Patricia Arquette Jokes a 'Little Inner Cobel Comes Out' of Her, 'Wants Me to Lie' Between Takes on “Severance” Set (Exclusive)

Though she doesn't stay in character between takes, part of Harmony Cobel stays with Patricia Arquette even after the working day is done on Severance.

"I leave it once I'm done shooting, except there's something funny about Cobel, where with fans or somebody asks me a question, this little inner Cobel comes out and I tell them like, 'Oh, this little inner Cobel just wants me to lie to you. What's happening?'" Arquette, 56, tells PEOPLE exclusively. "So that's kind of fun, but it's like a fun little liar. I don't know, it's strange because I don't really lie in life."

Ms. Cobel is known for her icy, cold demeanor as the severed floor manager at Lumon Industries. "There's unscrupulousness about her," says Arquette.

Related: Ben Stiller, Adam Scott and Other Severance Crew Share the Unexpected But 'Really Fun' Ways They Bonded Off Screen (Exclusive)

"I think part of the indoctrination of this Lumen world is covering your feelings. It doesn't really matter what your feelings are," she continues. "These are the rules of this company. These are the rules of your job. This is your job description. This is your level of responsibility. This is what you're supposed to do."

"And when you have that happening for so long, it really clouds your emotions and your thoughts and really channels things into a very specific passage," she adds.

Severance's first season debuted in 2022, and Arquette admits she was trying to determine "the tone" of the show throughout filming the first installment. "Some of the directions almost felt film noir, but then some of it was sci-fi and then, there was parts that were funny. It was a very specific tone of its own kind," she recalls.

Going into the much anticipated second season nearly three years later, the Oscar winner says it was both "a little bit" surreal to return to the series as she also felt the pressure to top its predecessor.

Related: Severance Cast Draws Huge Crowd in Grand Central Station to Promote Season 2

"It's very exciting to come back to see what they came up with, and this season is very different in a way," she says. "We spend some more time with some people's Outties and a lot of different things are revealed, I think, through the course of the season."

She continues, "But also, I just get excited as a kind of viewer myself about what sets they built and what new characters are coming in and what gets revealed to me. And also, for my character, there's some revelations that come that [director] Ben [Stiller] and Dan [Erickson] and I had talked about it at the beginning of season 1, so that's nice."

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New Severance episodes arrive Fridays on Apple TV+.

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