What’s Your Deal? (with Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Cat Miller)
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Hey, I'm Ben Stiller. I'm Adam Scott. And this is the Severance Podcast with Ben and Adam, where we are talking all about Severance. And in this time where we're in between seasons, the different influences and movies and TV shows and people that have kind of contributed to our making the show, I guess, in some way. And this week, we're joined by two incredible multi-hyphenates and longtime collaborators, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

who most recently co-created the Apple TV Plus series, The Studio. Yeah, I'm very excited they're coming on. They've made so much great stuff for years, but they also have The Studio that's out now. So good. Really, really good and really...

has this very unique style to it and is also a comedy and we're gonna talk to them about making that and sort of the crossovers with Severance and also how they got going and you know how they connected which was at a very young age and you know what they've been doing together which is you know really

I don't know, they just have such a unique and identifiable style. And I think with the show, they've taken it to like another place now that's new. Yeah, it's such a great show. And by the way, if you haven't seen it, this is a big spoiler alert. We're probably going to be talking about the entire first season in detail. Yeah, I'm excited to talk to both of them. You know, kind of a freeform conversation about show business. Can't wait. I love talking about show business. Me too.

Yeah. I like talking about deals. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Making deals. You know, I hope we can really get into it with them about deals. I'm curious what their deal is. That's what I want to know. I want to know. What's your deal? What's up? That's what we should rename the podcast. Right. So what's your deal? What's your deal?

That's going to be fun talking to them. And then after that, after talking to Seth and Evan, we're going to bring on Kat Miller, our unbelievable prop master on Severance. And we'll talk about her work on Severance. And we will also answer some of your burning fan questions with Kat. Yes, we're going to get into some nerdy details. She's the perfect person for nerdy details. All right, let's get into the episode. Ben...

How you doing, man? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I'm in New York. Right now, you're in Los Angeles, right? Yeah. When you say New York, you mean New York City, the Big Apple. I think people know when you say New York. It's not like New York, Minnesota or something like that. No, I know. I know people know that, but just in case there's someone that has never heard of New York, I'm just-

No, I'm good. It's super hot here. There's a heat wave going on. Is it still super hot there? It feels hot. It's not as hot as it was the last couple of days, but it's definitely, I did a shirt change already today. Whoa. Yeah, not to get too, you know, I don't want, but yeah. No, but I know you pretty well. You don't usually do a shirt change until much later in the day, if at all.

No, my shirt change usually comes around 5 or 6 p.m. for evening wear. And you have two guys with bugles who enter the room and go, shirt change. And then you do a shirt change. Just for me. Nobody's there. It's just my own little, you know how we all have our little rituals in life, you know? I did do a shirt change because it's very muggy. I mean, it's exactly what you would think, like hot.

New York City muggy. It feels like, okay, we're in summer. It's happening. That's right. It seems to happen a lot earlier these days. And sometimes it happens in February too, which is weird. I was there like a week ago and it was freezing. Yeah. It's very unpredictable, but it's just like you're just moving through the atmosphere. It feels to me in the dead of summer in New York, walking down the street, it's like

walking through a warm milkshake. Yeah, for sure. Then you're like extra alert for the rats. Oh, gross. Like everything's at night. You know what I mean? You just feel like everybody's out and just kind of trying to get some air. And then sometimes you walk through just like a cloud of turd smell. Yeah, yeah. Or garbage smell. Garbage smell. Yeah.

That's why we love New York. It was like 103 a couple of days ago, right? Apparently, yeah. And then they said then with the heat index, it was even more. I don't understand that. I don't understand the heat index. Heat index? I'll explain it to you sometime because I understand it completely. Do you want to get rid of it like daylight savings time? No, no, it's not a thing. Daylight savings time is a thing that we could all decide on. Heat index is just an actual calculation.

I feel like they're the same thing. I'm not going to go there right now. Oh, okay. What's your 4th of July plans though? Oh, the birthday of our nation. Yeah. You know what? We're going to hang out with some friends who've invited us to hang out for a 4th of July party. What are you doing? See, I never get invited to stuff like that. Yeah. And then when there's

nothing going on. I went at home. I've never do a barbecue. Almost I feel like there's pressure to have to do something and I don't do anything. But that's cool that you got invited to a party. It is cool. I feel cool. By the way, there is a New York in Texas, Missouri,

New Mexico, Kentucky, Iowa, and Florida. You know what we need to do is a live podcast from one of those New Yorks. All right, if anybody is listening in New York, Iowa, call up the hotline. Tell us what New York, Iowa is like, and are they having a heat wave? Well, Seth and Evan are here. Yeah, we should bring them on. Let's do it.

Hey guys. Hello. What's up? Hi. Welcome to our radio show. It is fun. You're like, I'm doing a radio show. We like your TV. We love your radio. We're live, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, I did Howard Stern recently and it was like, oh, this feels like doing a podcast.

But it's not, I guess it's not a podcast. I guess he's been doing this for 30 years. Yeah, exactly. I love it when Howard gets going on podcasts. They annoy him so much. Oh, he hates them. It's great. But he's right. Like people are not qualified and they're doing the same thing that he does. It's like if just people start making TV shows and movies on their own and like saying, hey, look at my show. Not calling it a movie, calling it a, like my entertainment show.

Cast. Yeah. My show cast. Well, thanks for doing this. No problem. Thank you for having us. You guys had this incredible long standing working relationship that started like when you were 12 or is that right? In bar mitzvah class. It is. It is right. We came of age and instantly linked up. Yes, exactly. We became men together. What was it like being kids going to bar mitzvah class in Vancouver in the 90s? What was it?

I guess it was 1994 when we were 12 years old. And I would say it's as good as you picture. Yeah, exactly. As awesome as you might imagine. As exciting. As amazing as you could imagine. And did you immediately connect, like you just liked the same movies and that's kind of what you connected on or-

I think it's even worse than you picture where like none of our friends really were like into it at all. We're just the only two guys who were really into movies and comics. And Evan wrote like short stories and I was like starting to want to do stand up comedy. And so I was writing jokes and I just never met another like kid who like wrote recreationally who like like like a thing they did in their spare time wasn't like only playing video games or sports or something like that.

Neither of us like sports. Video games rule. We did like video games. I actually think the fact that neither of us were into sports had a lot to do with us hanging out, especially in Vancouver. Everyone was so into hockey and stuff like that, and we just were not into that. Well, you said this the other day at a dinner we were at together, but I didn't know you had the same moment where I found out that the sports team players are not from the city. Yeah. And in that moment, I was like, sports are dumb. I'm out. I know. I was like, why do I care?

I'm voting for some Yugoslavia. I thought we were Vancouver Canucks. I get very nationalist and have real questionable beliefs about me. I'm usually the only person I know that doesn't follow any sports whatsoever. Yeah, you also follow no sports? None. I play hockey every Monday. I couldn't name one.

One NHL player. I don't know a single name. But it's like in your blood hockey, so you can go and actually play. I think it was in my shame. My mom wouldn't take me because she didn't want me to get hurt, and it was too early in the morning, so I only started like eight years ago. We did play rugby, though, in high school, both of us. Yeah, we were very Canadian. Very Canadian. Very violent sport. Yeah, that's really hard. It's quite hard, but we never followed rugby.

When you started, you were doing stuff for fun. You made like home movies together. Yeah. Right? We made a spoof of Spaceballs. And I play all of them. How do you make a spoof of Spaceballs? You won't believe this. We couldn't finish it. We couldn't figure it out. I'll tell you. It really ran out of energy. A few minutes into it.

