“Severance” Creator Dan Erickson Shares How John Turturro's 'Horrific and Ritualistic' Watermelon Head Came to Life

Not everything is as it seems in the world of Severence — even the fruit.

During the Feb. 14 episode of the hit series, titled “Trojan’s Horse,” the Macrodata Refinement (MDR) team of the mysterious Lumon company is allowed to mourn their severed friend Irving (John Turturro) after he is fired for nearly killing Helena Eagan (Britt Lower) while exposing her for having ulterior motives.

Dylan (Zach Cherry) coerces their manager, Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), to allow the team a bereavement ceremony for Irving. Milchick begrudgingly accepts and, at the start of the proceedings, presents the team with a watermelon bust to resemble the exact likeness of Irving's face. Ignoring their confusion, Milchick prompts the remaining severed crew, which includes Mark (Adam Scott), to eat the severed head of their friend.

Related: Where Is Season 2 of Severance? Ben Stiller Spells Out the Timeline — and Why It's Taking So Long

According to show creator Dan Erickson, the urge to create the fruit bust came from his search for inspiration online.

"I just liked that idea, Erickson told Entertainment Weekly. "I was Googling and looking at Google images of different melons, and I was scrolling down and suddenly I saw this horrifying carved face, and I gasped. And I thought, 'Okay, yeah, we definitely need to do this. This is definitely something Lumon would do.' "

He went on to call the idea of Irving’s friends eating his severed head “horrific and ritualistic,” though agreeing that it “feels right for Lumon.”

"There’s something so uncannily flesh-like about it,” Erickson further explained in an interview with Polygon. “It’s red and it sort of has the consistency of flesh. It’s almost like this bloody face looking at you ... but it’s being presented with this veneer of corporate pleasantness."

Although Erickson was certain the carved fruit was perfect for the scene, having real fruit on set for hours was much harder than the creator imagined. “I think they had a couple of different ones, because leaving it out, it would start to get brown or shrivel a little bit if you're going to do that over the course of the day,” he noted to Entertainment Weekly.

Propmaster Catherine Miller also shared with the publication how difficult it was for sculptor Penko Platikanov to create the hyper-realistic head. “We learned quickly that the high water content of the fruit made it incredibly challenging to carve,” said Miller. “They kept turning mushy ... and our schedule was such that we were going to film that scene over the course of many months.”

Related: Severance Season 2 Review: Apple TV+ Thriller Goes Deeper, Darker and Wilder — and What's with All Those Baby Goats?

After some trial and error, Miller explained that the final episode didn’t include a real watermelon, as dense foam coated in paint and lacquer for the "wet feel" was utilized instead.

"We created a second melon head out of foam with a 'slice' already carved out of it," she said. "We matched a real piece of melon into it so it could be pulled out on camera and eaten in the same take."

The fake watermelon head was so convincing that it fooled Erickson the first time he saw it. "I literally worry sometimes I’m going to lose my grip with reality," he confessed. "There’s something so strange about imagining something and then you give it to somebody else and they make it real."

Read the original article on People