Britt Lower: The MVP of ‘Severance’ Dishes on Her Characters’ Big Twists

After nearly three years out of office, Severance is logging back on with a sophomore season. The Apple TV+ show about work colleagues who have surgically divided their memories between their work and personal lives returned Jan. 17 with more twists and turns than before.

Everything has changed when Britt Lower’s Helly R. comes barreling out of the Lumon Industry’s elevator. She returns to her desk with colleagues Irving (John Turturro), Dylan (Zach Cherry) and Mark (Adam Scott), the latter with whom she’s having an office affair, to continue their “mysterious and important” work. However, after the explosive Season 1 finale revealed Helly’s outie is Helena Eagan, daughter of Lumon CEO Jame Eagan, data sorting is the last thing on their minds.

Season 2 opens up new corners of the office as the gang marches down the fluorescent white hallways with a rejuvenated curiosity. But their confidence comes to a screeching halt when they are forced to face the consequences of crossing the severance barrier. Sitting down with The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, Lower discussed returning to the labyrinth set for Season 2, playing different parts of the same person and what is in store for Helly R.

How has it been for you to return to this character, walking back on set knowing the show has a big fanbase this time?

Reading a role like Helly on the page for the first time felt like falling in love with someone. I loved how she moved through Season 1 and the determination she had. Because she is in that audience surrogate position, helping us understand and question this weird place we’re introduced to, I was excited for that dialogue with the viewer that inevitably helps the show to evolve in the subsequent seasons. To come back and step into Helly’s perspective again was like seeing an old friend and just being excited to see what they were up to.

At the end of Season 1, Helena was established as Helly’s outie. There’s a closeness and a separation between them. How does that impact the psychology of your performance? Do you see them as parts of the same person or two completely different women?

I’ve had lots of conversations with everyone on the show about this; it’s the same person, just different parts of that person. We all have different metaphors that we use. I like to think that there’s a shared subconscious. My job is to build that inner life that both characters share. I start from a place of what they have in common. These are two parts of the same person who are both trapped within the same company but in really different ways. Helena is in a position where she’s being watched and has to behave in a particular way, so there are different layers of masking. For Helly R, there are very few masks. She has this raw, unmediated way of moving through the world. The easiest way I can describe it is that they sound like different music inside of me. The same musician, but maybe different albums.

Helly is such an interesting character as not only the mastermind of Lumon, she’s also the only woman in her office. How did that representation of womanhood influence your performance?

There’s something about the way that Lumon dresses people that’s quite gendered. Costume designer Sarah Edwards worked on what the severed workers have to wear, a store [where] there are rules about what they can wear or not wear. Helly has no idea why she’s wearing an A-line skirt, pantyhose and heels. She’s just woken up and didn’t choose that outfit that is different from the guys all wearing suits.

That was interesting to me because Helly doesn’t necessarily move through the world as if she’s wearing a skirt. She may as well be on a basketball court. I liked that she was on this journey of self-discovery and fighting for her humanity. In doing so, she becomes the catalyst that disrupts this office’s status quo.

I suppose being immersed in the Severance set must help you live through the character and ease you back for Season 2, being surrounded by those fluorescent walls.

Yeah, it’s bright! There’s the meta quality of showing up to work, going to your trailer and putting on a costume, assuming a new identity, and then walking down. There are a lot of hallways to get to our studio, so you’re walking down halls and then through hallways inside of the set too.

The way the camera and characters navigate the hallways is enthralling. What is it like to film with that closeness to the lens?

We have the most incredible cinematographer, Jessica Lee Gagné, and her team operates like another player in our show. It’s like the camera is receiving the information, like the viewer, and so the camera moves like it’s a dance. It’s a choreography that we do with that team and I feel like the camera almost has a personality of its own.

Something I also love about the show is the script. What’s your relationship to the script when you enter this new season, do you read it all in one go or episode by episode?

I love the scripts, the writers, and their relationship to language. It’s a whole new vocabulary and way of speaking that they developed for Lumon and the innies. They have an idiosyncratic way of playing with language that I find so delightful.

The experience of reading the scripts is a lot like watching it, I would presume. I remember at the end of Season 1, reading the finale, and my heart was racing as I was reading. I was trying to read it faster but also I didn’t want to miss anything. I think that’s the experience of watching our show. Truly, every prop, and every line of dialogue has been considered; there are Easter eggs around every corner.

In terms of Season 1, we had all the scripts before we started filming. Season two, [the scripts] came out as we were filming. But it’s a collaborative environment so if you have questions about where things are going, Dan [Erickson] and Ben [Stiller] are extremely generous with sharing that.

I read you’ve compared Severance to The Wizard of Oz previously. For Season 2, did you have any other influences that you drew on or felt inspired by?

Yes! I was inspired by the movie Orlando when thinking about Helena and the isolation that she must experience being a part of this high-profile family and the pressure that she must be under as the lone child of this strange man, Jame Eagan, her father. The soundtrack of that movie was inspiring to me. The grandiosity of the way that Lumon presents itself to the world, the paintings and all of the literature, there’s a kind of timeless quality [similar] to Orlando.

Finally, how would you summarise the thematic and emotional journey of Helly’s arc this season? What were the beats you wanted to hit?

Starting from Season 1 Helly is on a physically courageous journey but there’s more risk in season two of the interior journey that she’s going on. She’s waging a war within herself and against this company, but also opening up to her connection with the people she’s come to love. I think that’s more frightening because there’s more to lose now. In season one, there was nothing to lose, she could go after what she wanted: her freedom and autonomy. Now she has people that she has to consider, their well-being and how to show up for them.