It was just that his dad had all the toys. Right. The video camera. We had what we needed, string and X-Wings. Yeah, I remember my dad at a garage sale bought all the Star Wars toys in a big box. So I had all the Star Wars. So we were using miniatures and we were making our own silly Star Wars uniforms and stuff like that. And then we made a spoof of Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs with the Little Blues Brothers. We only finished the opener on that one. We didn't get

We did a scene in retrospect the joke it was like Pulp Fiction had just come out and we were making fun of the scene where Christopher Walken like hit the watch Yeah, and it was Evan with like a giant like Hanukkiya The whole joke was like Evan explaining how he like hid this Hanukkiya up his ass to escape the Holocaust with it That's funny. That's really funny We tried to find the footage his mom had it but it's it's gone. Oh

You were pushing the limits even then. Even then. Edgy comedy. Exactly. Fortunately, it was just between the two of us. We found it funny. Our audience loved it. I'm sure there's someone who was offended in your family, probably. Were your parents creative? I'm just curious how you got into it so young.

For me, it didn't have to do with my parents. It was that the rental stores in Canada, they just never checked you for anything. You could get a rated R film. So when I was really young, I was watching rated R films and that hooked me in hard. My brother just fed me a diet of comics and movies. He's a little older and

For me, it's my brother. He got me into it. It's the slightly older brother. And my parents just loved movies. Like they were not in any creative field. I just grew up watching tons and tons and tons of movies. Did they show you movies? Like would your dad or mom sit down and say, hey, you got to watch, you know,

Yeah, and I would just watch what they were watching, you know, in the 80s and 90s, just as like, you know, like when Harry Met Sally came out and they loved it. So we would watch that movie all the time. And Hannah and Her Sisters came out and they loved it. So we watched that all the time. And the Three Amigos and, you know, Ghostbusters and just like whatever movies they liked, they would just watch all the time. And we would just sit there and watch it with them. And I think a lot of people our age, it's like your taste in movies really is reflective to like...

whatever your VHS collection was, I guess. Totally. And so we had these 80 movies that my parents had taped off of television. And you would watch over and over again. And you would watch them over and over and over and over again. And it is funny because I think looking back, those movies like-

really shaped my sense. And my parents were also very, unlike Evan's parents, my parents were incredibly supportive of us pursuing creative things. My parents were confused why we were wasting our time and encouraged us to go play sports that we never had nor shown any want to play ever. Yeah, like we would literally be like 13-year-olds like sitting at his family's computer like trying to write a movie, like seriously trying to write a movie for hours. And his mother would just be like, why are you doing this? You're wasting your time. Yeah.

And my parents, conversely, were incredibly supportive and really encouraging and thought we actually could become movie writers. So you guys both sort of absorbed Seth's parents' support and kind of took that. His mom bought us Final Draft. Yeah. Oh, that's great. My mom bought us Final Draft at a very early age.

So you wrote Superbad truly when you were like 14 years old? We started in high school. We started before we were 14. Yeah, we started, I think, in eighth grade. That starts rough. It was rough. And not good. Not that good. But it was a start.

And there were some ideas in it that I think made it like all the way through to the final actual movie. Yeah. Yeah. Very few, if any, writer directors I've ever met wrote something when they were a teenager that then they actually made into a movie. That actually became like a good movie. A really good movie that like kind of a classic comedy now. And like that's amazing.

I actually do think that is why few people are more shocked that that movie has resonated to the degree that it has than we are. And something we're always marveling at is how short a shelf life comedy has at times and how things that are amazing seemingly just, you know. But sometimes that doesn't happen. And I really think a

A large part of the reason that people still relate to it is because we were in high school when we like came up with a lot of it. So I think there is like in some like fundamental raw way, it is like imbued with like the actual anxieties and fears of like 14, 15, 16 year old kids that like somehow does resonate through it.

But you also had Greg Mottola instead of like someone that's just going after, you know, there's terrific dick jokes in it. Yeah. Someone that's also emotionally. Well, that all came from like. I'll never, the first time he did like, he did a one-er in one of the scenes. Yeah. And we were like, oh,

The thought that someone in a thing we wrote was like, we're going to do this scene in one shot. We were like, are you nuts? Also just that he had shot, like it was so much more composed than anything we had made up until that point. And we would improvise a lot as well. So it was sort of like you were always trying to get to cross coverage basically. Like that was always like the name of the game is like, how do you get to people not moving? Yeah.

And so you can like shoot a camera at each of them. And it was great, but that wasn't like Greg's thing all the time. And I think it gave the movie like a look and a style that, yeah, like that we didn't even, but we were big fans. Like, it's funny when we were writing it,

Like we were big like Martin Scorsese fans and Wes Anderson fans and Steven Soderbergh fans. And so we actually, I think, pictured it being very cinematic. And then it was funny because then all the stuff that we were making before it, it was all about like, how do you capture improvised comedies?

Right. But that was because the other really interesting thing is that, I mean, you came to LA. You guys were still teenagers, right? Yeah. I mean, you were what? I came when I was like 18, 19. Yeah. Okay. So you came first. Why did you come on your own, Seth? Because I got cast on Freaks and Geeks. And so I- Out of Vancouver. 16 years old. Yeah.

And it is inextricable from you, Ben, in many ways. It was coming off of, you know, Judd had done the Ben Stiller show, and these were the things that to us also were benchmarks. And Jake Kasdan, who directed Freaks and Geeks, had just done Zero Effect, you know? Yeah, which was one of the first movies I was in. It was his first movie. He was like 21 when he made that movie. Zero Effect is so rad.

It's so good. And Bill Pope shot Zero Effect, I think, who shot the pilot of Freaks and Geeks. And we loved Zero Effect. We were completely obsessed with it. And so to us, it was like, oh, we were getting to work with these people who... I didn't know who Judd was, but I know who Jake was because of Zero Effect. Because we were friends and I knew what the Ben Stiller show was and things like that. So Judd was sort of like, we realized a person who was involved in a way we just didn't know. But we were fully stepping into what we viewed as the...

the world that like Ben and you guys were kind of creating like at that time, you know? - Right, and I remember Judd telling me, "Oh yeah, this kid, Seth Rogen, he's like, he's so funny and he writes and he does comedy and he's like really." I remember him talking about you.

I was pretty ferocious at the time. Yeah. What do you mean? I would like write scenes for Freaks and Geeks and give them to Judd and I would write them and give them to the other actors and I would film us doing scenes that I had written for the show to try to advocate for myself to get to write for the show and to get to like write, contribute to the show creatively.

And was that just because you were reading it and you're like, I can do this. I can write a scene. Yeah. Well, and we were writing super bad at the time. And I felt like we had like a very specific writing style. And, and I was trying to offer it up basically. Like I was trying to offer up like, here's how I view conversational writing.

comedy between high school kids and no one was, you know, super bad. It wasn't even done at the time we were writing it. And so I was like, I feel like I have like a perspective on how these kids could speak to one another. And I was trying to impose it on everybody. And so then did, did Judd kind of scoop you up and he saw something in, in that and started shepherding you along or helping you out? Freaks Geeks got canceled and we did a show called undeclared. Yep. I auditioned for undeclared. For what part? I don't know. Maybe Jason Siegel, maybe the Jason Siegel. I have

I really don't remember, but I remember Alison Jones and Judd. Yeah. And I was probably there. Yeah. Probably. Because I was, because first I was hired as a writer on like, cause he had read what I'd done. So he hired me as a writer on the show and I was 18 and I was like a writer on a Fox show.

