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CBC
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Britt Lower explains how Severance, the circus and libraries dovetail
When Britt Lower was a kid growing up in a small farm town in Illinois, there were two places that made a big impression on her: the library and the circus. Today, those childhood interests unexpectedly dovetail with three of her most recent projects: the hit series Severance, the Canadian indie film Darkest Miriam and her 2020 short film Circus Person. While you might already be familiar with her Severance character, Helly R., Lower makes no less of an impression in the film Darkest Miriam, in which she plays a Toronto librarian living through a fog of grief. The film is an adaptation of Martha Baillie's Giller Prize-shortlisted novel The Incident Report. "I loved the format of that book," Lower tells Q 's Tom Power in an interview. "It's made of 144 incident reports that this librarian writes. It's a real thing that librarians do. When something peculiar or even just out of the ordinary happens at the library, they fill out a report…. So this book is this librarian writing her daily incident report, but they become increasingly more personal and journalistic." WATCH | Britt Lower's full interview with Tom Power: Like many children, Lower felt very connected to the library as a young person. "I feel like we all have some kind of library in our childhood memory," she says. As for her circus connection, Lower's mother is a professional face painter who brought her into the "circus-adjacent world" of Renaissance fairs, festivals and birthday parties. Along the way, she discovered that the town of Bloomington-Normal, Ill., close to where she grew up, was once known as "the trapeze capital of the world." It's also home to a large circus archive library that further fostered her fascination with the circus. "Whenever I spend time with circus performers, and I've traveled around the country and spent a fair amount of time with a variety of circuses — small-tent circuses — I like to ask them what 'circus' means to them," Lower says. "I've been collecting definitions of the circus, and some of my favourites are that circus means that everybody's welcome. Circus is risk. Circus is right now. Circus is family. Circus is a circle…. But for circus performers in particular, the word I hear most often is that circus means family." I sometimes like to think that Helly R. was born at the circus. In 2020, Lower wrote, directed and starred in the short film Circus Person. It's about a woman who runs away to join a circus after experiencing heartbreak. But at this point you might be wondering, how does this all connect back to Severance? WATCH | Official trailer for Circus Person: "After Season 1 and 2 [of Severance ], I joined two different circuses and performed in the role of a ringmaster of sorts. And it was, again, a full circle moment for me because it was two weeks after I filmed Circus Person … that I got the call from my agents to make a self-tape for a character named Helly R. It was really the spirit of making that film that I had with me when I made that self-tape. And so I sometimes like to think that Helly R. was born at the circus." It doesn't stop there. Lower says the second circus she performed in, Shoestring Circus, was located in Bellingham, Wash., which is the same town where Dan Erickson, the creator of Severance, attended college. "He actually came and saw my opening night performance in the circus", she says. "It was really special to get to see him in the audience and to be performing — sorry, again, full circle — under the tent that was actually in my short film five years prior." Lower's new film, Darkest Miriam, is in theatres now in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. It will be available on-demand as of April 15. WATCH | Official trailer for Darkest Miriam: Interview with Britt Lower produced by Lise Hosein.
New York Times
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
I Love ‘Severance.' Now End It.
This article contains spoilers for the Apple TV+ series 'Severance.' When we left Mark S. and Helly R. in the final moments of the final episode of the second season of 'Severance,' the bedraggled lovers were frozen, midmotion, while running down the blinding white nowhere hallways of Lumon Industries, like Paul Newman and Robert Redford at the end of 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.' Running down hallways leading nowhere is what Lumon's severed workers — their 'innie' worker personalities severed from their 'outie' lives off the clock — have done for two seasons in the brilliant, unsettling series on Apple TV+. The couple's season-finale sprint, set to the 1960s lilt of Mel Tormé crooning 'The Windmills of Your Mind' ('Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own / Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone') was about as perfect an ending as this show could have conjured. Holding hands, our heroes face an unknown world of more hallways, forever without sunlight. What future do they have? We don't know. Will the nefarious corporate banality of Lumon Industries be dismantled from within? We haven't found out. The devoted fan (including this one) is left with many unanswered questions, as well as that greatest of adult freedoms: the space to think through multiple meanings for ourselves, with no answers imposed on us by the storytellers. This is as it should be. And this is how it should conclude. In that final freeze-frame shot, this devoted fan thought the series was concluded. Bravo! What a compliment to trust an audience to tolerate uncertainty. But the next day, when a third season was announced, this devoted fan felt a little betrayed. Many are cheering. I think it's a pity. I know this is a strange way to respond to a TV show I love, and I don't doubt that the creators