[This story contains major spoilers from the Severance season two finale, “Cold Harbor.”]
For Severance star Dichen Lachman, life has imitated art in a rather peculiar way.
Despite being a series regular throughout both seasons of the Apple TV+ hit series, Lachman has largely been separated from the majority of the main cast, much like her collective character of Gemma Scout, Ms. Casey and her 24 other innies. In season one, Lachman, as wellness director Ms. Casey, got to interact with the other actors here and there, until Ms. Casey was permanently sent back to the testing floor for failing to keep protective tabs on Helly R (Britt Lower).
Thus, Lachman’s involvement in season two mostly consisted of glimpses in the discombobulated mind of Mark Scout (Adam Scott) and his innie, Mark S. The former’s efforts to reintegrate both personas into one meant that each character saw flashes of the other’s life. But Lachman’s status quo finally changed as of season two’s critically acclaimed seventh episode, “Chikhai Bardo,” which served as Gemma’s highly anticipated showcase of the series.
Directed by the series’ primary DP, Jessica Lee Gagné, Lachman helped fill in the gaps of Gemma’s existence, beginning with the origin of her four-year romance with Mark Scout, followed by their heartbreaking infertility story and the fateful moment where Mark learned his wife had supposedly died in a car accident. The dual narrative of the Dan Erickson and Mark Friedman-penned episode also depicted Gemma’s life as an imprisoned lab rat on Lumon’s testing floor. The season two finale has now confirmed that she was testing two-dozen innies that Mark Scout and Mark S were unwittingly creating for her by way of the innie’s number sorting as a Macrodata Refiner.
At long last, the Ben Stiller-directed finale also gave Outie Mark the chance to finally reunite with his kidnapped wife and rescue her from the aforementioned testing floor. Innie Mark, with a nudge from Helly R, reluctantly agreed to go along with his outie’s multi-step plan that was co-developed by Devon Scout-Hale (Jen Tullock) and Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette). So Innie Mark went through a series of dangerous obstacles in order to position Outie Mark on the testing floor to retrieve Gemma.
“It was really emotional. It felt so real that I got caught up in the story,” Lachman tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Sometimes, as an actor, you really have to use your craft to get to where you need to get to. But on that day, it felt much deeper to me than some of the other things I’ve done in the past where I’ve had to really work hard to get to that place.”
After the tearful embrace between husband and wife, they both booked it for the elevator that was inevitably going to turn them into their innie personas of Mark S and Ms. Casey. That seamless transition happened in the middle of Outie Mark and Outie Gemma’s passionate kiss, but the day of filming was anything but seamless.
“I don’t know how this happened, but for some reason, Adam and I totally butted heads like no one’s butted heads before. It was very awkward,” Lachman recalls. “But overall, it was hard not to laugh in that incredibly heartfelt moment, because, all of a sudden, there’s Ms. Casey with her wide eyes, saying, ‘What’s taking place?’”
From there, Innie Mark escorted Ms. Casey to the severed floor staircase exit where she re-transitioned into Outie Gemma. However, Innie Mark stopped short of following suit since he was always hesitant to leave behind the love of his two-year-long severed life, Helly R. The latter then arrived on the scene, creating a choice between the two women, and Innie Mark opted to follow his own heart, not his outie’s. All the while, Gemma was screaming and crying for Mark to leave with her, only the question now persists as to whether Gemma knew which Mark she was addressing at the time.
“I decided to make the choice that she doesn’t know [it’s Innie Mark] at first. But the further away he gets from her, she slowly pieces it together, and she still tries to get through to him,” Lachman says. “When Gemma is banging on the door and calling for Mark, I kept crying that day, which hasn’t really happened to me before.”
One of the many other remaining questions for the now-official upcoming third season is whether Gemma will have enough time to get to safety. Knowing the extensive capabilities that Lumon has, Lachman casts doubt on Gemma’s ability to get to Devon’s house or a police station. “What scares me is whether she will even be able to make a next move,” Lachman speculates. “It seems like Lumon still has control with the overtime contingency, so who knows if she’ll ever even get out of there.”
Below, in a spoiler conversation with THR, Lachman also discusses her hope that both the innie and outie romances can each have a happy ending.
