How the longtime ‘Severance' cinematographer wound up directing Season 2's standout episode

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As Severance has refined its wintry, corporate aesthetic over the course of two seasons, one woman in particular has been central to crafting the show's look. Jessica Lee Gagné has worked as cinematographer on most of the show's episodes so far, continuing her collaboration with director Ben Stiller from the 2018 miniseries Escape at Dannemora. Mark Chernus, who plays Ricken on Severance, recently told Gold Derby of Gagné that 'her eye, her lens, is the look of the show.' But towards the end of the most recent season, Gagné finally made her directorial debut — and created one of the show's standout episodes in the process.
'I definitely had a lot of doubts going into it. I've doubted myself for a long time,' Gagné tells Gold Derby of taking the step towards directing. 'But then it seemed so obvious that this episode was meant for me to direct, just because of the themes and the possibility of style and language that it could have, and also what the writer wanted from it. So I was like, 'Well, if anyone's going to do this, I have to do it.''
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'Chikhai Bardo,' the seventh episode of Season 2, breaks from Severance's usual format by focusing on the character of Gemma (Dichen Lachman). Gemma's shadow looms large over the show, since her supposed 'death' is the reason that Mark Scout (Adam Scott) volunteered for a job on the severed floor of Lumon Industries in the first place. Back in Season 1, viewers met her own Lumon 'innie' persona, Ms. Casey. But 'Chikhai Bardo' actually introduced everyone to Gemma herself for the first time, both in flashbacks to her relationship with Mark before her disappearance and in present-day scenes showing her being experimented upon as a prisoner on Lumon's testing floor.
Through the flashbacks, viewers see how Gemma's struggles with getting pregnant pushed her towards Lumon (who apparently own and operate fertility clinics among their many mysterious business holdings). Gagné felt a strong connection to this material.
'I feel like one thing that helped me direct and work with actors in this capacity for the first time is my own life experience with my career and how I've gotten where I've gotten,' Gagné says. 'I got to have access to amazing projects at quite a young age. I really lost myself within my work for a long time. So going into my 30s, I went through a big questioning phase of, 'OK, I need to find my partner, freeze my eggs, do all of these things … or did I miss out on that part of life?''
Gagné adds, 'I felt like those everyday moments, those everyday conversations, are things that I've felt and lived. So it hit really close to home in that sense.'
Bringing this perspective to the director's chair was a big help to Lachman, who in addition to portraying Gemma's fertility struggles also had to do something that no other Severance actor has had to do yet: Portray multiple 'innies.'
'When I found out she was directing that episode, I was very excited,' Lachman says. 'I think she's an extraordinary talent, and I love her vision. I love her creativity, and I love how flexible she is in terms of doing whatever she has to do to capture the moment. And I thought it was really nice to have a female director for that episode.'
Most Lumon employees have two personas: The 'outie' that exists outside of work, and the 'innie' they become when they take the elevator to their office on the severed floor. But on the testing floor, Gemma becomes a different 'innie' with every room she enters. This revelation has greatly expanded the possibilities of what can happen within the world of Severance.
'I was terrified because it's an expansion of the idea. It's a new iteration of the concept of the show. And I was like, 'Can the show sustain this?'' Severance creator Dan Erickson tells Gold Derby. 'I love the idea in my head, but you always wonder, 'Is it going to play? Is it going to come across?' What I knew we had was this amazing secret weapon in Dichen. Not that she was a secret, but I knew that she was going to be able to play each of these versions of the character so strangely and tenderly and differently, and she just knocked it out of the park. She nailed it. And then of course Jessica Lee Gagné, who directed that episode, is one of the most brilliant people on the planet. Even with all of us knowing how good she was, she managed to surpass those expectations.'
Each of the rooms Gemma is forced into seemingly represent a different unpleasant life experience. One of her 'innies' only goes through dentist appointments, for example, while another has to endlessly write out Christmas thank-you cards. Making all of these selves feel real with limited screentime was the episode's main challenge for both Lachman and Gagné — but thankfully they both made each other feel comfortable in their collaboration.
'Dichen's openness to exploration on set and trying different things made it a lot easier for me, working with actors like this for the first time. She wasn't afraid of doing anything or trying anything. There were some moments that we were just exploring and trying stuff,' Gagné says. 'Like I said, I have a lot of personal experience with these kinds of themes. So I just wanted to really anchor them in reality with her as much as possible. So we had lots of conversations, personal conversations, to see what we could touch on. This very female way of hiding parts of ourselves and not fully showing what we feel in order to put other people first, was always a thing we'd come back to. We had many conversations and we moved through it together.'
Gagné didn't make things easy for herself. In addition to directing 'Chikhai Bardo,' she still worked as cinematographer on five other episodes in Season 2. But she thinks this amount of work made it easier for her to push through without getting caught up in her own doubts.
'I think that's what really pushed me through. I would be shooting Episode 10 and then prepping Episode 7 at the same time. It was like I had two or three full-time jobs. I lived and breathed Severance for sure.
The main difference between cinematographer and director, Gagné found, is how many more questions you have to answer as the latter.
'The prep work is much more laborious and you are answering 3 million questions. I wasn't used to that as a cinematographer,' she says. 'As a DP I'm very involved in terms of set design and these kinds of things, I'm that kind of cinematographer who really gets in there, but I don't get to take over any of the smaller details. So for me, those meetings with the props department and the costume department, when we were researching all of these new things, that was just joy. I was like a kid in the candy store. To get to direct for the first time on Severance was a pretty luxurious first-time directing experience, and I felt like I needed to live up to it. So I gave it everything I had.'
The results of her hard work speak for themselves; the episode astounded viewers and set pieces in place for the epic season finale. Not everyone was surprised by this.
'That was not surprising to me because we've been working together for a while and I know how talented she is,' Stiller tells Gold Derby. 'I thought it was really important that that episode had a female point of view. Jessica is just so talented and really is interested thematically in a lot of the ideas that are in that episode, in terms of how we connect with each other, and how people who have some sort of spiritual connection are linked in different ways. What she did with it visually was just so impressive. It's great to watch her do her thing.'
Now that Gagné has gone from cinematographer to director, she's ready to start working on her first feature film. She 'leaves some really big shoes to fill' as Severance's go-to DP, according to Patricia Arquette, but also everyone's excited to see what Gagné does next.
'When you're putting your name on something like that and saying that you approved it, you have to be quite vulnerable. You're opening yourself up to criticism, and I have to admit, I was really afraid of that,' she says. 'But after seeing that it went so well, I think I needed that to help push me forward in the rest of my career.'
Gagné isn't yet ready to share many details about her plans, but says, 'We're in the beginning stages, but I'm giving it my heart. It's going to be a personal one, and it's very different from Severance.'
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