Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Severance’ Star Zach Cherry Explains That Awkward Visitation, Playing Outie Dylan and His Door Factory Doppelgänger
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 3 of “Severance,” streaming now on Apple TV+.
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In Season 2, Episode 3 of “Severance,” the innies are kind of all doing their own thing. Mark (Adam Scott) and Helly (Britt Lower) are off exploring the goat nursery in search of Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman). Irving (John Turturro) returns to Optics and Design for the first time since Burt’s (Christopher Walken) forced retirement and shares stories with Felicia (Claudia Robinson). And Dylan (Zach Cherry) is visited by his outie’s wife, Gretchen, played with a gentle curiosity by Merritt Wever.
Dylan didn’t get to portal into his outie’s body at the end of Season 1, and the only brief glimpse audiences have seen of his outside life is when Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) visits him at home, in the show’s first application of the Overtime Contingency. After Dylan discovers he has a son outside of Lumon, he grows increasingly disillusioned and rebellious against the company. So, in the first episode of the new season, Milchick — in a gesture of goodwill or, more likely, a manipulation tactic — tells Dylan that Lumon has created an Outie Family Visitation Suite. He also tells Dylan to keep this a secret from the other refiners.
In the latest episode of “Severance,” Lumon puts the visitation suite to the test, allowing Innie Dylan to meet his outie’s wife under the watchful eye of Ms. Huang (Sarah Bock). It’s immediately awkward: Gretchen is staring at her husband and the father of her children, and Dylan is making small talk with a stranger. She tells him about their three kids, and how his outie had struggled to keep a job before Lumon. “He never quite found his thing,” Gretchen says of her husband, and a dispirited look washes over Dylan, who asks, “So he’s actually kind of a fuck-up?”
Overall, Dylan enjoys the visit and is intrigued by his marriage — or is it his marriage? When Gretchen tells him she’s proud of him, gives him a hug and says, “I love you,” it seems to open a door in Dylan’s brain. He’s warmed by affection, something his innie hasn’t experienced. Back at the house, Outie Dylan asks Gretchen how it went. “It was good,” she says. “Weird good, but good.”
Cherry spoke with Variety about the episode and how Innie Dylan’s relationship with Gretchen could lead to interesting tensions. He also talks about “Severance” fan theories and how Mark’s reintegration process might affect the dynamic between the innies.
The past couple of episodes have given us the first real glimpse of Dylan’s outie. How did you prepare to play that double role? Or do you not see it as a double role?
It’s sort of a double role, but I think they’re very much the same person, and their lives inform each other. One interesting thing the show plays with is what bleeds through — personality-wise, temperament-wise, those kinds of things. A primary way I think about the difference between the two is that Innie Dylan is this extremely confident guy, and he has no reason not to be. He has very limited life experience, and he’s very good at what he does in that context. There’s no baggage, whereas the outie is a version of that same guy but has all of this other stuff that has gotten in the way of his confidence.
Innie Dylan seems genuinely disappointed when his outie’s wife, Gretchen, tells him Outie Dylan has struggled to keep a job. To what extent does Dylan feel that his outie’s shortcomings reflect upon him?
He spends a lot of Season 1 hypothesizing and self-mythologizing about who he might be on the outside, and I think that adds to his confidence. He tells all these stories about how he might be a riverboat captain, and he does muscle shows and he hooks up with women left and right. He’s able to tell himself any story about who he is, and it can be true. So when he starts to hear what his outie is really like, he’s confronted with the fact that those stories aren’t true. There are versions of this that can happen in real life. This is a silly example, but maybe you think of yourself as a really good cook, and then you have your friends over for a dinner party and they’re not that into it. Then you go, “This story I’ve been telling myself about myself is not true.” That can impact how you feel about yourself and what you want to do going forward.
I hear you like to improvise on set a lot. Has your background in improv comedy been a help or a hindrance on a show like “Severance,” which requires a certain tightness?
The way in which it helps me is you have to listen and be very present with your scene partner, because there is no script. You can’t just be thinking about what you’re going to say next. So I try to take that approach with everything. When you’re working with such incredible actors, like I have been lucky to on “Severance,” you get so much from really being there with them and looking at them and listening to them. It helps me figure out what the scene is about. In this episode, we meet my wife, who is played by Merritt Wever, who is an incredible actor and is so thoughtful. There were so many times where, when I was reading the script, I would think, “Maybe this is what the scene will be.” Then I get there and I’m in the room with her and she brings so much to it that it changes the whole dynamic. It was fun to figure out what our relationship was together, as we were doing it.
