What should be reserved for you and you alone? The fact that so many of us are working twenty feet away from where we sleep makes the question that much starker. Is this show going to have any resonance anymore? Are we making an office show right as offices are going extinct?” What was crazy and surprising was just how much the pandemic re-contextualized the question of work-life balance, and what you owe or don’t owe to your work. Many jobs were going to remain at home or fundamentally change. How has this story taken on new resonance for you under these circumstances?ĭ.E.: When we came back from the initial lockdown, it became clear that a lot of jobs weren’t going to return in the same way. As a culture, we’re wrestling with our changing relationship to work. Adam is playing such a beautifully, exquisitely different version of the character when he's the innie versus the outie, but I don't think the change is much more marked than what most people do when they're at work.ĮSQ: You started writing the show long before the pandemic, but it's interesting to receive it in our present context. Going to these temp jobs, I watched myself adopt slightly different mannerisms, because I would assess, “What is wanted from me here? What do these people like to talk about? What do these people think is cool?” I think we all enter a new scenario, assess those things, and then we shift, if only just a little bit. How did you calibrate that dichotomy-that there's both this difference and sameness to these people?ĭ.E.: It was easy once I recognized it in myself. When it comes to the severed characters, their innies and their outies are the same person, but the actors are giving a dual performance. AppleĮSQ: You're touching on one of the most fascinating things about Severance-this idea of turning yourself on and off. Michael Chernus as Ricken and Adam Scott as Mark in the season finale of Severance. When you're going through a complicated or painful time, sometimes all you want is to shut off your brain for eight hours and input data. In those hours on the job, I was resentful of not being in a grander place in life, but there was a sense of escape to it. At the same time, I was going through the really hard breakup of a five-year relationship. I would think a lot about the person I wanted to be and the career I wanted to have. I went from that situation to one where I wasn’t important in any way, just working temporary office jobs. That's a situation where you’re being catered to all the time, because you're a student and people are trying to nurture you creatively. During that chapter of your life, where did your mind wander when you were bored at work?ĭan Erickson: When I first came to Los Angeles, I had just come from New York, where I’d been at NYU for grad school. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.Įsquire: Severance was inspired by the time you spent working monotonous office jobs. But in the meantime, Erickson Zoomed with Esquire to take us inside the show, from its relationship to our changing work culture to the possibility of telling other stories in the Severance sandbox.Ī note: This interview was conducted before Apple TV announced Severance’s Season Two renewal, meaning that, luckily, Erickson’s uncertainty about the show’s future, which you'll read below, is now a thing of the past. We’ll have to wait until Season Two to find out what happens to our favorite refiners, and just what shady business Lumon Industries is up to. Harmony Cobel herself, meaning that he’s not going to unlock the show’s excruciating mysteries entirely. But you ought to know that Severance creator Dan Erickson is as tight-lipped as Ms. Ben Stiller Sees the World Differently Now. 'Severance' Season 2 Severed From Production.
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