Created by showrunner Dan Erickson, Apple TV+’s dystopian workplace psychological thriller was nominated for three Spirit Awards in its first season, including Best New Scripted Series. One of its Executive Producers is Spirit Awards alum Ben Stiller, who directed 11 of the 19 episodes. Now in its sophomore year, the most nominated show this year with 27 Emmy nominations has won six prizes so far, after last weekend’s 77th Creative Arts Emmy Awards. One of the newly-minted Emmy winners is production designer Jeremy Hindle (Top Gun: Maverick, Zero Dark Thirty), who credits the absolute creative freedom on the set for the success of the show. “It’s not just that it’s collaborative, we all trust each other’s opinions and instincts, which is rare. I think that’s why the show works so well. Nobody’s trying to do something that someone else wants; we’re all doing what we feel is right. Everybody’s bringing their A-plus-plus-plus game and Ben creates a place where we can all do that.”

Centered around the fictional Lumon Industries, the series follows employees who have chosen a surgical procedure to permanently “sever” their work memories (“innies”) from their true selves (“outies”). Spirit Award nominee Adam Scott plays Mark, who finds himself stuck working on the Macrodata Refinement (“MDR”) team on the Severed Floor with colleagues Helly (Britt Lower), Irving (John Turturro) and Dylan (Zach Cherry). Delving deeper into Lumon’s history and its founder, Kier Eagan, this season, amongst the bizarre revelations include the Mammalians Nurturable department, where goats are raised for sacrifice rituals that purport to guide deceased humans “to Kier’s door,” and the creepy mural that greets everyone in the lobby.

We’re here to talk about Severance, but I just have to start by saying how much fun I had with Top Gun: Maverick!

Wow, thank you! During COVID, IMAX and Paramount gave my wife and kids a private screening in their IMAX theater a year before it was out. That was the best day!

That movie made me so happy. After I walked out of the theater, for about three minutes, it felt like all was good in the world. Not many movies can do that, and I watch movies for a living.

It’s such a fun movie! My kids are in their 20s, and they loved it too.

In Severance, the décor at Lumon has a 1970s feel. How did that idea come about?

It was described as just an office in the script, so I asked Ben for two days to come up with a distinct look. The first image in my lookbook was of [the film] Fargo, when William H Macy’s going to his car in the snow on the rooftop; it was insanely isolated and he’s very tiny, because we’re all tiny in this world. I wanted it to always be winter outside Lumon. For the interior, I used references for the stunning John Deere building in Chicago, which were designed by Eero Saarinen and Kevin Roche. If they’re only working for eight hours a day, as opposed to 16, all they need is a pen, pencil, computer, one photograph. It creates this workplace the way it used to be, which was beautiful and made people inspired to work, and not involve their family at work. That’s the theory behind the ’60s/’70s look.

What inspired the 1980s computers in the MDR cubicles?

If the innies ever escaped and tried to describe what it’s like, it would make no sense. So, everything had to make no sense to anyone in their right mind. That’s why the computers look really old even though they have modern features like touch screens and a track ball. When you first see Helly, she was lying on the boardroom table – why? Dan said it’s the birthplace of the office, it’s basically the womb of the office. So, we treated them like kindergarten children — the desks are playful and the carpets were green. Some of it was based on the 1967 movie, Playtime.

What inspired the look of the break room, where the innies are forced to watch that uprising video in Episode 1.

It was originally written as surveillance footage, but I thought since they’re children, let’s make one of those videos of David and Goliath or Burl Ives and use stop motion. I storyboarded it and Ben loved it. I’m good friends with [stop-motion animation director] Duke Johnson (Anomalisa) and got him to do it. To keep it in the same vein as instructional kids videos, the chairs and everything’s a little low, and we had the balloon lights. This is their playroom, so there’s a chocolate bar vending machine and the handball table with paddles that look like hands. It was hilarious and so much fun to come up with.

I really like the little white, purple chairs. What was behind that look?

The Nimrod chairs by Marc Newsom are new this season. They reminded me of the ones I had in kindergarten in northern Ontario. They’re just playful. We made multiples and picked the ones we liked and camera-tested everything. The show’s aesthetic is so particular that rarely does anything go on without being camera-tested.

Those chairs reminded me of the 1980s cartoon, The Jetsons.

Absolutely. All the stuff you grew up on eventually comes out of you, it’s all nostalgia. There’s a freedom now to just do what we like, and that’s usually based on our memories, right? This season is more like that for me, but season one was tricky because it was hard to know if this was going to work.

The show was mostly shot in Upstate New York?

Yes, and the soundstage was in the Bronx. We’re always hunting for something that no one’s ever seen, which is hard in a place that’s been shot a million times. It needs to be vastly dissimilar to what people have seen, say in Law & Order, because we can’t have things that could take you out of the story. The Utica train station where Burt and Irving say goodbye was four hours north where no one’s shot before. We filmed the Salt’s Neck episode (S2 E8) in Fogo Island, Newfoundland, when we got into the Kier Eagan lore and [former manager of the Severed Floor] Cobel’s (Spirit Awards alum, Patricia Arquette) backstory.

Was most of your team based in the Tri-State area?

They’re almost all from New York—construction, costumes, props, set decorators, buyers, painters. Only four of us are from L.A., me, one concept artist, a researcher, and one of our shoppers.

