- Hi, I'm Adam Scott.
- I'm Ben Stiller.
- I'm Britt Lower.
- Hey, I'm Jen Tullock.
- I'm Dichen Lachman.
- Tramell Tillman.
- Dan Erickson.
- And we're here to answer your burning questions
for Buzzfeed from season one of Severance
(upbeat music)
- Getting to see Tramell dance was really fun.
- Mm-hmm, yeah.
- A chicken walked onto our set one day
and spent the afternoon hanging out in the office.
- By accident? - Yeah.
- What?!
- It showed up near the garbage dumpster
outside of the stage in the Bronx.
And it was like a lone chicken.
- The Bronx Chicken.
- It was very friendly.
It was like sitting on the sound guy's shoulder.
- Yeah. - It was set pet.
I love filming the kind eye scene with Adam
'cause it was the first time in that season
that I broke character. Yeah.
(all chuckle)
He made me laugh.
(upbeat music)
- I feel like the easy choice is the music dance experience
because it was just glorious in every single way.
But I did also love, Jen reminded me earlier
of the non-dinner dinner, which was just an incredibly
fun night to like sit and watch these people
- Night and a half
- Night and a half, yeah
Enact this just, just ridiculous event
- And such an incredible group of actors,
those people, they were rad.
- One of the things that I really valued being a part
of this was the fact that we were able to do what we did
in the midst of a pandemic.
You know, we had so many people that were
on board to help push this forward
and create some really beautiful art.
(upbeat music)
- Well, we had it pretty well mapped out by that point.
I don't know how much you guys knew, though.
I feel like it was sort of case by case
what you guys wanted to know and didn't wanna know.
- Yeah.
- My character's on the outside world the entire time.
I thought I didn't need to be privy
to what was happening on the inside if she wasn't.
And so I, I kind of intentionally kept myself away
from some of the buttons on some of the storylines
towards the end of the season.
So, I watched it with friends
for the first time and there were a couple
of twists where I was like, oh, cause I didn't know.
- And when you say you watch it with friends
do you mean Jennifer Anniston, Courtney Cox?
(all chuckle)
- Yeah. David was not there, but um...
- Matthew Perry
- I'm friends with the Friends.
That's not a big deal.
- That's cool.
- You know, when we were making the show
nobody knew we were making the show or really cared
that we were making the show 'cause we were just making it
in our bubble and shooting the whole series.
So it was kind of like, they weren't like big, like this
you know, this, the twists and turns were like, okay
well hopefully people will think this is cool, but it
nobody really, you know, the show didn't really exist
for anybody except for us making it.
And we were doing it for about a year and a half altogether.
So it was, after a while I was like, ah,
I wonder if anybody's even gonna watch this.
- I remember like a month and a half after we started airing
talking to Ben on the phone and we were just sort of like
can you believe people care now about these
these big things, these big..
- Or just to hear like like I was saying like
innie and outie for like two years
(all chuckle)
- Yeah, yeah.
- And nobody knew what I meant.
And I was like, now I,
first time I heard somebody say like his innie,
I always think they're saying innie.
- Yeah, I know
(all laugh)
(upbeat music)
- I sort of thought of it as the duality of a single person.
So the ego versus the id
The innie is kind of this raw material that is,
hasn't been affected by years of memories
and the stories that we tell ourselves
and my outie is much more seen in a presentational scenario.
So she's much more aware
that other people are looking at her,
whereas innie Helly doesn't really care what anyone thinks.
So she's, she's got that like teenage angst.
So, I sort of tapped into the rebellion of being a teenager.
- Yeah. We were circling as we were leading up
to shooting the show, like how to do it.
Like you approach it as like two, like you said
like two different characters or, and I remember Ben telling
me a story about visiting Michael Keaton on the set
of Multiplicity, I think, and seeing that he had
like a chart, like a white board or something, it was
like charts, 'cause he played like seven different versions
of the same character in that movie.
