NEW YORK CITY — When Ben Stiller read the script for Severance it was like nothing he had been handed in his 30-plus years as an actor and director.
Stiller, who executive produced and directed most of the sci-fi thriller’s first season for Apple TV+, was hard at work on Showtime’s 2018 miniseries Escape at Dannemora when he powered through series creator Dan Erickson’s first treatment. The COVID pandemic, which changed how everyone viewed their work-life balance, was still years away.
“It was amazing. It was funny and weird and it reminded me of a lot of different shows and movies that I loved,” Stiller, 59, recalls of his initial reaction. Underneath it all, was the opportunity to explore an engrossing thriller in an endless number of ways.
The first season followed Mark Scout (Adam Scott) and his colleagues (Britt Lower, John Turturro, Zach Cherry) who have undergone a surgical procedure that has allowed them to divide the memories they have at work from the ones in their personal lives. The nefarious day-to-day tasks the “Innies” fulfil at the mysterious Lumon Industries remain a secret, and the “Outies” have no knowledge of what is going on in their lives inside the walls of their midcentury-designed office.
“The idea of being able to have a chip that cuts off your memories when you go to work, so you’re like these two different people … it’s a fantasy a lot of people might have,” Stiller says. “It’s just such a great, smart idea, and it has opened up so many (storytelling) possibilities.”
But when Season 2 debuts next week, Mark and his office mates will deal with the fallout following a jam-packed finale that saw them learning the truth about who they are in real life. Mark will also try to unravel the shocking Season 1 cliffhanger that revealed the wife he is grieving in his “Outie” life (Dichen Lachman) is very much alive behind the closed doors at Lumon.
Scott, 51, who worked with Stiller on 2013’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, says the character and the storyline tapped into “everything I want to do as an actor.”
“It was this mix of all these genres that I’m a fan of, and it read like something that if I was watching it, I would be a voracious fan of,” he says.
After debuting in January 2022, Severance became one of the breakout streaming hits of the year, earning 14 Emmy nominations and two wins. But it also became an outlier in Stiller’s career as it built a cult-like fandom on the Internet.
Like the TV show Lost before it, fans took to Reddit to launch their own theories and dissect the broader mysteries surrounding Severance.
“That’s a totally new experience. There are not any message boards debating theories for Zoolander,” Stiller says laughing. “It’s so much fun because it’s so much bigger than anything else in terms of the possibilities people are thinking about and what that opens up. It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced.”
Scott loves that Severance has built up a fan base that is paying attention to the show’s little details, and he promises that the most passionate viewers will be rewarded when Severance returns for its 10-episode second season on Jan. 17.
“It’s so incredibly flattering to have these fans that are so zeroed in on the details and coming up with theories,” he says. “When we’re making the show, we have them in mind the whole time and we’re zeroing in on the smallest of details because we know they are looking at all of it.”
The new episodes will dive deeper into the split identities of Mark and his colleagues, as well as their bosses (Tramell Tillman and Patricia Arquette), but it will also delve into the broader purpose of the work they do for their sinister employers at Lumon.
Erickson, who created the show after he was stuck in an office job he hated, promises that Season 2 will take a darker turn and put his main characters in peril. But he cautions that fans who are hoping all of the show’s questions will be answered will be left disappointed.
“That’s by design,” Erickson explains. “For me, I don’t want to walk away from something feeling like it’s all tied up in a bow and there are no mysteries left to be solved. You want to leave still asking questions and still talking about it. I think that’s fun and part of the magic of it.”
For Stiller, the mystery-laden plot (journalists attending a recent press day were given a spoiler-list we couldn’t talk about) is much like several of his favourite theme park rides combined into one.
“It’s this weird kind of house of horrors-meets-rollercoaster type of thing,” he says.
“It’s like a more disturbing version of (Disneyland’s) It’s a Small World,” Scott jumps in, laughing. “It’s an experience that grows as you go through it.”
“There’s definitely a little of that vibe,” Stiller chuckles. “But that would be a good theme park ride. The Severance ride. You go in and forget everything that happened while you were in there and you just come out.”
The first episode of Severance Season 2 will premiere on Apple TV+ on Jan. 17, with new episodes streaming weekly on Fridays.