‘Awards Chatter’ Pod: Adam Scott on ‘Severance’ Emmy Noms, ‘Parks and Rec’ Lessons and Learning Improv From Will Ferrell

Adam Scott, our guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, has done standout work on TV for decades. He stole scenes on Starz’s Party Down (2009-2010), NBC’s Parks and Recreation (2010-2015) and HBO’s Big Little Lies (2017-2019). But nothing has showcased his talent and magnetism like Apple TV+’s Severance, on which, since 2022, he has played Mark, a grieving history professor who opts to undergo a groundbreaking procedure that creates a total mental separation between one’s personal and work lives, resulting in “Innie” and “Outie” versions of oneself.

Back in 2022, the first season of Severance was recognized with 14 Emmy nominations, including best actor in a drama series for Scott and best drama series, for which Scott, as a producer of the show, was also personally in the running. Last month, the show’s second season — which the New York Times recently described as “the most ambitious, batty and all-out pleasurable show on TV” — was recognized with a field-leading 27 Emmy noms, including those same two. But this time, unlike last, it is the odds-on favorite to prevail in both, which would make Scott an Emmy winner for the first time.

Over the course of a conversation in the offices of Gettin’ Rad Productions, the company that Scott runs with his wife, Naomi, on the Radford Studio Center lot, just a few steps from where he shot Parks and Rec, the 52-year-old reflected on his slow evolution from starving actor to scene stealer in the Judd Apatow films Knocked Up (2007) and Step Brothers (2008) to TV stalwart; how his relationship with Ben Stiller developed from 2013’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which Stiller directed and starred in, and in which he cast Scott as his character’s nemesis, through Severance, on which Stiller is an EP and the primary director; the different ways in which he approaches playing “Innie” and “Outie” Mark on Severance; plus more.