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An argument can be made that you play the most important character on Severance. Your collective character is constantly talked about, and yet we’ve only seen Gemma/Ms.Casey in selective fashion across two seasons. Has it been bizarre to be such a focal point from afar?
It has been bizarre. As an artist, you want to get in there. You want to play with all the other actors and the director, and be there with them. So you feel like you miss them and you want to be there, but that’s why I was so excited to see the script for season two, episode seven. I was like, “Finally, I get to play.” Sadly, it wasn’t as Ms. Casey with all her friends on the severed floor, but it’s wild because you have mixed emotions. You want to be there, but in order to tell the story, it needs to be the way it is.
As idiosyncratic as your dual role is, you’ve been in this territory in the past. On Altered Carbon, you played an integral character who was believed to be dead until she wasn’t. Long before that, your Dollhouse “Active” character had a programmable personality that is somewhat comparable to innies. Have you always felt like this material was well-suited to you?
I’ve always loved playing in this [sci-fi] world, and I feel like I’m manifesting it towards me. It somehow finds me. It’s such a wonderful place to explore real-life things in a fun, very creative and bizarre way. Sometimes, I like to think of Severance as the prequel to the technology on those other series. Dollhouse is the one in the middle, and Altered Carbon is the finale of that tech and how far human beings take it. I feel really lucky to be able to play in this space, and I guess I just attract it.
Severance’s season two finale, “Cold Harbor,” reveals that Innie Mark has been creating new innies for Gemma through his fulfillment of the numbers and files. In essence, Outie Mark was unknowingly contributing to the lab rat-like torture of his kidnapped wife on the testing floor. Is the meaning of the numbers something you also learned upon reading the season two finale for the first time?
Yes, I learned what the numbers were very late in the process. I’m sure [creator] Dan [Erickson] had known all along, but it was a mystery for a bunch of us. So it was something that I learned very late, and while it didn’t make too much of an impact on how I approached the character, I did think it was extremely dark.
Innie Mark completes the final file, Cold Harbor, and Gemma is then dressed in her own clothes and taken to the Cold Harbor room to dismantle a crib. Was the test to see if the pain of Gemma’s struggle to bear children had been completely suppressed?
Yes. I’m assuming they’re testing the technology and whether this extremely painful moment for her outie had broken through the barrier of the innie’s mind. That’s how I approached and interpreted it. Finding the [Cold Harbor] innie was a little tricky, but Dan and Ben [Stiller] were there to guide me through it.
What was the hangup in finding that innie?
It was a very new innie in a room with little context, and there was a lot of weight behind the moment. There was a simplicity to it, but it could have gone so many different ways. We tried many different versions, and we did our due diligence to make sure we found the right balance. [Dan and Ben] helped by being creatively available to try many different things. That’s one of the amazing gems about this show. No one is locked into an idea about a performance. Yes, there’s an overall goal, but it feels like everyone is open in terms of how we get there. I think I remember Ben playing music before takes, and I really like it when he does that.
Do you think the Cold Harbor innie is the one that resembles Outie Gemma the most internally? Do you think that’s also why they put her in Gemma’s own clothes for added effect?
In a way, yes. In my opinion, the innies are just parts of the outie’s subconscious mind, and I’ve always believed that there’s something from the outie that’s left in the subconscious mind. So I think the crib and the clothes were meant to see if they would trigger anything from her outie’s mind. In season one, Ms. Casey was drawn to Mark S in some way, and when he built the little tree out of clay in the wellness center, part of his subconscious mind comes through since it’s modeled after the tree that [Outie] Mark believes led to Gemma’s death. So we’ve seen the subconscious break through previously, and I feel like I had to be very delicate with that in the [crib] scene. Ultimately, I think Gemma’s subconscious does come through here, but it doesn’t happen in a way that this innie can understand. There was something, but she couldn’t quite access why there was something.
Do you think Lumon’s ultimate goal is to vanquish outies’ trauma? Is this all geared toward improving the lives of outies?
