[This story contains spoilers from Severance season two, episode eight, “Sweet Vitriol.]
Jane Alexander first discovered Severance because of her grandsons. “It’s very popular, I think, with young people,” she hypothesizes over Zoom.
It’s hard to track down verified demographic insight, but if Alexander is right, then all those young people currently tuning into Severance‘s season two might be too young to realize the prestige of Alexander’s appearance in last week’s episode. Here’s a catch-up: She’s well-known for movies like 1970’s The Great White Hope (and the play, with James Earl Jones, the year before), 1976’s All the President’s Men, 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer and 1983’s Testament. She earned Oscar nominations for all of the above, won two Emmys (Playing for Time in 1980 and Warm Springs in 2005), a Tony (for the aforementioned The Great White Hope) and, from 1993 to 1997, led the National Endowment for the Arts.
“The arts have always been for everybody,” Alexander, now 85, tells The Hollywood Reporter. Her time at the NEA involved an existential battle with then Senate Majority Leader Newt Gingrich over the agency’s existence, but still the polarization of today’s Congress feels unrecognizable. “There used to be civility,” she says. “To have the possibility that grants might be taken away… it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
In Severance, Alexander is the acerbic Sissy Cobel, the aunt of Patricia Arquette‘s Harmony Cobel who lives on the outskirts of Salt’s Neck, the desolate town where a young Harmony grew up and worked as a child soldier for Lumon (Are you still with us? Last week’s episode was crazy). The town’s decaying buildings mix with a population of ether addicts in a depiction eerily similar to today’s opioid crisis — the episode’s title, “Sweet Vitriol,” is slang for the drug, which, like the severance procedure, leads to disassociation.
“I honestly don’t know anything,” Alexander says of all the theories. But she loves the show, and (thanks to those grandsons) she’s tapped in for all the trivia. One of the men in the background of the episode’s opening scenes, for example, is Jerry Stahl, the novelist and screenwriter whose 1995 memoir Permanent Midnight became a movie in 1998 starring Severance boss Ben Stiller. Alexander points this out as example of the director-producer’s thoughtfulness. “He’s got a great eye,” she says.
Below, Alexander chats with THR about how she developed Sissy’s “high drama,” her experience championing arts funding and all that she’s still waiting to figure out.
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How did your Severance casting come about?
Ben chose me. I was thrilled. I have to confess, I’ve known him since he was a boy. We haven’t really kept up, but his parents were friends of my husband and myself — Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller, the great comedians. I was a great fan of the first season.
When Ben reached out, how much did he tell you about the character?
I was told nothing. They hold the cards very tight to their chest — for good reason! I think the appeal is how little one knows and how much one has to figure out. I knew very little, but I was certainly intrigued. He told me I would be working with Cobel — Patricia Arquette — and that excited me, and then I figured out I had to be related to her in some way. And I learned that we were shooting in Newfoundland, which is not too far away from Nova Scotia, and that excited me because I love Newfoundland. As you can tell from the scenery, it’s really wild and woolly.
Some people have pointed out that the town is a cold-looking harbor. They’re wondering if it’s related to the Cold Harbor task that Mark S. is almost done with.
I honestly don’t know anything. And once I got the script in Nova Scotia, it was remote enough that I couldn’t tell people even if I wanted to!
How did you develop the character, then, knowing so little about her?
I have to say, Dan Erickson is the main writer on Severance — he is amazing. I think the writing told me so much about everything with the character in this scene. This one episode is so revelatory and that was very exciting to me. There wasn’t a lot I had to do.
Had you worked with Patricia Arquette before?
I have never worked with her, but I knew her. My late husband, Edwin Sherin, he worked with Patricia whenever he could. He tried to get her to work on some Law & Order [Sherin was the executive producer of Law & Order], but she was too busy. He had always been saying that she’s remarkable, and he was right. She’s so professional, ready to work, willing to listen to everything and as a result she’s a really great actress.
Very few actors that I know are as still as she is after she gets off the scene and we’re waiting for the next setup or something. She goes right into this quiet stillness and she will stand in the corner of a room — she did it in that small room where we were shooting in Newfoundland — and not move. Just be very quiet, in the zone.
That doesn’t sound too different to her character.
[Nodding] What I liked, which I found revelatory about our scenes together, was that my character is not still. She’s got this volatility in her, and it told me a lot about what had happened to that young woman [Cobel] growing up.
This episode feels like a contained play to me — it’s almost entirely one set, mostly one room. Did that come to mind to you, given your theater background?
You know, it never occurred to me, but you’re right. It could be a play. And Sissy is certainly theatrical. There’s high drama there. I chose to take it there. I wanted the contrast with Cobel and James Le Gros [as Cobel’s childhood friend] because I’m not taking drugs.
Did you talk with Ben about playing with the drama?
I knew Ben enough as a director that we would tell me when he wanted me to bring it down. He’s also an actor, a wonderful actor. But I think he wanted me to go to a certain point. Sometimes he would encourage me to go more. He wanted it on film, and then he would choose what he wanted, and I love what he chose. The grandsons have told me there’s going to be a meme of me saying “You are a weed.”
That’s a great line. It is very old-school drama, you’re right.
She’s biblical.
She definitely esteems herself.
And some people are saying she’s wearing a nightgown, but it’s actually kind of a cult outfit.
Do you know the story behind the costume?