So he had a chart with like a diagram of where each version
of the character was at a different point in the story.
- That's the only time I ever met Michael Keaton.
- Yeah.
(all chuckle)
- I do have a Helly kind of graphic novel that I
I drew out pictures on my wall
so that I knew, 'cause we were shooting kind of
out of order.
- Yeah.
And I drew little pictures of like Helly's action scene
so I could go, oh I've smashed through a window here.
And then I random....
- You should publish that.
- Yeah.
- I saw that. It's pretty cool.
I think whatever level of difficulty you think it might be
for actors to do this, it was compounded by the fact
that we were shooting the episodes out of order to
and like a movie we weren't shooting episode by episode
but we'd shoot pieces of episode
across the nine or 10 months that we were shooting.
So they had to sometimes
on one day do parts of episodes from, you know,
like three or four different episodes
and have to be jumping around
and where they were and innie or outie.
So it was really, really
I think very challenging for you guys.
(upbeat music)
- I was very fortunate to be able to read
like all of the scripts at once and I just
couldn't put it down.
Ben, you told me when we met on Skype
he was very reluctant to tell me 'cause
when we met it was still up in the air
whether I was gonna be able to do it or not.
And it was so such an extraordinary experience to
to work with him because like he's an actor as well.
And so, you know, he takes his time
with you and wants to try so many things
and it just felt like a different experience.
Usually when you work, it's just like, go, go, go.
And obviously they had days like that
but to really have the liberty to take so much time and
and try so many things to get Ms. Casey just right,
was such a blessing.
(upbeat music)
- I can't quite describe what it's like to walk
into a room where there's like 54 images of you spinning
on giant cubes.
(all laugh)
But I think I, I actually felt a bit nauseous
when I walked into the room that morning
and we were joking that it's either an actor's
like greatest fantasy or their worst nightmare
or both at the same time.
So yeah, I was kind of using that shock, that literal shock
of seeing myself so much in the that's what's happening
with, with Helly as well.
And that's that whole scene was choreographed so beautifully
with the camera movement and just literally
all the moving pieces of the set design.
- You were stunning in that dress
- Aww.
- It was beautiful.
(upbeat music)
- It was amazing.
I think I was physically trembling
to the point where I was trying to steady my own leg
under the table in the scene and I was like
just use it Tullock, don't be weird.
She's just such a brilliant artist.
No two takes felt the same.
She's incredibly generous.
She's, she listens and she's also just a, a badass gal.
So I really felt very lucky
that I got to be in any scenes with her at all.
(upbeat music)
- It was a long process.
like we saw a lot of people.
It was something that, you know, each of the characters
Ben and I had already discussed a lot in depth
and already had some very specific ideas
but also really wanted to be surprised
and wanted to sort of discover stuff that we didn't know
about these characters via the performers.
So it it's weird and vulnerable and beautiful to
have somebody who's lived in your head for years.
It was years at that point suddenly become real
and become fleshed out, this improved version of
of this character that you've been thinking of.
It was pretty surreal.
(upbeat music)
- I remember when we were shooting that stuff
'cause we were like in the middle of the shoot,
like Ben said, we were kind of shooting the whole season
at once in a way like a movie.
We were just like, okay,
if this whole thing works, like if
if we have them up to this point,
if the audience is like in
these moments are gonna be so much fun.
And I think we did that
that run and the screaming and stuff.
we did it quite a bit and, and it was just a matter
of trying to like, you know, go for it
and turn it up to 11 every time.
It was, it was really fun.
- Yeah.
(upbeat music)
(all chuckle)
- My, my theory is that all the characters
are slowly turning into goats
and at then at the end of the series
they're all gonna be sent back in time.
So the goats that we're seeing in season one
are actually like future Mark and Helly and everybody.
It's, it's a theory.
I don't know if it's true or not.
- [All Cast] Thank you. Thank you Buzzfeed.
- Thank you for having us and go check out Severance
on Apple TV +.