of 'Severance' have another season in them. But what if they left it unmade? Not because the creators of 'Severance' can't find more to say; no doubt they can. Maybe they can make the enter-the-marching-band absurdities even bigger, the hinted-at underpinnings of Lumon Industries even more chilling, the sci-fi elements creepier and the psychological musings even more woo-woo. Yet the originality of the series is embedded in those hallways we don't understand and those fleeting symbols we can't quite decipher. The genius of the show lies in the very obscurities the audience loves to dissect. But that's the way we take our popular culture now: Enough is never enough. Do viewers really want their favorite shows to go on without end, continuing to manufacture ingratiating resolutions and treating us like cranky children who want to hear the same bedtime story over and over again? Many of us might wish that 'The White Lotus' had ended after Season 2 and the death of Jennifer Coolidge's character, Tanya McQuoid. 'Ted Lasso,' which seemed to end succinctly after Season 3 in 2023, just announced it will be back for Season 4. Even the exalted series 'The Wire' lost its tautness in its fifth and final year. (It happens in movies, too. Exhibit A: 'The Godfather Part III.') Never mind that for a show's creators to explain more is to ruin the excitement of conjecture. There is timeless wisdom in the rusty showbiz adage of always leave 'em wanting more. Teasing the plot further for the sake of stringing an eager audience along is to risk becoming lost. (Or 'Lost.') Yet as an audience, we apparently can't bear to live with the tension of ambiguity. Are we really those petulant, dully literal guys? The entertainment-industrial complex sure seems to think so, feeding us sequels and prequels and reboots and sure things renewed for one more season until every shark is well and truly jumped. Will I watch the third season of 'Severance'? Of course I will. I'm an unsevered human with hope integrated into my circuits. And when an extended narrative works — I'm thinking of 'Downton Abbey' or 'The Sopranos' — it's a rare and glorious experience. Still, remember the uproar about that 'Sopranos' ending? Nearly two decades ago, after six seasons and 86 episodes, the saga signed off with a breathtaking jolt: The world was closing in on Tony Soprano, and the huge population of fans who had been following his mayhem for years were pleasantly queasy with the understanding that something bad was bound to happen to him soon. But what? And when? We waited. We knew we were watching the last episode, and we waited, and … in the stunning final minutes, the screen cut to black. What precisely happened to Tony? We don't know. More than that, we'll never know. And more than that, we shouldn't know. That's art. There are many who, nearly two decades later, still resent the violent originality of that choice. They're many of the same people now saying they absolutely need to know what is going to happen to Mark S. and Helly R. I'm here to say that nothing about Season 3 of 'Severance' will ever be as satisfying as where they — and we — are now, with a perfect ending and a story full of questions that's faded to black.
New York Times
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Severance' Finale Raises New Questions, but Were There Any Answers?
The second season of 'Severance' just wrapped up with its longest episode yet. We have thoughts. Spoilers abound. Whose Side Are We On? There are endings that give you what you want. There are endings that don't give you what you want. There are endings that give you what you don't want. Then there are endings that make you wonder what exactly you should want, which was what the 'Severance' Season 2 finale did. The first season of 'Severance' gave us some clear rooting interests. We wanted Mark Scout to find his not-dead-yet wife, Gemma. And we wanted Mark S. and the rest of his innie colleagues to find freedom, self-determination and love. But the finale hit a realization that the season had been building to: These two wants might not be compatible, at least not easily. The two Marks having the world's weirdest Zoom conversation at the birthing cabin laid the conflict out. The series has shown them to date as twin protagonists wronged by the mighty Lumon corporation. But there's a power dynamic between the two of them as well, as innie Mark says with growing frustration. Outie Mark has more agency, more legitimacy under the law, more life on earth. And as the conversation goes on, we see him through the eyes of his innie. The sweet, sad, grief-stricken man we'd come to know begins to look … a little smug? A little cagey? He tries to say the right thing, but there's a bit of a lip-service vibe, like he wants to make restitution without actually sacrificing anything. It's like he's making a land acknowledgment for his own brain. We know outie Mark has a heart. But can you blame innie Mark for wondering if he's just giving a kinder, gentler version of Helena Eagan's dismissal to Helly from Season 1: 'You are not a person'? Maybe there's a win-win solution; maybe reintegration will really work; maybe both can share joint tenancy of one body. Or maybe outie Mark is blowing smoke! The finale doesn't resolve this — or much else — but it does force us to wonder, push comes to shove, whose happy ending we want. (Not to mention whose happy endings matter: Gemma makes it out, but what about the dozens of innies nurtured in her brain? Are they any less real than Mark S. and Helly R., simply because we spent less time watching them on TV?) Innie Mark chooses himself, and Helly R., escaping through the klaxon-blaring chaos of the Lumon halls as the episode ends, à la 'The Graduate,' with the elation on the lovers' faces shifting to seeming anxiety. There is no certain future for them inside Lumon, after all. But sometimes you can't help