It’s very interesting that it’s crucial for the look of the show that it not be easily identifiable as any particular place — it can’t look like Chicago or New York.

Before we found Newfoundland, we looked at Iceland and Norway, anywhere that’s visually interesting but not easily recognizable. If you see something familiar, your brain starts to fill in the gaps, but we’re trying to make viewers put the pieces together. That’s why I wanted to design most of the stuff on the Severed Floor — in Gemma’s (Dichen Lachman) office, we custom-designed everything from the chairs, sofa, the fluoroscope, her bed, to the showers. So, it feels like something we’ve never seen before. The only way Lumon can keep this secret is to build most of it onsite. Wouldn’t it be fun if some day if we see where they built all this stuff (in the show)?

Did some of the props actually work?

Yes, we try to make them functional. All the computers on the MDR are functional, the keypads, trackball, touch screen and the program they use – they all work. That’s what makes it so believable because the actors can really engage with it. They’re not faking it.

One of the most notable pieces this season is the “Kier Pardons His Betrayers” mural, where four people—bloodied and sweating—are buried up to their necks in sand. It greets the innies as they exit the elevator. How did that idea begin? 

What Dan wrote was “four people with their heads above the sand,” and I crafted some backstory with Ben. Some of it’s Lumon’s history and we stylistically added things to tell more of the backstory. It was created by [New York-based illustrator and storyboard artist] Daniel Aviles. He started as a PA on Season One before realizing he could draw. So, he started doing some storyboards – the kid’s a genius. Most of Season One’s original paintings were done by [concept artist] Hugh Sicotte.

Once you have the concept, what was the process to produce these intricate art pieces?

First, we created the paintings digitally to tell the story with Ben. Once we love it, I sit with the painters to make it feel as three-dimensional as possible, making sure their eyelines are correct, etc. Especially the one when they’re all in the waterfall at the end, the layout and story we’re trying to tell are very particular. These are 12-foot paintings that are hand-painted, so we really got into the details, especially with lighting.

Designing the Mammalians Nurturable space must have been wild!

The word “mammalians” sounds ridiculous and hysterical to me. So, it’s a huge room because it’s ridiculous. You’ve got to be able to walk in and go, ‘What the heck is this?’ That really cues the design. The birthing cabin is another great one, it had two ceramic sculptures on the fireplace. When I asked Dan [Erickson] what the two sculptures would be in his imagination, he instantly said ‘Mrs. Kier pregnant and Mr. Kier pregnant,’ that’s it! He always has amazing answers because his head is full of these bonkers ideas.

Wow! What reactions did you get when the cast first saw them?

Nobody knew I was making them! Patricia just started laughing hysterically. She loved them, gravitated right to them and touched his belly. I’m always thinking of how to create a mood for the actors to play with that hopefully helps bring out honesty in their performances.

What were some of your inspirations and references to create this dreadful and isolated environment?

Since we’re underground, the office feels like a Kubrick spaceship in a weird way. We created the feeling of confined spaces with windowless rooms that feel claustrophobic. But it’s also about making people kinetically respond to things, not just mentally, but physically.

What are some signature pieces that you want to highlight from this season?

I loved doing the retreat in Episode 4, where we designed those tents. It was originally written for Irving to open his eyes in a forest. But what if he wakes up on a frozen lake instead? To me, that’s funnier. We probably scouted for 15-20 days, crafting that story on-location to make it feel like they really went on this journey. Even though it’s just on the backside of the office, it’s the biggest waterfall in the world. The bonding retreat is not comfortable at all because Lumon is always playing with their mental state. So, we designed things that were aesthetically pleasing but not comfortable — the benches they’re sitting on around the fire are made of steel. It’s that fine line of being a little torturous.

Were there any stark differences between the seasons?

It’s a bit more sophisticated this season. Gemma’s floor changes — the ceilings are higher, hallways wider, and other spaces bigger — because she’s now the main priority on this prison floor. Her space feels more clinical, not like an office anymore.

What inspired the aesthetics on the Testing Floor, where various experiments were performed on her?

The DP Jessica Lee Gagné (who also won an Emmy this year) also directed this episode—her first one—which is focused on Gemma and deals with loss, birth, and death. We had the luxury of having a year to come up with this. Originally, the plane [in the flight simulation room] was going to be full-size. But I thought it’d be funnier if they built a mini plane. Color-wise, each room has to be visually dominant so that anyone should be able to remember it. But the second she walks out, she doesn’t remember anything, which is why the chip works.

What is the real point of the Testing Floor and how does the décor tie in with that?

The Testing Floor is where they examine if her memories would leak into each other [between the outie and the innie]. The more absurd they are, the more you’d expect her to remember them. She handwrites Christmas letters hundreds of times every day and gets her teeth drilled every day. So how do we create a space that feels medical and prison-like? To survive in this windowless space, she’s got this UV light. We thought of every way she could survive for a few years but it also needs to be an attractive environment for us to watch. When she escapes, we lit more from the floor, whereas the lighting was all in the ceiling in MDR. When it gets into emergency mode, it comes out of the vents on the bottom. We tried to create contrast so you knew where you are at all times.

All episodes of Severance are streaming on Apple TV+.