team player.