Right. No, it's so crazy. And then did you summon Evan to come join you? And then during the summers, we finished Superbad around then, right? Yeah. And then it was Judd read Superbad and said, bring your friend down for a little. Let's see if we can jam together and come up with something. And that led to-

Just being like, this is crazy. Are we staying for dinner? How long do we stay? When do we leave? Are we allowed to leave? When do we not leave? The answer was staying for dinner a lot more than I expected. What is happening? Are we his friend? Are we working for him? Are we getting paid for any of this? What is happening? Are we in danger? What is happening right now? Are we in danger?

That's amazing to me, honestly. And I have to say, Judd really was one of the pioneers, I guess, in terms of this improvisational work on film where he would set it up so that you could really riff and get the best out of people, let them go free to try stuff, and then be able to edit it, right? Yeah. And I just want to say, because you're talking about the movies you guys love, you guys are such...

cinematic comedy filmmakers, which I feel like doesn't always go together, you know, and it goes all the way to the studio, which is, I think, really, really great in terms of how you guys have such a clear, specific visual style to the show. You really, I think, kind of like figured out your own style that has a lot more of a cinematic vibe to it, you know, looking at like, this is the end or something like a genre kind of movie that has all that. But also there's a lot of

crazy huge cinematic stuff that's going on in it yeah I just think that's I think that's unique yeah it was really like I mean it's sort of it's funny because like we would look back at movies like Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters and stuff like that and like they're pretty cinematic you know and and again I grew up loving you know we grew up loving Woody Allen movies and you know and like they had Gordon Willis and like Carl the

Paul was shooting those movies. Like they're, they're, you know, like the guy who shot apocalypse now shot husbands and wives. Like they're very beautiful films, you know? And so this is the end was the first movie we directed. And we hired a cinematographer named Brandon Trost, who was around our age.

which right there was like kind of a revelation. - Yeah, that is like a bold thing to do because I think if I was in your position making that movie, I'd be like, you know, get me whoever, you know. - Oh, we went to Yano first. - Oh, we went to Yano. We immediately did that, don't worry.

Don't get us wrong. We went to Janusz and he said he was too busy, but he also said you should get some young guy like you. That's the move. Janusz Kaminski was Spielberg's cinematographer. And he shot funny people. So Judd actually also then clearly started to want to explore more cinematic films.

Yeah. No, no, but I mean, what Judd was doing was its own thing. Yes. It was a lot of cameras always, you know? And we talked a lot about like how, with that movie, how to allow the actors to improv because we knew we had some of like the funniest improvisational performers that were around. And we knew that like in order to capture stuff that would really feel funny,

and we had to allow them to improvise. But then we talked a lot about lighting and the set and to have some sequences that were incredibly composed and pre-planned and storyboarded and then other sequences that we knew we were going to just put a bunch of cameras on and some shots that we, yeah, knew were like, okay, this is like a...

will break us out of this sort of riffy camera style. So you were able to do the cross coverage, just mixed it in with all these other young. Exactly, yeah, exactly. Right, right. There's scenes where it's more that way, but it all feels of a whole. And then there's these huge visual effects sequences, which is like, visual effects, I feel, is the enemy of comedy.

It can be, for sure. And Ghostbusters to us and things like that are like the reason we thought it could work, you know what I mean? Yeah, like because Ghostbusters, people forget that Ghostbusters actually was scary at a certain point. And visually impressive at a certain point. Like looked as good as what you would expect from anything. And what's funny is like, I mean, talking about Spaceballs, like it's like we, I knew always that like I...

ILM also did Spaceballs. And I think that's why to us it was so impressive when we were kids because we're like, oh, it actually looks like Star Wars. Like it actually looks better than Star Wars a lot of the time. And so we actually, yeah, like the first hires we had on This is the End were our visual effects supervisors. And those were like by far the most conversations we had were about the visual effects of the movie and how we could afford it and how we could make like –

something that had this like reckless quality to it, but also like good enough visual effects that you weren't taken out of it. And then it, it supported the stakes instead of reducing the stakes. Yeah. While also being an extension of the comedy, but also presenting just how scary and fucked up the whole situation was it,

really was frightening, but also hilarious. Yeah, because there are scenes where there's like a punchline that is a visual effects shot, you know what I mean? And that's not easy to do. I just always say it's the enemy of comedy because it's really hard because when you're doing visual effects, it's all pre-planned and you have to, every single frame, you have to know exactly what it's going to be. And there's not really a lot of room to improvise in visually or, you know, in terms of the script. It's also scary because

You don't know till post. Like you don't know for months and months and months. So you can't pick up the shot because you don't even know if you need to pick up the shot because the shot didn't work. Yeah. Like on the studio, you wouldn't, I don't know if one would assume, but like we had a visual effects supervisor on set all day, every single day of the shooting of that show, you know? And it's something that we learned from this to the end is like,

so much sleight of hand is required at times to make these things seem seamless. And so it was always like a very close relationship we had as directors was people who do visual effects, you know? You know, something that I love about the studio too, as far as you guys go, like it's also you're turning the page to a new color comedically as well. Like there's just this really fun madcap,

for lack of a better term, kind of hearkening back to the sort of screwball comedies of the 70s like Bogdanovich. I thought you were going to say zany. You seemed on the edge of zany. That's just as bad as Madcap, by the way. Just as bad. I know. Sorry. Sounds stupid. But whenever you have Seth and the whole gang together and it's just Zany,

And you eating shit is so funny. Falling a lot. Falling. And then also when you fall, stuff spreads on the ground, like ice or whatever it is. It's the evidence of comedy. It's so funny. And it had the feeling of Altman and Bogdanovich and Blake Edwards and these free-flowing comedies of the 70s, too. Just that chaos. Yes.

Yeah, we loved those. I mean, yeah. I mean, like, I think chaotic comedy, comedy where everyone's kind of, it's a heightened, like, that's what we're always trying to do with the show is like...

Find ways to like pressurize the situation and condense the timeline, have a real ticking clock and stakes that to the characters at least feel like incredibly important. You know, and I think we also have this advantage where it's not a movie and it's a TV show, but it's not a highly serialized TV show. And so like we can crank it.

way up with the panic and the stress because it just ends. That's right. You don't have to carry over that stress throughout the rest of the week. You know exactly how it sadly ended for Matt. Yeah, and that actually, like, for me, like, I... We produce a lot of highly serialized television, and I've always struggled, honestly, to be incredibly contributive towards it because my brain just doesn't work that way. Like, I struggle with, like...

the 10 hour story, you know, which is what- - I totally empathize with that. - Yeah. - I feel the same way.

It's really hard. And so the idea... It's really different. It's very different. The idea is like, what if each one has like a beginning, a middle, and an end? We can give each one a build and its own little shape and they kind of stand alone and they're more like short films. Yeah. You know? And stylistically, they seem to have their own thing, some of them too. Yeah, exactly. Like the Missing Real episode kind of had this sort of like Chinatown. There's the war episode. Yeah. And it's so fun to try to do that within the overall visual rules of the show as well. But...

