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Severance Season 2 Interview: Showrunner Dan Erickson About His Personal Experience Inspiring The Series

Directed and executive produced by Ben Stiller and created, written and executive produced by Dan Erickson, the 10-episode second season of Severance premiered on Apple TV+ with the first episode on Friday, 17 January 2025 followed by one episode every Friday through 21 March 2025.

In Severance, Mark Scout (Adam Scott) leads a team at Lumon Industries, whose employees have undergone a severance procedure, which surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives. This daring experiment in “work-life balance” is called into question as Mark finds himself at the centre of an unravelling mystery that will force him to confront the true nature of his work… and of himself. In season two, Mark and his friends learn the dire consequences of trifling with the severance barrier, leading them further down a path of woe.

Severance Season 2 reunites its ensemble cast of stars including Emmy Award nominee Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Tramell Tillman, Zach Cherry, Jen Tullock, Michael Chernus, Dichen Lachman, Emmy Award winner John Turturro, Academy Award winner Christopher Walken and Academy and Emmy Award winner Patricia Arquette, and welcomes new series regular Sarah Bock.

Check out our review of Severance Season 2 by heading over here.

We interviewed Dan Erickson.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Why was it important to have all of the original lead characters return in Severance Season 2?

Dan Erickson: I think so much of this show rests on the chemistry of our core characters. So, you know, something that we had asked ourselves, even going back to the first season was like, well, it would be interesting to see Mark, you know, with a new crop of people in a new setting, sort of throwing him off of his game a little bit. But at the same time, you know, that wasn’t something that we always knew, that at the end of the day, you know that the show rests on these, on these four characters, and this collective journey that they’re on together.

So you know, it’s once you see them back together again for the first time. I think there, there is this I like to for me anyway, there’s this sense of feeling like you’re home again, and I think that that was a really important thing to try to recapture for season two.

Did any of your personal experiences shape or inspire the story of Severance?

Dan Erickson: Yeah, so around 2012, I was working at a little back office in a factory that made doors. And it was, you know, lovely people who worked there, but I didn’t really it wasn’t the job I wanted to do, which they could they could tell they knew. But I found myself walking in one day and just thought, God, I wish I could jump ahead and suddenly have it be 5pm and the day would be over. And then I was like, well, that’s a messed up thing to wish for, like, we should want to experience every precious hour of life that we have.

And but then I thought, you know, a lot of people would probably, a lot of people whether they would do it or not, a lot of people have probably had that thought or had that wish and so the whole thing just kind of came from that. And I think if there’s anything relatable about the show, it’s because it came from that just literally an impulse that I had as I was going into work one day.

There are some great sociopolitical and social themes explored in Severance, such as how the corporate side of the workplace works. Can you elaborate on that?

Dan Erickson: Absolutely, it’s funny because, yeah, I was, you know, I was not very good at keeping jobs before this one. This is the longest I’ve ever had a job. But because of that, while I was writing the pilot, I worked a series of office jobs. Some of them were, you know, were temp jobs. Others were temp, just because I wasn’t very good at them. So I got fired quickly. But it was, it was a lot of, some of those were, you know, working for in an office, for, like, a big global company. And so there are things like the, you know, these corporate mission statements that seem to come from nowhere, where you’re like, who actually wrote this?

And, you know, having a boss who lives on the other side of the world, and someone that you’ll never meet and they’ll never set foot in your office, and yet, you know, they’re sending you these kind of vague, you know, guidelines on how to go about your day. And it’s surreal. It’s really surreal.

You know, I worked at an office at one point where the smoke detectors broke, and so they said, Well, apparently, like, we’re a lot legally, we can keep working, but somebody has to go around every hour and check every room in the in the building and make sure nothing is on fire. And so that was my job for, like, for like, a month at that job, I was a human fire detector, and that’s the kind of thing that it’s in corporate in the corporate world, you see that all the time, and if you put it in a script, it seems exaggerated, but it’s actually the way things are.

What about the philosophy of the series?

