Ben Stiller on How ‘The Office’ Influenced ‘Severance’ – The Hollywood Reporter

severance pay director and executive producer am stiller knew about five years ago that he had something special with Dan Erickson’s pilot script. Initially, he signed up only to direct the pilot, but the material continued to attract him, to the point where he directed six of the nine episodes of Apple TV+’s sci-fi series, which has now racked up 14 Emmy nominations.

Starring Adam Scott, Zach Cherry, Britt Lower, John Turturro, Christopher Walken, and Patricia Arquette, the show follows Lumon Industries employees who agree to a “dismissal” process to separate their work and personal lives. “I read it and I thought it was so unique in terms of its tone, and it just jumped off the page for me,” Stiller says.

The director talks to THR about what drew him to the project, why he wanted Adam Scott to play the lead character, and the meaning behind certain decisions in the show’s haunting production design.

How did you first get involved in the project and what attracted you?

It came into our company [Red Hour Productions] long ago as a writing example of Dan Erickson. In my mind it seemed funny and interesting and weird, but it was based on this comical structure of this office workplace comedy. That’s what I really responded to, and then Dan and I met and we set it up at Apple. Apple wasn’t even really a thing back then. It was a long process in which they worked on ideas for the season. And I immediately contacted Adam Scott, but it took about three years to put it together.

What did you see in Adam Scott that convinced you that he would be your Mark?

Sometimes it just comes to mind when you read something. Maybe it was because of that office work I was thinking about, and I was working on it with Adam The Secret Life of Walter Mitty a while back, and I’ve been a fan of his for a really long time. It occurred to me that this is this workplace situation, but this character lives his life and doesn’t really think about what’s going on around him in his inner world, and then on the outside, [he has] so much more baggage going on in his life. I thought it would be really interesting to see Adam do that because I feel like we’ve seen him a lot in these comedies and he’s really great at that, but I also knew he was a great dramatic actor too, so it seemed to fit perfectly. Later, when I spoke to Dan about it, he told me that Adam was also someone he had thought of from the beginning.

Was there a specific character that was harder to track down?

The rest of the characters were all these interesting archetypes, in terms of the office and workplace culture. I love the show The officeand it was hard not to think, “Oh, [Dylan] has a little bit to do with Dwight in a way.” I had seen Zacho [Cherry] in succession and some other stuff, and I just thought it was so funny and unique. For Irving, Rachel Tenner, our casting director, one of the first people she introduced was John Turturro. His character undergoes the greatest change as his world has been shattered, his faith has been shattered, in the cult of what it is to work for Lumon and its religion. And so he just added a whole different level of grounding and intensity beneath the softness that Irving also has.

Patricia [Arquette] and I worked together before, on Escape at Dannemora, and I’m just such a fan of hers and I thought this would be an interesting one for her. I just loved the idea that it was a completely different character from what she played on our show. And also in The deed – there’s a real sharpness, and it’s also hard to really see what’s going on behind her eyes. She has so much going on and she can do very little and be so fascinating and intimidating. She was also one of the first people I thought of.

What were some things in the production design that were important to you? I know you had the actors train on old computers so they could get the feel.

On their workstations, we wanted to make sure they actually worked, so that when they do this refinement and get a bunch of grades and drag them into bins, they can actually do it. Everyone started doing it for themselves, and it really helped, I think, just because they were doing real things while we were shooting these scenes. In terms of production design, it was just knowing that we were going to create a world that we would spend a lot of time in and it had to be boring, but somehow interesting at the same time. It was things like, “What shade of white is it and what kind of texture do the walls have?” or “What finishes do we have for the vents?” All we really wanted to do was put the show in some sort of grounded reality so it didn’t feel too science fiction-esque. We didn’t want to make it feel like it was another world, but still it had to have an interesting feel. So we always made sure you could see outlets in the wall and things like that to plug things into – things that were a little bit retro and very analog.

And the hallways…

We had many courses. The nice thing about the set that Jeremy [Hindle] designed so that it is all connected. Actually, the very first shot of Adam, when he comes down for the first time, is just us following him through our entire set. And that was really fun to work in that maze, and then figure out ways to rearrange it so we could use it and reuse it. [We’d take] a wall down so you can go in and out and then put the wall back up so sometimes it was hard to find a way out. Six or seven months later everyone was like, “When can we go out?” We cherished the times we were allowed to go on vacation. Also the idea that the ceiling is super low. It is very unpleasant when the ceiling is so low in such a large room.

Why do you think the show appealed to so many people?

It’s interesting because [things] changed in terms of availability and this notification now of when people are around to work – even the way we made the show as we edited it completely remotely. Geoff [Richman] and I’d edit for six hours, both at our house, and then he’d say, “I have to put my kids to bed, but I’m available from 9am to 10:30am if you want to do some more work,” and we really hit it We didn’t know how people would react because [the show] is actually so much about going to a 9-to-5 job, going to the office and then leaving, and leaving that [work] behind. We never clearly thought about the environment we would be in when the show came out. Who could have known that a pandemic was coming or, as we were going to make the show, not knowing how people would react to a workplace show. I don’t know why people have reacted that way, other than the idea of ​​just separating from your own identity, or releasing your memories or being able to cut yourself off from painful experiences, whether it’s a job you don’t like , that fantasy idea of, “Oh, if I didn’t have to spend eight or nine hours a day doing something I really don’t like.” Ultimately, I think the show is about a person dealing with their own identity and their own grief over losing their wife, and I think that’s something we can all connect with. That to me is the crux of what the show is, as is the workplace situation.

Did you always know there would be multiple seasons?

I always hoped it would be, and we really designed the first season with no other choice. To end the first season like that and not come back would have been frustrating for fans of the show. And I think Apple, to their credit, has never really questioned it. Everyone was like, “If it works, it should work for several seasons.”

Interview edited for length and clarity.

This story first appeared in a standalone August issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.