Yeah, it was – that's always what we would try to do is like kind of create these situations and to go for real comedy and for better or worse, me and Evan just think people falling down is really funny. Yeah, for better. It's for better. It's for better. And that was honestly like a challenge we would have for ourselves is like how do we keep it grounded and real and feeling of –

human emotion and desire, but can we get it to a place where it kind of has one foot in this like real silly kind of comedy world, you know? - And we've only seen how his character falls. All the other characters could fall, anyone could fall. - I can sit by a car. - Oh, that's true. - Cranston falls also a few times. - All right, let's take a quick break and when we come back, Adam and I will be back with more from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

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Try it free today at notion.com slash severance. Notion, the connected workspace. You were talking about before, though, with this 10-hour thing, which I really, like I say, I really identify because what you've done on the show is that you can say to somebody, hey, you know what? They haven't seen the show, but you know what? Check out this episode. I think this episode's so funny. And like, even if you don't have time to watch the first six episodes, watch this one and you can get it, you know, I think. And that's something we can't do on Severance. And it's really, it's...

Really, it's really challenging. Just give it a shot, guys. I'd be really curious. We'll help out. We're here. That happened with my mother over my shoulder one day while watching Severance at Home, and I can attest she was very confused. I'm sure. Of course.

I mean, yeah, confused probably is a nice word. I mean, I feel like people sometimes are like, what the fuck is going on? And a lot of times I get from people too, like, should I feel like I'm not smart enough or something? Right. But you've given enough answers fast enough that people trust. To me, it becomes a question of faith, honestly. Yeah.

It really does. And I think like for me, when I engage in a show like Severance, which is like inherently revolving around a mystery that will reveal itself to me over time, I think that's

For me personally, I'm totally okay not understanding things if I have faith that that is what I'm supposed to be feeling. And that at some point I will understand what I need to in order to make this a gratifying experience. And that's why, like, I enjoy not understanding things.

And I enjoy things that seem almost completely unexplainable because I have faith that they will be explained to me because I have faith that you're good storytellers and you wouldn't do things that, you know, don't do that basically, you know? And so that was kind of what Conan said when we talked to him. He was like, you know, he's like, okay, I can just like sort of relax into knowing that whatever it is, it's going to somehow be.

And I appreciate that. But when you're making the show, you're trying to think about like, well, what is going to be entertaining to people within watching this? And I never was, for me, there was something about what Dan created in the pilot episode that he wrote that was so funny to me and unique that

The down the line aspect of the mystery. Yes, I was like intrigued, like what's going on? What are they doing? What are the numbers? But that wasn't the first thing that drew me to it when I first read it was just more like, oh, it's got this weird tone that really makes me laugh and feel strange or reminds me of different things I've seen. Well, you've made it fun and you made the world really fun and funny. And you can tell that you're not afraid to be funny, which I think also is.

adds like a level of enjoyment to what you're saying and entertainment to watching the show in like a week to week basis where you're like, okay, yes, it's mysterious and I don't always get what's happening, but you're also not afraid to just make jokes and to make like set pieces and to make things that are kind of silly. Honestly, like there is sort of like a silliness to certain aspects of it, which I think also like takes the weight of it off you. You know what I mean? And, and you're not,

because I remember like you know I've watched so many shows like Lost and shit like that and like you're just waiting for more information it's all you want you're like all I fucking care about is what these guy in the hatch is doing that's it it it's all

All I want to know. And other than being given that information, the show is like entertaining sometimes. But that's like what you really are waiting for is that information. And I think Severance is very is fun. Like, honestly, like the fact that it's funny allows it to constantly be giving you like a dopamine hit that is separate from just sheer like revealing of mystery. You know what I mean? I think without the comedic beats, it would be really unnerving.

a tough thing to... You know, it would be a lot. Though it is also... There is one episode this season that is essentially completely serious and that one... And it's great. ...plays like a movie. Right. I thought it was, like, so interesting. It's the only one where it's, like, it is not bouncing back and forth. That's right. That's right. That 10-episode thing is really interesting because...

I think it's one of the most challenging things with Severance that we're always kind of thinking about is maintaining the tension throughout and the tension that has to do with the characters, the tension that has to do with the mysteries. It's all of that, which is why I always think like horror is really hard for television because, you know. It's so prolonged.

Yeah, and you don't have enough time with an hour to build the tension. And then with 10 hours, it's too much time to maintain the tension that makes something scary. Whereas comedy, like you were saying, it's great to have those little pressurized segments. No, very much so. What's hard about it is we have to think of 10 ideas that feel, and that's where we're at right now, is it's so hard to just decide what are the 10 ideas. You know what I mean? And you want to

really love every one of those ideas and really make sure everyone allows you to like reach the heights that you want it to reach. And, and, and I do often like, there's so many ideas we come up with that would only really work in a more serialized show. Cause they just play out over such a long period of time. Like the Kool-Aid stuff.

Exactly. And that is the thing where we're just like, we can have basically one of those a season. Like a thing that's sort of like a running joke that, you know, is something we go back to all the time. But it's not like. But it's still like the Kool-Aid thing. If you didn't have the other beats of it, it would still work. The Kool-Aid thing was great because it was like everything was connected to it because it was the big compromise that he makes to get the job. Yes. Everything's in the wake of that. That's right.

That's right. I love the moment at the end of the first episode where you guys are just watching Goodfellas after having fucked over Martin Scorsese because your character, Matt, is just a fan when it really comes down to it. And it's kind of a deeply felt moment right after this horrible thing happens. That's actually a real tradition of ours. Whenever we ruin someone's project, we watch something good they made. We have a martini. And we think, you know what? Cheers. Cheers.

Cheers to this. But did you guys have like a meta moment at all working with him? Because I read that you guys, he basically, he showed up, like you hadn't really met him before, right? He just showed up on set. Never even Zoomed. Not even a Zoom. Wow. Yeah. That sounds to me like a nightmare.

I would be so nervous. We did have this thing. Jonah Hill was there and had worked with him, of course. And he kept being like, you're going to love him. He's so nice. You're going to have a great time. And it was really nice to have someone telling me that. Right, right, right. And he's so good in the show. Yeah. But you also had to direct him. Who's the scariest person? I mean, I imagine you working with Robert De Niro as a young man. Yes, yes. It would be a similar attitude. Yes, I had a... Honestly, yes. De Niro's been like...

We're doing another Meet the Parents movie. And I had a call with him yesterday regarding casting. And he called me up. And I got like two messages like, Bob's trying to reach you. Bob's trying to reach you. And I was like doing stuff in the morning. And then I was like, okay. And Adam, by the way, just worked with Robert De Niro too. So you know what this is. But he calls me. I'm like, hey, Bob, how you doing? He's like, good, good, good. And he starts talking to me about like, you know, his point of view on this casting choice. And I was so scared. I was like...

shit, I hope that I'm, I hope that I were on the same page with this thing. Cause I could picture him just like, you know, saying, no, no, no, you gotta do it. You gotta do it. You know, like it's, but, but he, were you like nervous with like Scorsese that he would know his line? Like, cause everything's one or so. We had no idea what to expect.

At all. Well, first of all, it was funny. I think his call time was like, he was supposed to be on set at 9 a.m. Everyone got there at like 6 in the morning. Like, we were there for hours before he got there. Which also, again, we'd never spoken to him. So we were like, if anything goes wrong. He's like, where's the rewrite? We're like, what rewrite? And we're just blocking the scene. And I remember being like, we had all these conversations forever.

Hours and hours. And we had a second camera. I think it was our second week of shooting. So we had committed hard to this one camera, one lens thing. Yeah, it's a commitment. And that day I was like, I want to have a second camera crew there in case Scorsese...