Dan Erickson: That’s a great question. Yeah. I mean, I think that the search for sort of personal meaning is really central to the show, and it is one of the funniest and saddest parts of the show. You know, we talk about the different characters, each is sort of trying to derive meaning in a different way, because they lack it, you know, because they’re cut off from who they are. So, you know, you have Irving, who sort of looks to the lore of the Egan family and almost like a religion, you know, and that’s sort of how he finds meaning. And then Dylan is more, you know, he’s focused on the sort of tangible, physical prizes that are meant to signify, you know, achievement.

So, you know, I think my favourite detail, I think it has to be the finger traps and how, how for Dylan, that really is sort of the most important at the beginning anyway, you know, before he finds out, the revelation of having, having a family, you know, a finger trap is the most important thing in the world, which is also funny, because it’s literally a trap, you know, and, and so I Love that we were able to do that, like, answer this really sad question of, like, how do people artificially create meaning for themselves, but also do it in a way that was kind of funny and absurd?

How has Severance Season 2 changed from the first season?

Dan Erickson: Yeah, well, I mean, stylistically, I think it’s, it’s we’re going darker, we’re going scarier. I think our characters are put in more peril, both physical and existential and then. But thematically, I think it’s it. We’re continuing to sort of try to answer this question of, who are you? Which is, you know, the first question that you hear on the show. And each of the characters, you know, I think they start season one as these kind of walking automata, automatons. And by the end of season one, they now have the desire to understand who they are as individuals, but they still don’t know necessarily, you know?

I mean, Dylan is no longer obsessed with finger traps. But then the question becomes, well, well, what do I care about? What are my values? And the same question applies for every single character on the inside and on the outside, really, because I think these are, you know, we’re, these are questions that everybody asks, you know, we all sort of live in a world where we have to, we have to interrogate our own motives and what’s important to us. And so people are doing that, whether they’re severed or not.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect or impact Severance?

Dan Erickson: well, it’s, it’s funny because, you know, of course, we didn’t, we didn’t know that the pandemic, you know, was going to happen when we were writing it and we were shooting it, sort of in the, in the midst, sort of the heaviest part of the pandemic, you know, we all, you know, on set every day, everyone was masked and had these plastic face shields, and we had to stand at least six feet. And if we, you know, if we were talking to each other and socializing back, you know, on set, somebody would come and tell us to stop. So it really was sort of an apocalyptic feeling, which I know everybody was going through. So I think that that inevitably made its way onto the screen, and sort of even unconsciously, I think, helped to create this strange, sterile atmosphere of the office.

But then at the same time, you know, it was funny, because I remember worrying, as it was coming out, I was like, well, we’re releasing an office show after, you know, seemingly after the extinction of the traditional office. So have we just made, you know, the least relevant show of all time? But I was surprised, because I think that actually the the fact that everybody was working from home, really added a strange and important context. Because you know, when you’re working from home and you’re doing your job 10 feet from where you sleep, and it’s not your work isn’t tethered to the physical office.

It actually becomes harder to maintain a work-life balance, because, you know, you could, technically, you know, keep working all night, all evening, you know. And so in a way, I think people felt like it, it was like the job was encroaching more, and people’s jobs were encroaching more and more on their lives, even though working from home seems like it should be sort of freeing. And so I think that the themes of like, how do you, how do you have a job and also be a person? I think that question just became even more relevant, but in a way that we couldn’t have expected. So it felt a bit like, you know, it feels strange to say, but like, you know, we really didn’t know what the show was going to be until it came out, and all of a sudden we were, we were surprised by the world that we were releasing the show into, and the context that gave it.

Season 2 Episode 4 ‘Woe’s Hollow’ is perhaps the most unique episode of the entire series so far. Can you tell us how the idea came about?

Dan Erickson: Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s funny, the opening image of that episode was something that I had had in my head since, really, since the inception of the show. I always thought, you know, once we had this, this conceit, you know, there was this, you think about different ways that your experiences in any could be upended and changed. And you know, if you have no control over when and where you’re going to wake up and find yourself, so what if? What if our characters suddenly found themselves in a totally new environment, sort of a hostile environment that was not at all what they were used to.

And what would they do, you know, if you, if you put them in that situation. And so we wanted that episode to open without any explanation, without any context, because that’s how it would feel to the characters. And then, of course, because it’s lumen and because it’s severance, you know, things just get more and more horrifying. You know, we knew that this couldn’t just be a normal camping trip. This is a Lumon camping trip, and that means things are gonna get pretty insane.

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