S2E7: Chikhai Bardo (with Dichen Lachman and Jessica Lee Gagné)

Summary

The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller & Adam Scott Episode Summary: S2E7 - "Chikhai Bardo" Release Date: February 28, 2025

In the seventh episode of Season 2, titled "Chikhai Bardo," hosts Ben Stiller and Adam Scott delve deep into the intricacies of the "Severance" universe. This episode offers an enriching blend of behind-the-scenes insights, character explorations, and technical discussions, providing both fans and newcomers with a comprehensive understanding of the show's latest developments.

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Introduction

The episode begins with Ben and Adam setting the stage for an in-depth discussion about "Chikhai Bardo," the pivotal seventh installment of Season 2. They introduce their special guest, Deechen Lachman, who portrays the enigmatic character Gemma/Ms. Casey. Ben Teases the Audience with Humor (02:14), ensuring listeners are primed for a blend of serious analysis and light-hearted banter.

Interview with Deechen Lachman

Deechen Lachman shares her multifaceted background, revealing her journey from Kathmandu to Australia, then to Los Angeles, and finally settling in London. She discusses the challenges and inspirations that shaped her portrayal of Gemma/Ms. Casey.

Deechen Lachman (06:32): "I've been trying to learn an Irish one, actually, because my daughter and I absolutely love it."

Delving into her audition process, Deechen recounts the pressure of embodying a character that seamlessly merges Gemma with Ms. Casey. She emphasizes her creative approach, detailing how she invested in crafting the perfect look and bringing authenticity to her role.

Deechen Lachman (09:53): "I wanted any tape I sent out to be a really great quality product and represent my commitment to my work and my creativity."

Ben and Adam commend her dedication, highlighting specific scenes that showcase her talent, such as her interactions with Dr. Maurer. Deechen reflects on the emotional depth required for these scenes, expressing gratitude for the support from the cast and crew.

Discussion with Jessica Lee Gagne

The conversation shifts to Jessica Lee Gagne, the director and executive producer of the episode. Jessica delves into the technical and emotional aspects of directing "Chikhai Bardo." She discusses the decision to shoot flashbacks on film to evoke nostalgia and the meticulous planning behind the episode's unique visual style.

Jessica Lee Gagne (46:16): "Everything is happening kind of all at once. So we are constantly affected by everything."

Jessica elaborates on the challenges of creating a cohesive visual narrative that intertwines multiple timelines, ensuring each scene resonates emotionally while maintaining the show's signature aesthetic.

Fan Q&A Segment

In an engaging Q&A segment, listeners call in with questions about "Severance." Two notable questions include:

1. From Zoe (29:09):
   "Should I apply to Gan's College?"

   Deechen Lachman (30:07):
   "I would say go for it."

2. From Grace (31:51):
   "If your innie had a wellness session with Ms. Casey, what facts would you want them to know about you?"

   Deechen Lachman (32:02):
   "I would want them to know what I was allergic to."

These interactions showcase the hosts' commitment to engaging with their audience, offering thoughtful and character-consistent responses.

Predictions with Zack Cherry

Zack Cherry, a recurring segment favorite, provides his tongue-in-cheek predictions for the upcoming episode. He humorously suggests that future episodes will involve the characters' annual dental cleanings, much to Ben and Adam's amusement.

Zack Cherry (74:51):
"Next time on Severance, we go back to the dentist and see each character get their annual dental cleaning."

Ben and Adam playfully critique Zack's predictions, highlighting the segment's blend of humor and fan interaction.

Technical Deep Dive

The latter part of the episode features an in-depth technical discussion between Jessica Lee Gagne and Zack Cherry about the cinematography and set design of "Chikhai Bardo." They explore the creative decisions behind lighting, shot composition, and the integration of different timelines to enhance the storytelling.

Zack Cherry (56:37):
"Shooting on film evokes nostalgia right away, which was the simple answer we needed for the flashbacks."

Jessica praises Zack's seamless integration of technical expertise with emotional storytelling, emphasizing the collaborative spirit that brings "Severance" to life.

Conclusion

As the episode wraps up, Ben and Adam reflect on the collaborative efforts that make each "Severance" episode a masterpiece. They reiterate their appreciation for Deechen and Jessica's contributions and tease the excitement for the upcoming episode, encouraging listeners to stay tuned for more revelations in Season 2.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Deechen Lachman (06:32): "I've been trying to learn an Irish one, actually..."
• Deechen Lachman (09:53): "I wanted any tape I sent out to be a really great quality product..."
• Jessica Lee Gagne (46:16): "Everything is happening kind of all at once..."
• Zack Cherry (74:51): "Next time on Severance, we go back to the dentist..."