I was like, if he seems judgmental of how we're shooting, I won't be able to take it. And I will later reconcile that this scene stylistically doesn't match the rest of the film. What do you mean? Like if it seems like he thinks it's pretentious or if he says something? Yes, literally. Casey was like, what? You got one camera? It's a comedy scene. You use two cameras. You're like, yes, sir. We have another camera right here. Literally. And not only that, it was a camera crew that had worked on Killers of the Flower Park.

food. Wow. So they were like familiar faces in case he wanted to see them. Wow. But like, yes. And they literally were sitting in a hotel room all day. Well, like on call in case we were like, we need you to come in. We also only been filming for two weeks, so we hadn't anything edited yet. Right. So there was no proof we were actually doing something good at that point. That you could like show him. Yeah. Or show ourselves. Okay. We were still like, I think it's working. So then he shows up and...

Is it just... He's just the best dude ever. Instantly like a rapturous ball of energy. Like you picture him as like the host of a show. It's like I remember I could hear him coming from down behind. You just hear that like Scorsese sound. He was like... And in that moment, I was like, this is going to be incredible. Like you could just like feel his...

positive energy. And he comes on the set. Hey, how's it going? Hey, what's happening? Okay. Hey, how are we? And he's making jokes. How we do this? Where do I stand? What are my lines? What do I do? Like, and he's like, he's just so, and he loves it. He clearly was having a really good time. And as soon as we got some shots off, we were like, so he was like, keep going. Like he clearly decided to just like, and I remember we were like, it's one cat. And then you forget like, Oh, he's like, Oh, he knows more about movies than anyone on earth. And so I'm like, like,

So we think we're doing this original thing, and I'm like, oh, we have one camera. He's like, oh, yeah, French New Wave, Truffaut, whole history of that. That's right. They only had one camera. That's why they used one camera. They couldn't edit. So they had to edit in camera. They'd shoot sequentially. And you're like, oh, yeah, okay. You...

That's amazing. Wide lens, cranes are flying, wide lens, got to have that Russian aesthetic, very wide, have everything. And we're like, okay, yeah, you understand what we're doing here. Yeah, you're like, we just thought it would be cool. Yeah, we thought it would look cool. We were talking also, Seth, about, you know, that thing of the cinematic nature of what you guys do. And you can talk about the shot, a single shot and-

All the scenes are a single shot. But the way that that works is because the blocking of the actors, blocking being where the movements of the actors in the scene is going to affect where the camera goes. And you have to figure out the blocking that's going to work in concert with the camera. And we would block for hours and hours and hours sometimes. Like we wouldn't shoot before lunch a lot of days because we would just be blocking from like,

8 a.m. to 2 p.m. And we also did no rehearsals ever. Prior to shooting. Yeah. So like it was on the day. It was all on the day. Why was that? We just didn't have access to like. It wasn't an option to get everyone. We could do a piecemeal. But even so like.

The cast we had, we had, and we knew that they could deliver what we needed. Honestly, part of me was inspired by... I always think of the musicians at the scoring session and how they're just like handed the music in the room and there's a hundred of them and the conductor's like, all right, third one, boom, boom, boom. And everyone just does their thing. And when they're all doing their thing...

it comes together into one beautiful thing, you know? And it, it reminded me of that where I was like, I know my shit. I know he knows his shit. I know she knows her shit. We've never done it all together at the same time. But if we all know it as, as we should, uh,

it will just work. And you know, you can trust everyone that's in that room. And then it would, and I would be standing there being like, holy shit, like this, it feels like we've rehearsed this for me. That's what was really fun about the day I spent, or a couple of days I spent in the studio was that we would, and we had a few winners on Severance as well, but,

all of the scenes in the studio are oners, but we would do it like, I don't know, six, seven times. And then the scene is over. Like I would go home at like 2:30 in the afternoon. But how many times would you rehearse before you'd shoot?

We would block it once or twice. Then we would start filming knowing the first four are utterly useless for sure, completely unusable. Except in the Globes where we were playing with a limited capacity. We would do like 16 to 25. On the Globes, we did six. Oh, is that right? That was shorter. There were so many people and so many moving parts that that one we had less chances. The resets were taking so much longer because there was so many background and stuff like that.

Your relationship with your DP, though, your cinematographer, must be really great. Yes. Was he operating too? No. Our operator was this guy, Mark Golnick, who's a giant, giant muscular monster of a man. And a subtle artistic genius. Yes, and a subtle because his timing was imperative. He understood you could be like, hold on Ike's reaction for a second.

split second longer and push in just the tiniest bit and then whip over to O'Hara for her reaction and do it a little faster. So he, and he would be like, got it. Well, and even more impressive than that is in the nine minute scene, sometimes he just has to trust his gut. Yeah. Like every, I don't think people quite get how much was on his shoulders and how in the moment, every scene he did something that was his and his alone. Yeah. That fixed it or made it. Yeah. Like another actor. He really is. He has to have the timing of an actor. He knows all their lines. Like it's not,

There are so many moments like that in the studio, like when you interrupt Greta Lee in the shot and then you walk out of frame and he stays on her for just that split second until her face changes and then whips away. And like he was so,

good at that and it was like editing and our editor was on set all day every day as well because there wasn't a lot of editing that could be done after the fact so our editor eric kissack would be there and and like kind of saying what he would do editorially he would say like yeah he'd be like you have to whip sooner for it to hit the way it needs to hit yeah yeah he'd be like i would shave a few frames off that reaction if it was just a normal reaction shot and so which we can't do right

Which we can't do, so we would have to do it as we were shooting it, basically. But yeah, no, we would shoot the scene with an iPad, and that was a few times, and that was sort of the rehearsal, and that was how like- As though we'd watch it again, which we almost never did. But Evan, are you holding the iPad? No, the DP holds the iPad. Okay, and then you're watching the iPad, and you're kind of like communicating with him as he does it? Yeah, I would run behind, and we would run around together in circles. Right.

And then we would all watch it together and be like, oh, it's too wide there. Like this on this line, it should be only on Ike. And then on this line, it should be all of us. And then this line, it should go to these two. And then as they walk away, it should be behind us, not beside us. And we would sort of figure all that out just like as we were doing it, basically. And then pretend you're also on mushrooms. Yes, exactly. We were on mushrooms the whole time.

But the episode was actually probably the hardest because of the amount of people. Like there's a lot, it was a ton of people. And like that shot, like the shot that you are first seen is like, it's like it's you in the car. Yeah. It started to be in the car. I walked the whole red carpet, walked through the lobby and then meet up with you guys. And it ends in the, in the thing. And so it was like,

every reset of that took so long and so it really was incredibly high stakes but at the same time we don't want it to feel like rigidity is like the enemy of this you know what i mean and that's and that's why it was so great having people really comfortable with like looseness because like it was very regimented and precise in some ways but we always hoped the actors would like

saw off the rigid corners and kind of make it feel a little more real, you know what I mean? - Well, when you're entering a shot two and a half minutes in, it is fucking nerve wracking. - Yeah, I had the experience on "Empire of the Sun" where there was like a two minute steady cam shot that I was at the end of and I had one line and I screwed up my line. I said, "Oh shit." And I said, "Cut." - Oh no!

I've told this story before, but it's literally one of the most mortifying moments of my life. I have to say also the look of the studio that you guys have to just shift gears for a second is so cool to me. This sort of Frank Lloyd Wright vibe. I literally the first episode I was like, where does wait? That looks like it's Warner Brothers, but I've never seen that building before. What was your idea behind that? And how did you do that? Because I feel like, you know, both Severance and your show have a very specific vibe.

and style in terms of the production design. I mean, that's not a coincidence. We referenced Severance. And honestly, like, in my head, like, that's, you guys made something so iconic. And I actually thought that was, like, important in this day and age in television is there's, like, so much stuff on there.