getting in your own way. Sympathy for the Manager The second season of 'Severance' ended with multiple innies dramatically taking charge of their half-lives. They include Mark S. and Helly R., who, in the closing moments of the chaotic finale, forsook Mark's wife and embraced an uncertain future of running through hallways together. Dylan G. seemingly dropped his resignation plan and recommitted to Team Macrodata Refinement. Even Lorne the melancholy goat queen decided she'd had enough and beat the ghoulish Mr. Drummond into submission. (Here's hoping we see Lorne's outie in Season 3 — she must have lots of questions.) But let's also spare a thought for the man who was charged with maintaining order and utterly failed: Mr. Milchick, last seen facing a defiant Dylan and an angry marching band. (This show is so nutty.) Milchick's dejected reflection in the bathroom mirror, as the red alert blared and he realized it had all gone wrong, was as poignant as anything else in the episode. I was moved partly in solidarity with a fellow middle manager but mostly because Tramell Tillman has been the show's M.V.P. all season. Consider a small sample of what 'Severance' has asked him to do: tell a bonkers campfire story in one scene and extinguish an innie in the next; endure loaded critiques of his vocabulary and maintain a chilly professional relationship with a child; and, in the finale, co-host a laugh-tracked tribute show with an animatronic statue and flaunt halftime-worthy drum major moves with the marching band. Tillman has managed to make all of this and more work while delivering the show's best lines — 'I feel the theremin works best in moderation' — and transmitting the bottled fury of a man who has given all of himself and been rewarded with disrespect and racist microaggressions from his Lumon superiors, including the statue. (Again, nutty.) Midway through the finale, Milchick gives Dylan his outie's reply to his resignation request. 'As it may yield an embarrassing emotional response in you, and as I'm duly swamped,' he says, 'I shall leave you to read it in solitude.' I too am swamped. But if Milchick is involved, I'm here for it. My Outie Is Concerned 'Severance' gets my brains working, which can be a problem. My TV brain — call it my innie — understands that Mark S. stays in the offices of Lumon Industries at the end of the Season 2 finale because that is the only place he is alive, and the only place he can be with Helly R., the woman he loves. It understands that this makes sense, and is heartbreaking, within the parameters of the show. But my real-world brain — that nagging outie — sees Mark's wife, Gemma, standing outside, thinks that his decision makes no real-world sense and loses any sympathy it had for him. Unfortunately, unlike Mark, I can't turn that one off. I have been on board from the beginning for the show's startling premise, and for the muted uncanniness of its execution. Mark and Helly's season-ending dash through the corridors of Lumon, like rats in a maze or romantics in the Louvre in a Godard film, was exhilarating. An emphasis on novelty and style can come at a cost, though, and the bill came due as Season 2 went along. The element of ritualistic cultlike weirdness in the workings of Lumon felt more artificial and frivolous than ever after the finale's marching-band performance and aborted goat sacrifice. The ultimate answers to what Lumon is up to — mind control? digitization of consciousness? — felt less interesting. What seem to me to be the holes in the ingenious premise (why would anyone sign up for separation knowing that they had to clock out and come home every night?) got more bothersome. And without John Turturro's Irving and Christopher Walken's Burt, the finale was missing the show's two most appealing performances. Oh well, no waffle party for me. The Meaning of Work In the Season 2 finale of 'Severance,' Mark S. completes his 25th macrodata refinement file. A celebration ensues, culminating in a performance by a full marching band. The scene, however sinister, enacts a fantasy that hard, tedious work will be rewarded. The episode also insists, for perhaps the first time on 'Severance,' that the work the show's characters do has a material purpose, that it matters. A chilly, bizarro tragicomedy, 'Severance' is fundamentally about work and the numbing futility (enlivened by friendship, flirtation and the occasional egg bar social) of most office jobs. For 19 episodes, Mark S.'s job has been an empty exercise: using a trackball to sort and group seemingly random numbers. (It's like the dullest grayscale version of Candy Crush Saga.) The finale reveals that this seemingly pointless work has a point, sharp and painful, involving Gemma, the wife of Mark S.'s outie, now trapped on the company's testing floor. Or as Harmony Cobel, Mark S.'s former supervisor puts it, 'The numbers are your wife.' 'Severance' has always depended on the paradoxical — but maybe also at least somewhat true? — notion that work is both a respite and a hassle. Mark S.'s outie agrees to the severance procedure so that he won't have to mourn his wife during work hours. (He also, in his video conversation with his innie, indicates that it was perhaps the only way he could function in a workplace after her 'death.') A bonus is that his outie can elide the tedium of number sorting. Working for the weekend? Congrats. Your outie is all weekend. The show has never before insisted that the work itself is vital. Though the timing is obviously coincidental, the finale arrives in a moment when many thousands of federal workers have been asked to justify their jobs. And it suggests that even tasks that seem needless, superfluous, might be absolutely essential. But even if that's true of the work, it's not necessarily true of the workers, who might be let go at any moment. Discarded, as Cobel colorfully explains, 'like a skin husk.'