I was wondering whether you improvised the “He dumb? He a dick?” line.
No, I don’t think so! Even when I do improvise, a lot of it doesn’t make it into the show. Some of it does, but it helps me figure out the boundaries of the character. And it helps me keep the scenes feeling alive.
What do you make of Dylan recoiling when Gretchen says, “I love you”?
That’s probably the first time he’s ever heard that. It’s something that maybe felt normal to her because of her relationship with his outie. But, to him, it’s a huge moment. I doubt he’s ever heard someone earnestly say they love him, and certainly not in the context of his outie’s wife.
Why is Lumon allowing these visitations? Is it simply to keep Dylan at bay, or is there a larger tactic at play?
It’s a good instinct to question why Lumon is doing anything. This season, they’re dealing with the fallout of what the innies did at the end of Season 1, and they seem to be taking a different approach with each of them. For Dylan, his family is the ultimate carrot. That’s something he’s really invested in, so Lumon knows they can use that. Maybe it’s just to keep him focused, or maybe it’s to drive a wedge between him and the other refiners. Who knows? It is interesting to see how it changes the dynamics of the MDR crew, because now he has a secret that he’s not supposed to tell them about.
In the previous episode, Dylan goes for a job interview at a door factory. Was it written in the script that he’d be interviewed by a doppelgänger?
I believe it said that they look very similar. The actor who played the interviewer is Adrian Martinez, and I was telling him while we were shooting the scene that there have been multiple times in real life where people have complimented me for his work. They’ve been like, “Hey man, I loved you in ‘Focus,’” or whatever it may be. And I’ll look up the film that I was not in and it’s been him. So that was really fun to get to do that with him, and very surreal. There were times when we were shooting that where I was almost tripping out. They made him look even more like me than he usually does. There were times where I felt it was almost too surreal to focus.
His character turns out to be prejudiced against severed people. That’s a sentiment that has been hinted at in the show but hasn’t been shown too much overtly. What is your sense of the broader political climate surrounding severance, within the show’s universe?
We don’t really know yet. It’s clearly a controversial issue. We see that it’s a topic of conversation in the first episode, at Ricken and Devon’s dinner party. We see there are some student protesters, and we see some corporate spin about the procedure. I don’t know what I’d compare it to, but I think it’s a seemingly new and controversial thing that people don’t agree on.
The episode ends with Mark starting the reintegration process, merging his innie and outie memories. How might that affect his relationship with Dylan and the other innies?
It’ll be interesting to see. There’s so much going on this season for each innie. Last season, they were very much united with one thing in mind, working toward this specific goal. This season, Lumon has put different things in each of their sights. Dylan is focused on not losing the privileges that he’s been given. He’s a little bit in his own world this season.
Do you read fan theories about the show online?
I do a little bit, more than most of the cast. I’m more online than most of the cast in general. I’ll have friends send me things, I’ll see Ben [Stiller] reposting things. It’s fun how much people engage with the show.
Do you ever read theories that you think could turn out to be true?
There are definitely times where I will read a thing and go, “Huh. I hadn’t thought of it that way but that’s really interesting,” or, “Oh, I hadn’t noticed that they did that. I’m sure they did that on purpose.”
Would you ever go to Ben Stiller or Dan Erickson and ask for their thoughts?
I tend to keep it to myself. I don’t like to ask too many questions. I like to just let their information come to me when I need it.
The “Severance” press tour has almost rivaled “Wicked” in terms of how many interviews you all have been doing. Is there a question you’re most sick of being asked?
I haven’t gotten sick of any of the questions. The fun thing about our group, especially when we are doing interviews together, is we find ways to entertain each other and ourselves while still answering the questions. Something we’ve talked about quite a bit is the playing the innies and the outies, and that distinction. But it was never boring because I kept finding new ways to explain it, and I was trying to surprise Britt Lower and John Turturro with my new analogies. I’d say, “It’s kind of like two slices of pizza that are next to each other…” Even if I hear a question a bunch, I’ll still find a way to make it fresh.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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