Ultimately, I think that’s what they’re trying to do. In our world, generally speaking, we strive to figure out any which way we can to avoid an unpleasant feeling. We also try to avoid doing something unpleasant or laborious by finding some shortcut to feeling good. So I do think that they’re trying to commercialize this technology so that people in the outside world can have this procedure done and, essentially, never have to go through anything unpleasant ever again. I don’t know if it’s necessarily the best thing, though, because, in order to experience joy and enjoyment and all the good things, you have to have the other things, too. For example, the birthing cabins, I can tell you from experience that, even with drugs, [giving birth] is extremely painful. So I can totally understand why a woman wouldn’t want to remember giving birth to a child, but that’s one of the most human things that a woman can go through. And to cut yourself off from that, it’s an interesting commentary on our society.
You’ve likely been thinking about a tearful reunion between Outie Mark and Gemma for ages now. How did that actual day on the testing floor compare to what you’d imagined?
It was really emotional. We both just felt it, at least I did. I suppose I shouldn’t speak for Adam. But it felt so real that I got caught up in the story. Sometimes, as an actor, you really have to use your craft to get to where you need to get to. But on that day, it felt emotional. Adam did such a great job, and it felt much deeper to me than some of the other things I’ve done in the past where I’ve had to really work hard to get to that place. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived with the story for so long.
The other challenge for me in particular was that I was transitioning from an innie into Gemma, and so that moment had to happen very quickly. There was no buildup for the character. It just had to explode out, from innie into outie. I had to bury everything I was feeling till she walked through the threshold. The hardest transitions I had to do were Gemma into Ms. Casey, Ms. Casey into Gemma and Cold Harbor Gemma into Outie Gemma.
Gemma and Outie Mark take off running for the elevator, and their mutual transition, mid-kiss, into Ms. Casey and Innie Mark, was so impressive because you and Adam both noticeably changed personas in the blink of an eye. She’s a bit more upright than Gemma, and she had a much tougher time running than Gemma did. Was the idea that Ms. Casey had probably never run before?
Yeah, I had that talk with Ben. I was like, “I feel like she’s a little bit more awkward than Gemma,” so it was important to give her a different stride. The elevator scene was really funny, actually. I don’t know how this happened, but for some reason, Adam and I totally butted heads like no one’s butted heads before. (Laughs) It was very awkward. But overall, it was hard not to laugh in that incredibly heartfelt moment, because, all of a sudden, there’s Ms. Casey with her wide eyes, saying, “What’s taking place?”
Innie Mark then gets Gemma to the staircase exit outside the severed floor, only to fall back himself. Helly R proceeds to show up at the opposite end of the hallway as Gemma is screaming for Mark to follow her. Does Gemma understand that it’s Innie Mark in that moment?
I decided to make the choice that she doesn’t know at first. But the further away he gets from her, she slowly pieces it together, and she still tries to get through to him. So I think she makes that realization pretty quickly as he walks away from her, but at the same time, if Dan was here, he might say I’m wrong. That’s just my personal take.
I want both couples to be happy somehow, but it was heartbreaking to watch Gemma experience hope for the first time in two-plus years, only to go right back into a pit of despair when Innie Mark chooses Helly R. Was that a painful headspace to live in that day?
Yeah, it feels like Gemma will not be at peace anytime soon. It wasn’t difficult, but it was an interesting thing to have to go through. The whole process of her being on the testing floor mirrored the fact that I, Dichen, was not always there either, so there were these parallels in wanting to play with the others. For me, one of the saddest scenes in season two, episode seven was when Ms. Casey thought she was going to see her friends again on the severed floor, and Milchick tells her to go back down the hallway. It’s just so heartbreaking because [season one, episode five] was the only experience she’d had with a community. I’m assuming that Gemma’s other innies probably only spent time with Dr. Mauer.
But yeah, she’s a heartbreaking character. When the writing is so good and the performances around you are so good, you do get carried away with it. You do end up feeling emotional. When Gemma is banging on the door and calling for Mark, I actually couldn’t stop crying for a little while, and that doesn’t usually happen to me. I’m good at getting into it and then coming out of it, but I kept crying that day, which hasn’t really happened to me before.
Assuming you watch the show as a fan, you’ve probably been rooting for Outie Mark and Gemma to reunite. But do you also find yourself wanting things to work out for Innie Mark and Helly R at the same time?
I absolutely do. Britt’s [Lower] has done such an incredible job of bringing Helly R to life. As a fan of the show, I see Helly R as that part of Helena that is fighting against her circumstances. Helly R is so likable and warm and funny, so, of course, [I root for them too]. It’s really hard. It’s like you want them to figure out a timeshare or something because they’re all such great characters.