New York Times
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Food on ‘Severance' Is Its Own Chilling Character
This article contains key details from previous episodes of 'Severance.' It does not include any spoilers for the Season 2 finale. It wasn't your imagination: Something was off about the food from the start. That first glimpse of cantaloupe and honeydew, arranged in the office to welcome Helly R., played by Britt Lower, was a little unnerving: Melons in jagged halves — severed! — filled with anemic, out-of-season fruit. 'Severance,' the Apple TV+ show written by Dan Erickson and executive produced by Ben Stiller, follows a group of Lumon Industries employees with chips in their brains that divide their work selves ('innies') from their main selves ('outies'). For innies, whose lives are confined to the office, who never sleep or see the sun, a snack is a treat. So why doesn't it feel like one? The food on 'Severance' leaves a bad taste in your mouth because it's as fluent in doublespeak as the show's most ambitious corporate climbers. In the show's second season, which wraps up this week, food has acquired all the chilling, spine-tingling dissonance of upper management, refusing your request for a raise with a warm, unflinching smile. 'I always try to design the props and food to have some connection, some metaphorical undertone,' said Catherine Miller, the show's prop master, who devised season one's melon presentation to fit the 'very graphic, very minimal' aesthetic of Lumon's retro office. 'I think food has the ability to define time and place and mood and overall emotional connection — it can become its own character.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Severance Creator Opens Up About ‘Troubling' Consent Issues Raised in Episode 4, ‘Really Devastating' Aftermath of Retreat
The following contains copious, luxury spoilers from Season 2, Episode 4 of , now streaming on Apple TV+. This week's episode of Apple TV+'s Severance not only featured the dramatic unmasking of a mole, followed by the termination of an MDR vet. (Read recap/John Turturro interview.) It also raised some really knotty issues of sexual consent, given that Mark S. (played by Adam Scott) had sex with who he thought to be Helly R., but was actually his co-worker's outie, Helena Eagan (Britt Lower). More from TVLine Holland Taylor to Play Matthew McConaughey's Mom in Apple TV+ Comedy With Woody Harrelson The Rookie's Mekia Cox Says Nyla Has Met Her 'Joker' in Serial Killer Liam: 'He Is Constantly on Her Mind' Here's How The Voice 'Reunited' Adam Levine and Blake Shelton in the Season Opener Even for a show as sci-fi as Severance, the issue of bodily autonomy will resonate. 'It is something that we wanted to get into, and we talked about it quite extensively when we wrote that into Episode 4,' Severance creator Dan Erickson tells TVLine in the video above. 'It's a strange thing, because in a way both characters have been used,' Erickson points out. 'Mark thought he was with one person when he was actually sort of with a different person. And then for Helly, it's a very troubling thing to know that something like that happened without you mentally being there.' Without spoiling much of anything, TVLine can say that an upcoming episode will deal with at least one of the characters' feelings about the quasi-consensual assignation. 'On the show, we talk a lot about autonomy,' Erickson says, 'and in the realty of this world, if people's bodies can sort of be off doing things without their minds being there, present, what are all of the implications of that? It wasn't something that we wanted to shy away from.' Above and beyond the issues raised above, Severance's instantly iconic 'Woe's Hollow' episode casts all kinds of doubt on the MDR quartet's future. For one, everyone will feel deeply betrayed by Helena, yet sympathetic to Helly R.'s unwitting abetting. Two, Irving B. was 'terminated' for his threat of 'collegial murder,' when he drowned 'Helly' in the titular pond until she or Milchick confessed to the deception. 'It definitely is going to change the dynamic,' Erickson affirms. 'For the innie characters, they felt like they were sort of starting to move back towards a more peaceful status quo. Mark was pursuing this relationship, as was Dylan on his side [with outie wife Gretchen]… and all of a sudden now everything that we thought was true from the last four episodes was sort of based on a lie. So, it's really pretty devastating to all the characters.'Best of TVLine Yellowjackets' Tawny Cypress Talks Episode 4's Tai/Van Reunion: 'We're All Worried About Taissa' Vampire Diaries Turns 10: How Real-Life Plot Twists Shaped Everything From the Love Triangle to the Final Death Vampire Diaries' Biggest Twists Revisited (and Explained)
