Spoilers ahead for “Severance” Season 2, Episode 4.
“Severance” Season 2’s ORTBO wasn’t just an Outdoor Retreat and Team Building Occurrence for its characters. The snow-covered episode unintentionally served as a team-building moment for its cast as well.
“There’s a meta aspect to it,” Britt Lower, who plays Helly in the Apple TV+ original series, told TheWrap. “It had an effect on the characters, and we also had a bit of a team building experience too, as cast and crew. It was a really special experience.”
Unlike most of the office-bound drama, “Woe’s Hollow” takes place outside in the wilderness. Helly, Mark (Adam Scott), Dylan (Zach Cherry) and Irving (John Turturro) all wake up to find their Innies are outside for the first time ever. After they follow a disturbing series of clones of themselves, they’re greeted by their boss Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) who explains this eerie trek through the frozen woods is actually a corporate retreat.
The episode was filmed in upstate New York at Minnewaska State Park across “about four or five weeks,” Lower estimated. The actor likened the experience to filming a movie, especially since production had to always keep their location front of mind.
“We were racing against the sun every day, which was new. Previous to that, we had these fluorescent lights that could indicate any time of day,” Lower said, explaining that the sun became “a wonderful partner in the storytelling.” “It was kind of breathtaking to be on that mountain together, and to be in the cold and operating within the actual elements of of nature.”
This episode also includes more lore about Lumon founder Kier Eagan. As part of their team-building exercise, Mr. Milchick tasks the MDR team with finding the fourth appendix to “Compliance,” the book Kier Eagan originally wrote that went on to become the guiding light for all of Lumon as well as the only piece of literature an Innie is allowed to read. “Woe’s Hollow” expounds on Lumon’s vast lore. Writing these long musings about redemption and finding love in daily work-related tasks is one of creator Dan Erickson’s favorite parts of his twisted series.
“I need to get out and touch grass and feel the sun. But I love it. I’m my own worst enemy with it,” Erickson told TheWrap. “If I could, I would spend my whole life writing the employee handbook.”
Erickson revealed that the production has an unofficial series document that details the history of the Egan family. It outlines who invented what, how each of them changed the company and “the just bizarro world philosophies of Kier Egan.”
“That’s where things get really crazy and and scary and often very funny and very terrifying all at once,” Erickson said.
Though Erickson purposefully made the philosophy feel “crazy,” he doesn’t feel that Lumon’s way of operation and devotion to its philosophy is too exaggerated in the world of corporate America.
“I’m a very fireable person. So over the course of about a year, I had like six different office jobs. Each one there would be this weird cult of personality around the founder of the company who often did have these kind of bonkers philosophies,” Erickson explained. “There’s a story about how corn flakes were invented in part because their founder wanted people to stop masturbating, something about ‘We need this dry, joyless food’ … There’s stuff like that. It’s real. We didn’t have to necessarily exaggerate it as much as you might think.”
New episodes of “Severance” premiere on Apple TV+ on Fridays.