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This episode serves as a treasure trove for "Severance" enthusiasts, offering a blend of personal anecdotes, character explorations, and technical insights. Whether you're a long-time fan or new to the series, "Chikhai Bardo" provides a deeper appreciation for the show's complex narrative and the dedicated team behind its creation.

Transcript

[Ben Stiller]

This episode of the Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott is presented by State Farm. Learn [e-mail] severance like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Hey, Adam.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah?

[Ben Stiller]

Is your experience at work a bit dysfunctional lately?

[Adam Scott]

I don't know. I think it's.

[Ben Stiller]

It's okay. I'll take that as a yes. Your team could undergo a highly controversial surgical procedure that would mercifully sever any and all memories of that work experience from your home lives. Or you could try Confluence by Atlassian.

[Adam Scott]

Oh, my God. Well, if it's a choice between those two things, I think I would 100% choose confluence by Atlassian.

[Ben Stiller]

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[Adam Scott]

So that would equal out, like, if we're playing with, like, let's just say 100%, 5.2 of those percentage points. Yeah, that's the improvement.

[Ben Stiller]

I mean, I'm not great at math, but that sounds very close.

[Adam Scott]

Well, I'm doing the math in my head right now as we speak, and I think that's great.

[Ben Stiller]

So why not keep your team unsevered in Confluence, the connected workspace where teams can do it all set, knowledge free with Confluence. Learn [e-mail] confluence that's a T L a S S I-a n.com C o n F L U E N C E Just. I have one question. This is like a. This is probably really silly. Do you do any other accents? Because your American accent is so good. Like, what else do you do accent wise? It's really good.

[Deechen Lachman]

I've been trying to learn an Irish one, actually, because my daughter and I have been bad sisters and we absolutely love it. And Matilda's, like, been walking around the house saying bled. You know, like all the different names on the show. And like, sometimes, like, we'll just start trying to talk to each other in Irish accent, but I have to, like, start. Let's hear it.

[Ben Stiller]

This is your. This is your Bad Sister season three audition.

[Deechen Lachman]

Stop being such a bad sister. Sister. Stop being such a bad sister. You. I can't swear on this, can I?

[Adam Scott]

Yeah, you can swear.

[Deechen Lachman]

You can swear. Stop being such a bad sister.

[Adam Scott]

That sounded really good.

[Deechen Lachman]

Blond, what the fuck are you doing?

[Ben Stiller]

Hey, I'm Ben Stiller. I'm Adam Scott, and this is the Severance podcast with Ben and Adam, where we break down every episode of Severance.

[Adam Scott]

Today we're talking about the seventh episode of season two, Chikai Bardo, written by Dan Erickson and Mark Friedman and directed by Jessica Lee Gagne.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah, this is a really big one and we have a very special guest to help us talk about it. We are joined by the star of the episode, the transfixing, the incredibly talented, the mesmerizing, the self effacing. I could go on. Deechen Lachman, who plays Gemma slash Ms. Casey. Yes.

[Deechen Lachman]

Hi, guys. Keep going.

[Ben Stiller]

And later on, I'll be talking with Jessica Lee Gagne about directing the episode.

[Adam Scott]

She's so talented. She's also our main cinematographer. Can't wait to talk to her about this.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. And of course, we'll have our friend Zack Cherry the favorite segment of the episode for us all, where he predicts what's going to happen in next week's episode.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah. You're welcome, Zach. Okay, here is your spoiler warning. We are talking about everything from episode seven of season two, so go watch it before you listen to this. Can't spoil that enough.

[Ben Stiller]

That's right. You know, it came to our attention recently that it might be a little bit different, that we're doing a podcast about a show that we make and the fact that since we know everything in the show, that it's hard to not give away spoilers.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

So, you know, we give the spoiler warning to people, we give it to ourselves. But, you know, of course, when we're talking about the episodes, I'm always thinking about what we don't want to give away. For me, of course, that's the fun of it. That's the fun of it. But then it does make you look inward a little bit and question. Well, the way I even said that thing that maybe wasn't explaining what happens in the episode, did I? In the way I said it. Because we knew people would pay attention to the episodes. But this level of intense analysis, it's.