Of course, Dan will make it official whenever season three airs, but what do you imagine Gemma’s next move will be?
I have no idea, and what scares me is whether she will even be able to make a next move. It seems like Lumon still has control with the overtime contingency, so who knows if she’ll ever even get out of there.
What unanswered questions do you still have involving Gemma?
How long have you got?
Touché!
One of the most enjoyable things about being on this show is that it has captivated imaginations. The fans have created art and video clips and theories, and they come up with so many questions and incredible possibilities that I didn’t even think of. It’s so wonderful to be a small part of something that has captivated so many people, knowing all of the incredible sacrifices people have made by working late on set and being away from their families and being in the cold [on location].
The brain trust on this show refer to themselves as perfectionists. And because they created one of the few water cooler shows out there, they earned the ability to fine tune season two as much as possible. So they’d work on specific shots or sequences intermittently for months at a time, and they’d also rewrite and reshoot scenes as needed. How many times did you have to come back and reapproach something from your episodes?
Not that many, actually. There were some days we had to redo something because of a technical issue, or they just wanted to pick something up. I remember having to come in a couple of times for a different episode where Mark is glitching, and Helly R’s face turns into my face. They don’t CGI that; they actually have you there for precision. I remember having a monitor to try and match up my face position to Britt’s face, and then lying there and not moving until everything got set up around me. So that took several attempts because of the technicality that was required in order to get that shot, and it’s just amazing attention to detail while also trying to do things that haven’t been done before. Ben and [DP/207 director] Jess [Lee Gagné] get so excited about that. The opening shot of the season [with Mark S running] was one of the most extraordinary, and you can tell they spent so much time on it. So it really paid off because it was so breathtaking and cinematic. I know it’s for TV, but it really feels like cinema.
Once Gemma completed the Cold Harbor test, Lumon was going to kill her and bury her with a dead goat that’s supposed to guide her spirit to Kier? Do I have that right?
I haven’t actually talked to Dan about this. Yes, they say “kill her,” but I was like, “Who are they killing? Are they killing Gemma? Are they killing the innies?” In this world, killing somebody doesn’t mean the same as killing someone in our world. The minute Gemma walked out that door, she killed Ms. Casey in a sense. And Robby Benson’s Dr. Mauer screams, “You’ll kill them all!” when [Outie] Mark was trying to get Gemma off the testing floor. So I wonder if “killing” means the same thing. I’m not a hundred percent sure.
Mr. Drummond (Darri Ólafsson) says to Gwendoline Christie’s character, “This beast will be entombed with a cherished woman, whose spirit it must guide to Kier’s door.” So, assuming that Gemma is the cherished woman, those are the pieces I’m putting together.
This is us talking as fans, but could it be Gemma in the form of a little chip? We’re not a hundred percent sure. So when I was saying, “Oh, they’re going to kill her,” the way I interpreted it as an actor was that it’s possible that they just mean a component. Maybe they’re not killing her physically, but just a part of her. Anything’s possible on this show.
My one non sequitur of the day has to do with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Wes Ball told me that he begged you to be in just a few shots, but that the opportunity came with the promise of greener pastures, meaning a bigger role in the sequel. Do you have a sense of what that’s going to be yet?
I hope there’s another Apes movie; I don’t know what’s taking Wes so long. (Laughs) If you run into someone you can ask, do let me know, but I thought Wes did such a wonderful job. The film was so beautiful, and the time he took to build up to moments, I miss that in cinema. I miss those really long first acts like an E.T. Spoiler alert, if you haven’t seen Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, but when the egg broke, I actually gasped. It’s been such a long time since a movie of that scale has gut-punched me like that. Wes really is one of our great young directors.
Ben actually texted me after he saw the movie, and he was just raving about it and saying how much he loved it. Wes is also a huge fan of Ben. So I’m hoping that “greener pastures” means another movie. When I spoke to Wes [for Kingdom], he didn’t send me a script, but he just talked me through each and every single storyboard that he had with such passion and energy. He was trying to sell me on it, but I was already sold.
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Severance season two is now streaming on Apple TV+. Read THR’s finale postmortem interviews with director Ben Stiller, and creator Dan Erickson and the cast.
Source: Hollywoodreporter
