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Tom's Guide
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
Get ready, Innies: The iconic 'Severance' keyboard is real, and it'll cost you more than a PS5 Pro
If you're a fan of Apple TV Plus' hit show "Severance," you may have seen the MDR Dasher Keyboard that's an exact replica the Innies of Lumon Industries use. Well, it's real, and it now has a very expensive price tag. The "Severance" keyboard from indie studio Atomic Keyboard is available to pre-order as part of a Kickstarter campaign, and it retails for a whopping $899. However, early adopters can sign up now to grab it for $599. That's one steep price tag, one that far outdoes many of the best keyboards. In fact, even a $699 PS5 Pro is cheaper at its full retail price, but I wouldn't expect anything less from a keyboard that has ties with Lumon Industries. The MDR Dasher Keyboard is set to start shipping from November, arriving with a built-in trackball, swappable layouts (like between an Outie and an Innie from the show) and a CNC-machined aluminum case with an all-metal design. For fans of "Severance" who want a taste of the work culture of Mark S., Helly R., Dylan G. and Irving B, the MDR Dasher Keyboard should provide if you've got a lot of spare change. At least those interested can knock off $300 if they pre-order now. The MDR Dasher Keyboard from Atomic offers the "Severance" work experience, all without an Esc key. It does come with a customizable layout and macros, though, and you can swap out the built-in trackball for a number pad instead. It retails at $899, but those who sign up now can get it for $599 with a $10 deposit when it's launched on Kickstarter. The MDR Dasher Keyboard was announced earlier this year, but Atomic Keyboard has made a few changes in the lead-up to its release. That includes 3 swappable layouts that are aptly named the Innie, Outie and Dasher. With its magnetic top sheet, users can swap keys, and even the trackball, to suit the Innie work-life (or more relaxed Outie one). Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. The Innie layout is the one inspired by the show, without any Option, Control or Escape key, while the Outie layout turns it into a 60% keyboard layout like a usual board. As for the Dasher layout, it swaps out the 50mm trackball on the right for a full number pad and modifier keys. Along with the built-in trackball, Atmoic added two keycaps with MX switches to act as mouse buttons. That makes for an interesting setup, but I wouldn't worry about moving the keyboard around while using it, as it weighs a bulky 15.4 pounds (7kg). It's an all-metal design with a steel top sheet and an aerospace-grade aluminum case, so expect this to stick firmly to a desk. Just so it doesn't just appease the higher-ups of Lumon, the MDR Dasher Keyboard also comes with a web configurator that can customize macros and apparently "unlock advanced features," whatever they may be. This is all done through a website, similar to Keychron and Lemokey keyboards. So, if you'd prefer to pay extra for a kitted-out keyboard from "Severance" rather than a more affordable PS5 Pro, the MDR Dasher Keyboard may just do the trick. We'll be interested to see how this keyboard performs, and if it's really worth that jaw-dropping $899 cost. Follow Tom's Guide on Google News to get our up-to-date news, how-tos, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Britt Lower Is Certain She Was Helly R in ‘Severance' Season 2 Finale: 'There's No Trickery'
[Severance?] It's frustrating when TV storylines keep us in suspense for literal years, as was the case of Severance season one to season two. While the same (real) time will not lapse between the Apple TV+ series' second and third seasons — Ben Stiller promises! — we don't have to wait until season three to re-engage in some Severance season two-finale cliffhanger chatter. More from The Hollywood Reporter The Baltimore Ravens Spoofed 'Severance' for Their Schedule Reveal. They Just Forgot to Make It Funny Tribeca Festival Sets 'Casino,' 'Meet The Parents' Reunions and Talks With Sean Penn, Ellen Pompeo and More 2025 Nantucket Film Festival to Open With 'Twinless,' Jacinda Ardern Doc 'Prime Minister'; Tony Gilroy, Alex Gibney Among Honorees (Exclusive) The Hollywood Reporter grabbed Britt Lower while she was on a break filming Netflix's adaptation of Harlan Coben novel I Will Find You (Lower is 'still a redhead' for that one, she says) to ask her all the burning questions about her other streaming drama. Did Mark S. (Adam Scott) make the right decision at the end of season two, when he chose himself and Helly R. over his Outtie/Mark Scout and Gemma Scout/Ms. Casey? And, is she sure sure she wasn't actually Helena Eagan when that all went down? Read on for her answers, below. *** How much do you know about season three? I honestly don't know anything. I wish I did. I'm as hungry as the fans are to find out what these characters are going to get up to, and I probably have as many daydreams as as you all might about where they're gonna go and what they might be thinking. How has your career changed since ? It's really hard to comprehend the scope of how impactful the show has been. When you do theater, of which I do a fair amount, I do live performance — someone gave me this analogy the other day that I've been really thinking about. You do a play and you go out at the end to do a bow, and that bow is not only to receive applause, which is so lovely, but also it's a way to thank the audience for coming to the show, to honor the audience by saying, 'Hey, this would be weird if we were doing this to an empty room. Thank you for coming.' In TV and film, we don't have