[Adam Scott]

Far more intense than season one, I would say.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. And I think there are more people watching the show now. And I realize that people are listening to every little nuance and watching every little speck of detail in the show.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah. Maybe even something that we may have said offhandedly gets analyzed as if it were a window into another hint, a.

[Ben Stiller]

Secret message or something. But that's kind of the Fun of all of this, I guess. And also, I think for people who are paying attention sometimes these clues that they're seeing are definitely real things.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

You know, there's a lot of, I think, institutional memory for people on Mystery Box type shows where they're really concerned about where it's going. But for me, a lot of what I love about this show is that aspect. But it's also other things about the show too, so it's fun to watch all of that.

[Adam Scott]

It's great. And just so everyone knows, we go through this show with a fine tooth comb to make sure that we're not leaking anything out that we don't want.

[Ben Stiller]

Nothing. Nothing at all. Deechen, thank you for joining us. You're in London, aren't you?

[Deechen Lachman]

Yes, I am. I'm sorry if I interrupted you earlier. I wasn't sure if that was the right time to step in.

[Adam Scott]

No, no, no, not at all.

[Ben Stiller]

But we'll just talk and talk and talk. You have to interrupt us if you ask me.

[Adam Scott]

Dichen, welcome to the podcast.

[Deechen Lachman]

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I've been enjoying listening.

[Ben Stiller]

So a lot of people know you for work you've done before severance. But for me, as a fan, it's always fun when I see a character from a show that I know the character from the show and I'm not that familiar with the actor, and then I hear them talk for real and they've got an accent from another country and I'm like, oh, my God, that's so cool. She's not American. It's such a ridiculous, simple thing. But you are so good with your American accent. Tell people where you're from and a little bit about where you come from.

[Deechen Lachman]

Yeah, well, I was born in Kathmandu and moved to Australia when I was about 7 years old and spent a lot of my, you know, teenage years there. And then when I was 23 years old, I moved to Los Angeles and now I'm in London, just, you know, working my way around the world.

[Ben Stiller]

Kathmandu to LA is a long way.

[Deechen Lachman]

It is. Even Adelaide to LA is a long way.

[Adam Scott]

Were your parents living in Kathmandu?

[Deechen Lachman]

Yes, they were. They were living in Kathmandu. I was born there in, you know, a very. Kathmandu in the 80s was not very developed and a lot of people lived like they lived hundreds of years ago. You know, we didn't have electricity half the week. I think the only movies we had access to were Superman, Supergirl, Police Academy and Hindi movies.

[Adam Scott]

Well, that's all you need.

[Deechen Lachman]

So it was. It was like another world.

[Ben Stiller]

Wow. Wow. And what made you want to come to America and be an actor?

[Deechen Lachman]

I was working in Australia, and at the time, there weren't a lot of opportunities there. And I knew that if I wanted to keep working, I'd have to sort of expand my horizons. And so I came to Los Angeles just like many young, aspiring actors do. And it was really exciting and I knew so little. I feel like if I knew how hard it was going to be, maybe I never would have done it. But that naivety was very helpful.

[Adam Scott]

Totally. That's how I feel too. Like, if I knew at 18, how difficult or 20 or whatever, how difficult it would be or how long it would take, I don't know if I would do it.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. It's interesting because I grew up in the business, so I saw it, but I still didn't realize all the things that you have to deal with. As, you know, Dietrichen. There's a lot of going out there, putting yourself out there and not getting the job, and you have to kind of just keep going and believe in yourself. And I imagine for you coming all that way, that was probably something you had to deal with.

[Deechen Lachman]

Yeah, I think. I mean, we all go through it. It's interesting, Ben, to hear you say that because someone who doesn't know you or hasn't had the chance to speak to you about it might assume that it was an easier path or something, but it never is. I think everyone's journey is up and down, and that's what makes it so beautiful, you know, because we get to have that contrast of the rejection and the highs of the winds. And everybody started somewhere.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. You're so great in the show, Deechen.

[Adam Scott]

Unbelievable.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. And obviously this episode is just incredibly special episode. And I remember we talked to Britt about her audition for the show, and similar to you, she sent in a self tape, which is, you know, at home, you just make a tape yourself of the scene and you send it in and you sent in just a really incredibly well done self tape of Ms. Casey. Can you tell me a little bit about how you put that together? Cause I remember watching it and just. It was stunning. You just seemed so otherworldly and it was so well produced and the lighting was amazing. And how did you do that?