There's so many shows. I watch eight spy shows personally right now, you know, and they're all good. But I think it's so hard to like assert any sort of like differentiation, I feel like, in a lot of ways. Yeah, and the thing we said about Severance is like if you flip onto the channel for four seconds, you know it's Severance. Exactly. Like you know instantly.

You could see a still frame of it and know what show it is. Instantanial. Instantaneously. Instantaneously because of how specific it looks. You know what I mean? And so we talked a lot about specificity, and that was like a word that –

as we were like just designing the show and the wardrobe and all that stuff, we were like, how do we make it just hyper specific and hyper different? And you picture it being in like, I know everyone at Apple that we pitched the show to just pictured it being like an office, like this office, just like a normal office. And, and we never, that's what they said to us though. When we first, when we were first making severance, they said, Oh, well we can find like an office, like an abandoned office in an office park. And we're like, no, no, no, no. It's weird. Yeah.

We actually are going to kind of try to do some stuff that you can't find in, you know, Tenafly, New Jersey. Yeah, exactly. And we liked, and so that was like really a part of it was like, how do we give it like an incredibly specific look? I'm just like a huge Frank Lloyd Wright fan. There's this documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright's work in Los Angeles that I find.

Really interesting. And we kind of quote it in the show where like he came to LA and made buildings that were like purported to be kind of monumental, but they almost all became uninhabitable because of how tomb-like they ultimately were and kind of how like mausoleum-like they ultimately felt. And-

sort of like, you know, the parallels between like a temple and a tomb were very kind of good symbolism for the show, we thought. And also just like to anchor it in like a real history of Hollywood. The studio would have been made at the exact time Frank Lloyd Wright was in LA making buildings. These old studios, a lot of them do have beautiful architecture. Their art deco they had at their time, like great minds dedicating themselves to the design and kind of grandeur of these buildings. And that was also our thought. It's like, how do we like...

Try to make it seem like it was there. Yeah. And it's very accurate. It's very accurate. I went to a meeting at Warner Brothers a couple months ago right when I was watching the show. I was like, I'm literally in the space. It's just less cool looking. Yeah, exactly. Less cool looking version. It's funny. That was actually like when our Apple executives started watching the show, that was one of their first comments was like, should we be dressing better? We were like, yes, you should. Yeah.

Should we wear double-breasted cool coats? You guys, they used to look cool in your job. What'd you do? Yeah, like in the play or everyone looks awesome. They all look cool. Yeah. I don't know when it all fell apart at some point or another. I think like going into making a show like our show or your show or really any show, you kind of like dive in and especially with streaming where you're going to make all the episodes and nobody's going to see it and then it's going to go out.

you really have to take this kind of leap and like make these choices and take these chances. I know like I have a certain amount of, you know, when it's before it's going to come out, like I get nervous or, you know, fear is not going to be well received or all that. But like, it's all after the fact because you've done all this work that you've committed to. Did you guys ever have that feeling? Were you ever, did you ever have any like,

fear of like, oh, like we've made this huge commitment to this thing. Or did you feel it was working as you were going along? And by the time it came out, you felt like, okay, we know what this is. I believed in this one from the get go. I was just like, this is going to work. I know this is going to work. I'm just, I feel like we're like all vibing on the same wavelength. And I felt like it was going to rock.

I hope so. I think because I was so front and center, I was pretty self-conscious about it. Well, I'm not in a shot where if I say my line wrong, it goes to hell and it's all on me. Yeah, and it's been a long time since I had written and directed and starred in a thing. And I think the pressure of that is something I have not subjected myself to in a very, very long time. It's also very specific, though.

I haven't done it for a while for the same reason. Yeah, and the last time I did it, I almost started a war with North Korea. That's right. Which was not lost on me either. I totally get that. I totally get that. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. This was so fun. Thank you, guys. This was great. Congrats on the show. We'll do a mashup podcast next year. Mashup episode. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

Our conversation with Seth and Evan might be over, but we've still got some more of this episode for you. Next up, we're joined by Severance prop master, Kat Miller.

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Hi. Hey, Kat.

How are you? Great. How are you? I'm good. I'm so excited to see you guys. Oh, it's so good to see you. Thank you for doing this. No, it's so cool. First of all, I just wanted to say I've had such a great time working with you. Do you remember the first time we met? I do remember the first time we met. It was in December of 2019. Wow. It was on my birthday, actually. It was my birthday, yeah. Really? Yeah. I think it was this little weekend.

production office in like midtown Manhattan or something? It was. And like an editing suite in there or something. And it was ushered in. Yeah. And yeah, we hadn't like really set up our offices or anything. And it was just like a temporary space. And, you know, when you're hiring a prop person,

It's such an important aspect of filmmaking. Maybe just like, can you tell people a little bit just about like what your responsibilities are on a movie or a TV show generally? Yeah, absolutely. So, so a prop is considered anything that the actor touches. So that's a really broad range. It can be the glasses that they wear, a cell phone that they use, uh, the food that they eat, the cars that they drive, uh,

the guns that they use, any kind of paperwork they have, any kind of bags, and any other kind of then larger, very scripted objects or things that come up that they have to interact with. Generally...

Anything that's not a piece of furniture would fall under the props realm. Yeah, which is a huge responsibility because if there's an actor who has a diary or something, you have to create that diary and put the writing in there and all of those things. Or a newspaper article. Yeah. And everything with being able to...

freeze frame and screen grab and especially on Severance everything is so examined that you can't just get away with you know just having some random text on there just some random words in a diary you know it has to be specific to the story it wasn't always like that

I think that honestly, like it's really in the last few years. I mean, someone would be reading a newspaper. I don't remember, you know, props and movies 10 years ago where people were worrying about what was actually in the real newspaper, maybe the headline or something like that. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but before HD, there was no capability to read whatever article, even if it was a quick shot of it, you couldn't really see it. Yeah. Yeah. When I started out, you had to actually describe to the person what it was because there were no cameras. It was all vocal. Yeah.

And I remember talking to you and there was a project you had worked on where you told me that you had, there was a character that had a desk or something and you had, the desk was completely functional in terms of if you opened any drawer, there would be, it would be filled with real stuff that the actor could use, right? Yes. Yeah, that was it. It was, I had just done a Derek C. in France project and he,

He believed and he said, you know, prop the life outside of the frame and do that for the actors so that the actor could not have to act so much and pretend and be able to really use and interact with the environment. And that was a huge kind of light bulb for me. Like, oh, the objects that the actors are holding or seeing or even potentially being able to create an environment for them could be a helpful tool in telling the story. And that really helped lighten

like open up a door for me to realize that it's not just about handing, you know, the backpack or the briefcase to the actor. It's actually really, how can I contribute to the story? How can I help tell the story that the director wants to tell and is telling? And how can I help the actors with their ability to tell that story as best as I can? So, and you know, you did

help so much because you know so much of the story obviously is lumen and then the culture of lumen which is directly reflected in the props that you created but then you guys really did fill our drawers with stuff at the cubicles and so much of our time there is spent just sitting around and

fiddling with stuff and those drawers we could pull out like post-its that had the lumen on them or the finger traps, all that stuff you guys made and we'd throw stuff at each other and it all ended up, you know, in the show but it also made us just feel like

we had our own little culture in our cubicle space, which was so important. I think it's really important that there's nothing random, especially in a show like this. Like everything that we do in all departments is just so considered and so specific to

Because a random thing that doesn't have a reason endowed in the story, then it doesn't make sense. And it's going to pull the audience out. Our audience is too smart for that. But then this development of this thing-- I had never done this either in terms of developing a world. And we moved these stages in the Bronx. And Jeremy Hindle, our production designer, was there and starting to create ideas for the look of Lumen and all that stuff.