that immediate audience response, right? There's a year or two between when we step into the character's perspective and when the audience sees it. So, doing press and getting to see how the fans are impacted by what we've done is our chance to take that bow. That's always the goal with art, right? That it somehow has a resonance with the audience, and we're on this journey together. My personal opinion is that art is this chance for us to to think about what really makes us human. When we're making art, we're saying, 'Who am I really? What makes our consciousness different from a tulip or a bird or AI?' When did you first learn you would be playing Helena Eagan in addition to Helly R.? I suppose it was after I was cast — pretty early on that was embedded into the storyline. I did not know that it was Helly and Helena when I auditioned, but once I got the news that I was going to get to be Helly R., then Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller told me the full scope of season one and that all of the Innies get this little glimpse of who they are on the outside. Because we film the show out of order, we were privy to the whole arc ahead of time, so you're sort of stringing that process together. A trend has been one actor playing twins — is it like that for you? I'm always trying to come up with new analogies. It's these two parts of the same person. They share the same anatomy, they share the same physiology. They share some of the same psychology, because they have a subconscious that's shared, but it's their consciousness that's different, right? Their subjective experience of awareness, of being awake, is separate in the same way that, as an actor, I share the same body as Helly, and I share some of the same subconscious space. If I bruise my elbow on set as Helly, I'm gonna feel it as Brit. But I have a different consciousness than these two parts of the character that I play. Fans pretty quickly picked up on the physical differences you bring to the characters, like their different postures. Can you talk about creating that tool for yourself? My job is to sculpt the inner life of each of them, and sometimes stuff that's happening internally affects how the character moves through the world. Some of that the fans picked up on and that just happened as a result. Helly has this drive. She moves with a lot of conviction and determination. And Helena kind of waits for the world to come to her. Their psychology works differently, given their circumstances. When did you first learn what is? For season two, I had the pleasure as an actor of now stepping into that weird world of the Lumon higher-ups and seeing what it's like to be a Lumon worker as Helena, and how everyone's always watching each other — and the extent to which Helena is aware of what's happening in the company is also a little mysterious. She knows a lot, but there are also things kept from different departments within Lumon. I had to know at least what Cold Harbor was as Helena. But the extent to which she knows what it is, I'm not certain. I know you've said that was definitely Helly R. in the season two finale and not Helena (again pretending to be Helly R.) — but are you sure Dan (Erickson) and Ben (Stiller) didn't lie to you about that to get a certain performance? That's so funny. No, there's no trickery involved in the Severance collaborative. If you track the whole episode and you see Helly trapping Milchick (Tramell Tillman) in a bathroom, her friend, Dylan (Zach Cherry), comes to help. She runs and stands on the tri-desk, remembering her friend Irving (John Turturro) and looking out at this sea of humanity of the Innies… That speech really embodies the question of the whole season: Are Innies people? In season one, [Helena tells Helly] she isn't a person and has no right to make choices about her body. Helly had no connection to meaning in the work that they were doing on the Lumon floor. She was like, 'This has no meaning to me whatsoever, get me out of here at all costs. In fact, I'm willing to risk my life to do so. Get me out of here.' The question of season one is, who am I in relationship to this work, which doesn't have meaning to me (Helly)? Then, over time, she's forming this chosen family with Irving, Dylan and with Mark. The connection she has to these people who she loves is then the journey of season two. All of these Innies have this new information about who they are, and it makes them even hungrier for purpose and meaning in their lives. So then to see her on that tri-desk at the end saying, 'They give us half a life and think we won't fight for it?' I just can't believe that anyone else would have said that. Did Mark S. make the right decision at the end of season two? Well, again, I'm gonna go back to that question of, are Innies people? Like, Helena says to Helly R., 'I am a person, you are not. I make the decisions, you do not.' So I think embedded in your question is: Is he allowed to make a decision? Mark's subjective experience of awareness — his consciousness — is separate from his Outtie's. So, you have to put yourself in his shoes. These Innies have been stripped of so much already, right? They don't get to see daylight. They don't get to experience music or art — not really, not very much, at least. They don't get to make choices about what they're gonna have for lunch, or what they put on in the morning. And to expect him to make a decision for his Outtie's dream to reunite with his wife is perhaps a step too far. *** Seasons one and two of Severance are streaming on Apple TV+. Read THR's season coverage and interviews. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
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.'
