[Do not read further if you have yet to watch the Severance season two finale in full. But also, what’s taking you so long?]
It’s frustrating when TV storylines keep us in suspense for literal years, as was the case of Severance season one to season two. While the same (real) time will not lapse between the Apple TV+ series’ second and third seasons — Ben Stiller promises! — we don’t have to wait until season three to re-engage in some Severance season two-finale cliffhanger chatter.
The Hollywood Reporter grabbed Britt Lower while she was on a break filming Netflix’s adaptation of Harlan Coben novel I Will Find You (Lower is “still a redhead” for that one, she says) to ask her all the burning questions about her other streaming drama.
Did Mark S. (Adam Scott) make the right decision at the end of season two, when he chose himself and Helly R. over his Outtie/Mark Scout and Gemma Scout/Ms. Casey? And, is she sure sure she wasn’t actually Helena Eagan when that all went down? Read on for her answers, below.
***
How much do you know about season three?
I honestly don’t know anything. I wish I did. I’m as hungry as the fans are to find out what these characters are going to get up to, and I probably have as many daydreams as as you all might about where they’re gonna go and what they might be thinking.
How has your career changed since Severance?
It’s really hard to comprehend the scope of how impactful the show has been. When you do theater, of which I do a fair amount, I do live performance — someone gave me this analogy the other day that I’ve been really thinking about. You do a play and you go out at the end to do a bow, and that bow is not only to receive applause, which is so lovely, but also it’s a way to thank the audience for coming to the show, to honor the audience by saying, “Hey, this would be weird if we were doing this to an empty room. Thank you for coming.”
In TV and film, we don’t have that immediate audience response, right? There’s a year or two between when we step into the character’s perspective and when the audience sees it. So, doing press and getting to see how the fans are impacted by what we’ve done is our chance to take that bow.
That’s always the goal with art, right? That it somehow has a resonance with the audience, and we’re on this journey together. My personal opinion is that art is this chance for us to to think about what really makes us human. When we’re making art, we’re saying, “Who am I really? What makes our consciousness different from a tulip or a bird or AI?”
When did you first learn you would be playing Helena Eagan in addition to Helly R.?
I suppose it was after I was cast — pretty early on that was embedded into the storyline. I did not know that it was Helly and Helena when I auditioned, but once I got the news that I was going to get to be Helly R., then Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller told me the full scope of season one and that all of the Innies get this little glimpse of who they are on the outside. Because we film the show out of order, we were privy to the whole arc ahead of time, so you’re sort of stringing that process together.
A trend has been one actor playing twins — is it like that for you?
I’m always trying to come up with new analogies. It’s these two parts of the same person. They share the same anatomy, they share the same physiology. They share some of the same psychology, because they have a subconscious that’s shared, but it’s their consciousness that’s different, right? Their subjective experience of awareness, of being awake, is separate in the same way that, as an actor, I share the same body as Helly, and I share some of the same subconscious space. If I bruise my elbow on set as Helly, I’m gonna feel it as Brit. But I have a different consciousness than these two parts of the character that I play.
Fans pretty quickly picked up on the physical differences you bring to the characters, like their different postures. Can you talk about creating that tool for yourself?
My job is to sculpt the inner life of each of them, and sometimes stuff that’s happening internally affects how the character moves through the world. Some of that the fans picked up on and that just happened as a result. Helly has this drive. She moves with a lot of conviction and determination. And Helena kind of waits for the world to come to her. Their psychology works differently, given their circumstances.
When did you first learn what Cold Harbor is?
For season two, I had the pleasure as an actor of now stepping into that weird world of the Lumon higher-ups and seeing what it’s like to be a Lumon worker as Helena, and how everyone’s always watching each other — and the extent to which Helena is aware of what’s happening in the company is also a little mysterious. She knows a lot, but there are also things kept from different departments within Lumon. I had to know at least what Cold Harbor was as Helena. But the extent to which she knows what it is, I’m not certain.
I know you’ve said that was definitely Helly R. in the season two finale and not Helena (again pretending to be Helly R.) — but are you sure Dan (Erickson) and Ben (Stiller) didn’t lie to you about that to get a certain performance?
That’s so funny. No, there’s no trickery involved in the Severance collaborative. If you track the whole episode and you see Helly trapping Milchick (Tramell Tillman) in a bathroom, her friend, Dylan (Zach Cherry), comes to help. She runs and stands on the tri-desk, remembering her friend Irving (John Turturro) and looking out at this sea of humanity of the Innies… That speech really embodies the question of the whole season: Are Innies people?
In season one, [Helena tells Helly] she isn’t a person and has no right to make choices about her body. Helly had no connection to meaning in the work that they were doing on the Lumon floor. She was like, “This has no meaning to me whatsoever, get me out of here at all costs. In fact, I’m willing to risk my life to do so. Get me out of here.” The question of season one is, who am I in relationship to this work, which doesn’t have meaning to me (Helly)? Then, over time, she’s forming this chosen family with Irving, Dylan and with Mark. The connection she has to these people who she loves is then the journey of season two. All of these Innies have this new information about who they are, and it makes them even hungrier for purpose and meaning in their lives.
So then to see her on that tri-desk at the end saying, “They give us half a life and think we won’t fight for it?” I just can’t believe that anyone else would have said that.
Did Mark S. make the right decision at the end of season two?
Well, again, I’m gonna go back to that question of, are Innies people? Like, Helena says to Helly R., “I am a person, you are not. I make the decisions, you do not.” So I think embedded in your question is: Is he allowed to make a decision?
Mark’s subjective experience of awareness — his consciousness — is separate from his Outtie’s. So, you have to put yourself in his shoes. These Innies have been stripped of so much already, right? They don’t get to see daylight. They don’t get to experience music or art — not really, not very much, at least. They don’t get to make choices about what they’re gonna have for lunch, or what they put on in the morning. And to expect him to make a decision for his Outtie’s dream to reunite with his wife is perhaps a step too far.
***
Seasons one and two of Severance are streaming on Apple TV+. Read THR’s season coverage and interviews.
#Britt #Helly #Season