But you really, I just remember you, your department there starting to do the R&D on the computers and how deep you went with that. And can you just talk a little bit about your process of how you started that? Yeah, the computers...

When things started to have a retro feel within the severed floor, like Lumen was curating and designing an office space and environment for the innies that was slightly retro back when design was a point of pride in offices, that started to inform us

about the tech, the tech was a really big question. Is it gonna be super sleek and high tech? And we started to think maybe it could be analog. Maybe it can be along the lines of this kind of retro feel. So we started to think about, okay, the computers which the characters are interfacing with for so many hours in their lives.

What are the computers? And so I went up to the Rhode Island Computer Museum and got Dan up there to open up this back warehouse. So we opened up this warehouse. It was huge. It was Costco-sized warehouse.

It was like going into the Raiders of the Lost Ark and the last scene with all of the things, just this history just created up. And there was just shelves and shelves and shelves and shelves of old computers. Can I ask you, how did you know that there was a Rhode Island computer museum? Like, where do you find that information? Yeah.

we just kind of knew it. It's sometimes, you know, one of the vendors will rent something from them or something, but we, you know, inside prop, prop business. Incredible. Okay. Keep going. And, and,

And I was just allowed to be in there in that space for a whole day and just kind of roaming through the shelves and just trying to find really interesting shapes of old computers that would make sense to start a starting point, a jumping off point of what our MDR computers would be. And so I pulled down as many as I could fit in the minivan. I think it was like 13 of them. And I was like, OK, I can't do any more.

And I drove back and then we cleaned them for a very long time because they had decades of grime and cigarette stuff on it. And so we tried to clean them all up, make them look presentable. And it was really, I don't know if you remember, it was our kind of like first big show and tell. I totally remember.

I remember them all laid out there and also all looking at them. Yeah, it was really fun. Yeah, but everybody came. Everyone in the office were coming around. All this nostalgia of like, oh, that's the Atari I used to have or the Commodore my parents used to have. And it was like a big first moment. I was a little nervous about like, oh. But then you went through all of them and looked at them all.

And a lot of them are really tall and boxy. A lot of them are really rigid or have a height to them. And then I felt like you were drawn to the data general Dasher, which we had a little bit lower profile and could also articulate. It was on a yoke, so it could articulate up and down and pivot left and right. And it just seemed like you could already see how that could be directed and used. And we were drawn to that and we said, okay, this will be our reference point.

And so we 3D scanned it, we 3D modeled it, we 3D printed it, and we had to get actual CRT tubes and screens to put in it because we didn't want to just do an iPad behind something that looked old. We wanted to actually do what the real texture, you cannot fake that real texture of what a CRT, an old school tube screen looks like.

So we found matching ones. We found nine matching Commodore 9-inch CRT TVs. We ripped them apart. We tried to put the tubes within the housing. We had to make some adjustments because all the old computers just used to be monochrome and just one color, but we wanted to have multicolors on our tubes. So the color tubes were longer than what our housing was. And that one color was that green color.

Or white. Or white, that's right. There was also white. I had a RadioShack TRS-80, I think, back in the day. That was my first computer, and it was like, I think it was white. Yeah, but the green was also, that's like such an iconic. The green was common. So are all the tubes used on our computers, are those all vintage? Those are old tubes? Those are old tubes from the late 70s, early 80s. Because they don't make them anymore. They don't make them anymore. Wow.

And so there's very few left. We tried, we gathered as many as we could find at that time because we knew, you know, what if one breaks? We weren't even sure it was going to work because we had to rearrange where all the transistors were and all the power sources were. And that kind of made the tube something, you know, we had to do a lot of R&D that it would make the images go wavy, but we kind of finally got it right.

And was able to figure out a way to then splice the input and the power cables and dig out a channel within the yoke so that we could run all the cables through the yoke of the computer and down through the desk so that it could peer wireless, which was a cool little thing. It's a lot of cable. It's a lot of cable. Yeah.

Yeah. And then to make them functional was a whole other level to it also in terms of the actual programming, right? Yeah. So they're fully interactive. They're fully on and they're fully functioning in real time and nothing gets laid in in post or anything like that. You had said early, I think in that first interview, Ben, that

you wanted the actors to be able to actually interact with the computer in real time, because not only in the story were they supposed to be in front of those computers for a long time, but, you know, Adam, you guys are actually sitting at those desks for so long while we shot for hours at a time that not having that actual functionality and that's something to interact with just seemed like a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

The development of that was, I think, such an important aspect of the show, even to the point of having them be functional so that you guys on set could actually know what you're doing and be able to... It's so much easier as an actor actually doing something real than pretending. And I guess in between setups too, you guys would start to do a lot of refining. Yeah. I mean, just to pass the time, I would refine. And you could also adjust the size of the numbers and kind of learn how to refine in

enormous groups of numbers all at once or single number. There's all different ways of doing it. And Zach and I were always debating which was the most efficient. No, incredible to just have that ability. I think it made so many things easier on set. There's so many more things to talk about with you. But we have some hotline questions from our listeners that we're going to play for you and get some answers. All right. Yes.

Hi, my name is Madeline and these are my roommates, Tyler and Kendall. And our question is, what is the stuff that Mark has to drink in real life? Like what was Adam Scott drinking in that weird little yellow thingy? Looks like claustrum. Or a sauerkraut. Those are our guesses. So let us know. Okay, praise Kier. Bye.

Oh, the stuff in season two. In season two. Correct me if I'm wrong, Kat, but was there coconut in there? There was. There was. It was the reintegration elixir. And we auditioned so many, so many different things. You know, we had this whole debate in our prop department before we even showed anything like,

do we really make it taste disgusting? Do we want Adam to really drink something disgusting? And they were like, no, we want him to drink something that tastes okay. I, there was, it was a pina colada flavored protein shake and,

with applesauce to thicken it up. And then we floated and suspended the coconut chunks inside of it. Yeah, it was not disgusting at all, actually. It was quite pleasant and lots of fiber because of all the coconuts.

Yeah, it wasn't gross at all. It was a pleasure. My question for Madeline would be, what is colostrum? Or maybe that's Kendall. What is colostrum? I think that was Kendall. Just kidding. And it does have a sauerkraut-y kind of...

color to it. I'm so glad it wasn't sauerkraut. That would have been a bummer. Oh, and now I just remembered what colostrum is. It's the first form of milk produced by the mammary glands of humans and other mammals immediately following delivery of the newborn. Colostrum is like- And then the back of my head. You can get little packets of it and eat it throughout the day for health reasons. Maybe Tyler Kendall is a doctor. All right, let's go to another question.

Hi Ben and Adam, this is Taya calling in from California and I need to know when you guys are making the Irving mugs for real because I need one for my mug collection. So give me a call and praise Kier. Yes, I love those mugs. It's a good idea. It's not, it's a great idea. It's a great idea.

I've had so much fun making mugs on this show. I don't, it's just the, the branding of the lumen mugs and, and making the trigger mugs. They're the ones that have the hand, the handle with the kind of indent. So you put two fingers through it. Yes. I just, I just love making the mugs on this job. It shows. Yeah.