It was just one of the choices that [costume designer] Sarah Edwards came up with. She presented it to Ben, and we had a lot of other more modest options, big sweater type outfits. But Ben chose the white dress right away, and it makes perfect sense, because it told me so much. Sissy is living alone, no one likes her, but she’s still in that sphere of Kier. She has the shrines to him in the bedroom.
Do you think we might see Sissy in another episode?
They have a lot of wrapping up to do. They have a lot of other questions to answer. Unless it’s possible they come back to that area of Newfoundland, then I’m sure they’d visit me again. Or if they ever wanted to say more about who Kier was. I secretly think that Sissy was in love with him. We know he was married, but I don’t think she was ever married.
Even the visuals of Salt’s Neck informs a lot of Cobel’s backstory.
I loved how Ben shot the whole episode. We had a camera crew from Quebec who were used to dark and cold. Ben uses angles that I have not experienced very much in my life as an actress. Angles that are a little bit off kilter or behind you, and you wonder why you’re not front and center.
Cobel did not leave Salt’s Neck on good terms. Do you know what she’s off to now?
No, I’m really watching the whole season hoping to understand everything a little bit more. I’m lucky that I have grandsons, because they run it down with me, and they have a lot of ideas and they follow the recaps. You know these recaps online?
Yes, it’s a cottage industry. Recapping television.
It’s amazing! I’ve never experienced it before.
Do you have any favorite storylines for the end of season two?
I’m so interested in Mark and his outie — the reintegration — that’s so moving to me. And I want to see where Milchick is going to go with this. And this brilliant little girl — Miss Huang. Cobel, clearly she was also a child at Lumen, getting all these awards. So who is this new little girl? And of course, Mark’s relationship with Helly. How is that going to go?
Let’s zoom out. You were the chairwoman of the NEA in the 1990s. Could you tell me a bit about that?
Back then it was during the Clinton administration. I was there from ’93 to ’97, it’s a four year term. I was confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate. It was just a few months later that the election flipped the House, the first time it had flipped conservative in 40 years. And then Newt Gingrich, as speaker, had the NEA and the NEH — National Endowment for the Humanities — at the top of his hit list because of “egregious grants” that were controversial to too many people. There was the homoerotic work of Robert Mapplethorpe, and also the Andres Serrano picture Piss Christ, which was a crucifix in very bubbly stuff that looked like urine. It wasn’t urine. It was beer, but nevertheless. That’s why they wanted to get rid of the NEA. We were in the trenches fighting to keep the agency alive for the next four years. And we did it with one vote.
What was the vote like?
I told my scheduler, right after that first conservative Congress came in, “Get me on the road. I’ve got to talk to the American people.” And so in the next 13 months, I went to all 50 states, 200 cities and towns. That really did the trick, because I met so many people in those 13 months, and I said, “Do you know what the NEA does? Do you know that that little ceramic pottery place where your kids go after school, do you know that that’s an NEA grant to to your local art institution?”
I tried to educate them that all the grants were matched by the community, so there was community involvement already. And everybody said “Yeah. Why are we getting rid of this?” Many Republicans even understood that argument. I had many friends on both sides of the aisle, which helped enormously. We won, but it was a long slog. I testified before Congress 13 times in four years.
What was that like?
At first you’re you’re just shaking and shaking, even for my confirmation hearing. But when I was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, that included Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond and other really extreme people. And actually, Jesse Helms and I used to have lunch together regularly, which makes you understand how much has happened in so many years. There used to be civility, where I said to him, “Senator Helms, let’s agree to disagree.” And he said, “Well, I don’t know, Miss Alexander. We will see.” But at least we were civil the whole time.
What’s changed, from your perspective?
The arts have always been for everybody. There’s the artists, but also those who watch or buy or collect, or also just learn. This has always been for everybody. That includes all the diverse groups that there are in the United States. When I was there at the NEA, Congress even asked for more programming. Robert Byrd, who was a senator from West Virginia, said, “We need more grants for those people who live in the hills there, who don’t have any programs.” That’s the kind of thing that the states were asking for. So now to have the possibility that grants might be taken away… it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me because the people really want it.
You said it was never hard to convince people that art has value, and that your campaigning was more about educating people about how the NEA worked. Do you think that’s the same today?
I don’t know the answer to that, because I don’t really know what everybody thinks. I think our president, by choosing to take over the Kennedy Center — there’s certain kind of art he’s said he doesn’t want. I don’t know exactly what that art is, by the way. But there’s there’s some rumbles there that I don’t fully understand. What are we talking about? But I will certainly be there as a staunch champion of arts for the American people and granting arts to their districts that will be matched.
Working with the NEA, championing arts funding… did that affect what types of acting jobs you were attracted to?
No, I was just lucky. I was so gifted, given the gift of people asking me — like Alan Pakula asking me to be in All the President’s Men and certainly The Great White Hope. I was lucky. And I’m aware of it. I’m actually writing a book right now about my career, and I’m totally aware that I was there at certain cultural and political events in history, and I was doing the art that was reacting or informing.
Severance is definitely reacting to many different aspects of our lives right now.
It’s true. I think that’s one of the reasons why I enjoy watching it so much. Severance is a huge puzzle and it’s reflective of the world we’re living in right now. We’re trying to figure out all the angles. What is going on and how do we behave?
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Severance is now streaming six episodes of season two on Apple TV+, and releases new episodes on Fridays. Follow along with THR‘s season coverage.
Source: Hollywoodreporter
