How Ben Stiller Balances Creepiness, Sci-Fi & Office Humor In Severance
Ben Stiller sat down to discuss how hard it was to strike the perfect tonal balance in his peculiar new series Severance. Stiller, who is best known for his comedic performances in films like Zoolander, Meet the Parents, and There's Something About Mary, has been quietly transitioning his career over to prestige television, beginning with directing Escape at Dannemora for Showtime, which was nominated for 12 Emmys. He followed that success with Severance, a long-gestating project that began airing on Apple TV+ on February 18, 2022. The series was created by Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller, who is also an executive producer and splits directing duties with Aoife McArdle, a music video director who also helmed several episodes of Peacock's Brave New World.
Severance is a high-concept science fiction series about a workplace that «severs» employees' memories of their work from their at-home selves. The show stars Adam Scott as a man who is grieving the loss of his wife and is part of this new program at New York City's Lumon Industries. The rest of the ensemble cast is filled out by Zach Cherry, Britt Lower, Tramell Tillman, Jen Tullock, Dichen Lachman, Michael Chernus, John Turturro, Christopher Walken, and Patricia Arquette in one of Severance's most intriguing dual roles.
Related: Severance: Why Lumon's Severance Departments Are So Small
While speaking with EW about Severance, Ben Stiller was asked how he managed to maintain the show's tonal balance. He revealed that over the course of the years he worked on developing the series, "the hope I had was that we were going to figure it out as we went along." He said that the genres were clearly laid out in the script, but one of the key elements in translating that to the
Read more on screenrant.com