It's such a great prop because it's so usable in life. I must have like, I don't know, I must have like six different lumen mugs at home that are a combination of maybe stolen from the set or from some promotion or whatever. I have like a big green one. Did you ever make the green ones? I did make the green ones, yeah. Yeah. And yeah, one of my favorite moments in, I guess, is it episode, is it five? The funeral and-

you know, Milchick's in the back supply closet with the other

The other mugs, the other faces. You know, that was something that I think, you know, it was a great development of the Irving mug from the funeral and the idea that, oh, there are other mugs with the faces of the other people at MDR that someday might be ready. They're just ready. They got them ready. It's a really clever moment. Ominous face mugs. How about the Irving watermelon head, Kat? Oh, we actually have a hotline question about that. So let's play that.

Hi, my name is Joan Musa. I'm from Seattle, Washington. I have got to know who carved Irving's watermelon head. It was one of the most beautiful pieces of art I've ever seen. And the touch, the nose, the rind nose was such a special touch. I just want to make sure that whoever did that is honored. Thank you.

Oh my God. That's like, I've seen people online really obsessed over this watermelon head. You know, our fans are amazing and the super fans are so detail oriented and they have created, tried to create almost all the props and they do it with such high fidelity. They have tried to recreate their,

Irving, Watermelon Head, and it's just amazing. The results are amazing. We tried to do it. So Penko, who is our master sculptor on the show and does so much great work, tried for many weeks, for a couple weeks, to co-create

carve out a real watermelon Irving space. And it was just so mushy and it just couldn't hold the detail. The water content of the watermelon was just so too way too high. And so, you know, I was like, okay, okay, you got to keep trying. And he's like, I'm going to make it, I'm going to try out a foam. And I said, no, it has to be real watermelon. Everyone will know.

And so he was like, give me a day. And he got some foam. I came back the next day and I was like, oh, you made it out a real watermelon. Amazing. And he was like, no, that's the foam. And I was like, he's just a genius. And I feel like when he had that little cap, he made the...

rind out of the cap with the little vine coming out and his hair. So good. No, it's brilliant that it's like a little like it's like a little Pope cap or something. I don't know. There's something very ecclesiastical about it. But yeah, let's listen to one more question.

Hi Jackie, I'm an Audi from Down Under. I am absolutely loving this series especially the art and design and I was just hoping you could give some insight into the design of the show's sort of two worlds. I feel like the Audi world is quite modern and you know has some really modern parts of it like the Severance presentation while the Uni world has a real distinct like

like retro futuristic style and I just wanted to know how do you approach designing each of these worlds and do you have a favorite prop or piece of set dressing? Mine personally is the goat eye chart on the testing floor. It's amazing. I felt like the art department had a lot of fun. Anyway, praise Keir. Great show. Thanks guys.

Thank you. That's so nice. What's your favorite prop, Kat? I got to say the break room table, making the break room table in season one and then pushing it against the wall and having it evolve in season two in the break room. That was a real fun adventure.

Yeah, that was really challenging. That was challenging because it was something that didn't really exist in reality in terms of the idea of this sort of brainwashing room and to figure out how to get and still have the elements of the retro, the sort of like table projectors. What's that called? It's an overhead projector. Yeah. Like old school, super old school. Yeah. Yeah. Which I loved. And those elements. And I remember...

you creating that and looking at all those specifics. And I remember as a director being so excited, it's like, oh, there's like a knob I can do a closeup on. I can do an insert here. So many fun inserts to do, which was amazing.

And then also to figure out even like the throw on that, the projector so that it could be in focus for her to look at the words, for Hallie to read the words. Then seeing how we could shoot through that. It was all created. The ambiance of that scene, the feeling of that scene was because of that table and how you designed it. And then repurposing it for the second season break room was insane. And I have to say it was one thing that I felt like unfortunately couldn't figure out how to do properly.

in the second season was to use that table. I had originally blocked a version of the scene in episode 201, where you guys go in the break room, the new break room for the first time. And originally the scene where you guys are all talking after Milchik leaves with Ms. Wong

was a scene where you guys stood up and started talking. And one of the blocking moves was that Dylan went over by the table, I think. Yeah, I thought he did. Yeah, he did. And then that was a scene actually that I went back and looked at and felt like it wasn't quite working. And we reshot the scene with you guys just sitting around

in a circle. But the sort of collateral damage of that was that we didn't get to see that really ridiculously funny idea of that table, which became like a game table where you had two paddles that were in the shapes of hands. Yeah, so we used the...

We wanted to use the same break room table that Helly, you know, Helly's hands were in, in, in, exactly. That's right. The hand, the hand like forms that she uses where it picks up her, you know, all her like vitals were used now as paddle. We, yeah, we made hand shape ping pong paddles and we had a,

a whole game that we created, which was with a ping pong ball and you would try and hit the glass that was now against the wall and a projector, you know, would have a little like the old pong where it was just a floating little target and you would have to try and hit it. And if you hit it, it would, you know, explode in a firework of color. And then you try again. I will say it was really challenging because the hand ping pong was,

Paddle was really hard to use. But Ben, you were really good at it. You got that up and you were really good at it. I found it impossible. I actually, I have a picture of Zach Cherry playing it. Like one of the Bendo pictures that I can...

I have never posted that because I thought people wouldn't necessarily know what that is, but now I could post that of him playing and having fun with it. But yeah, that was such an inventive and great sort of thematically saying like, hey, we took this thing that used to be a torture device and turned it into a fun game, which was very Lumen. Well, Kat, this was so great. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks, Kat. The show is just such an honor to work on and just the most creative and collaborative. And you guys are just like...

Such artists and it's just such a great, it's just such an awesome thing. Well, you are an artist and honestly, the more, you know, whenever we talk about doing the show and talk about this collaboration, we can't literally couldn't do the show without you. No, there's no way. So the reality is this, the show is a collaboration of all these artists.

different artists and creative people, you know, making stuff. And I just feel like, you know, from the beginning, it's great to meet somebody when you meet someone for the first time and you don't know where that working relationship is going to go that I feel really grateful for our creative working relationship. Yes, me too. Ditto. Kat, you're just incredible. It's such an honor to work with you. And thank you for being here. Thank you so much, guys.

And that's it for the episode. The Severance podcast with Ben and Adam will be back again next week. Yeah, this was really fun. Remember, you can stream every episode of Severance on Apple TV+. You can't stream it anywhere else. Just on Apple TV+. Nope, that's the place. What if we started saying there are multiple places you can stream the show and started...

directing them to like Netflix. Yeah, or stream it wherever you get your streaming shows. Yeah. Like they say with podcasts, right? That's right. Stream it wherever you like watching shows.

The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott is a presentation of Odyssey, Red Hour Productions, and Great Scott. If you like the show, be sure to rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your other podcast platform of choice. It really makes a difference. If you've got a question about Severance, call our hotline, 212-830-3816. We just might play your voicemail and answer your question on the podcast.

Our executive producers are Barry Finkel, Gabrielle Lewis, Naomi Scott, and Leah Reese Dennis. This show is produced by Ben Goldberg. It's mixed and mastered by Chris Basil. We have additional engineering from Javi Cruces. Show clips are courtesy of Fifth Season.

Music by Theodore Shapiro. Special thanks to the team at Odyssey, Maura Curran, Eric Donnelly, Michael LeVay, Melissa Wester, Kate Rose, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schuff. And the team at Red Hour, John Lesher, Carolina Pesikov, Jean-Pablo Antonetti, Martin Valderutten, Ashwin Ramesh, Maria Noto, John Baker, and Sam Lyon.

And at Great Scott, Kevin Cotter, Josh Martin, and Christy Smith at Rise Management. I'm Ben Stiller. And I'm Adam Scott. Thank you for listening.