[Deechen Lachman]

Thank you for noticing. Yeah, I mean, to go back to the whole journey of being an actor many years ago, I realized that so much of this business is out of our control. You know, it's not really a competition because it's just like there's just a person who's right for the part, and 99% of the time, it's not going to be you. And it's such a frustrating thing that, I mean, we all know what that feels like to have a million nos. And I think I got to a point where I wasn't even feeling like I was being able to be creative. I guess I just decided, like, okay, I can't control whether I get the job or not. But when things started moving to taping, which I would often push for, I was like, this is my opportunity to be creative. This is my opportunity to. You know, I learned how to use a camera. I learned, like, a very little bit about lighting. I got the best mic microphones I could. And I just decided that any tape I sent out, whether I got it or not, I just. I wanted it to be a really great quality product and represent my commitment to my work and my creativity, Especially when you get something so wild like this. When I got those sides, I had absolutely no context. So it was like, what is this woman saying? And why is she saying it like this? But it was an opportunity to be creative and get into my imagination. And Max, my husband, and I, we sort of do it for each other now. And I'll go handheld, I'll learn the lines for him, and we'll get the bounce boards out. And it's like we're working. It feels like we're working, which is, you know, sometimes you don't get to do that.

[Adam Scott]

And did you know right away from the very start that Ms. Casey was also Gemma, or was that. Did that come later?

[Deechen Lachman]

No. Ben and I got on a Skype call. Ben, do you remember you told me on the Skype call that Gemma was Ms. Casey? Yeah. I had no idea because I hadn't read anything.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah, I mean, it was obviously very early on, and, I mean, that concept at that time, we knew where it was going, but it was still, you know, a concept. We hadn't written all the scenes. This was, like, very early on. But watching you read Ms. Kasey, I was just like. I felt like there was. I can't even. Honestly. And this is no insult to other people who read for that role, but it's hard for me to remember other people who read for the role, because when I saw what you were doing, it's like, okay, that's the person for this role. And I want to ask you about this episode, because when you read it, this is the episode where we learned so much. What was your feeling when you first read it?

[Deechen Lachman]

I was like, wow. This is a lot of pressure. I'm gonna. I can't let anybody down. Well. Cause it's, you know.

[Adam Scott]

Sure.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Right.

[Ben Stiller]

I know. That's an honest answer.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah. It's daunting. I mean, the whole thing, but also.

[Deechen Lachman]

The buildup to Gemma, you know, and the audience getting to know her and everyone. Everyone seeing what, you know, Mark had that he lost. So when I read it, I was, like, extremely excited to be involved much more with you guys and to be able to collaborate with you all more. But I was also, like, don't mess this up.

[Ben Stiller]

Well, I was excited because I knew from working with you in season, first of all, even finding the look for Ms. Casey, I remember how proactive you were. And we were talking about this with Gwendolyn Christie, how an actor can really just take ownership of a role and come in with ideas. And you came in with so many ideas. I remember you had the Miss Casey wig.

[Deechen Lachman]

I did, yeah. Well, Ben was like, the hair. Like, he was concerned about my hair's hair.

[Adam Scott]

Surprise, surprise. Obsessed with hair.

[Ben Stiller]

Do you care about hair?

[Deechen Lachman]

But I totally get it. Cause it's, you know, it's like, it's such a. It's such a specific world, and, like, it really does matter on a show like this. Like most shows, like, it probably doesn't matter that much, but on this show, it is super important. So I bought all these different wigs, and then I was on set for something else, and I borrowed some of their wigs, and I took photos and I made a whole PDF just so, like, Ben could be like, is it brown hair? Is it red hair? Is it black hair? Is it like, what? What is it? And then you responded to that.

[Ben Stiller]

It was so great. No, she came in and she put the wig on and modeled the wig and said, what do you think of this? And it was like, oh, man, this person is just so into it. And I just really appreciated that. And then I remember we were shooting your scene in the hallway. I think it was 108, where Milchick sends you back down the hallway. And that's sort of this first hint that we really are feeling that there's something inside Ms. Casey, this sort of sadness.

[Adam Scott]

And, yeah, there's something. So. Because you could see how a character like that could be, like, one note or an inch deep in one way or the other, but your Ms. Casey is so deeply felt and such a whole person that you get the feeling that there is someone in there just aching to get out, like, always trying to find her spot. And it's so sad, but also just so interesting. How did you approach her in particular? Because there's something childlike about her, but it's more than that too.

[Deechen Lachman]

Yeah, I feel like she was curious, you know, she was. And also now in seven, you see that in those other rooms, she's isolated, basically with Dr. Maurer. And I think it worked out in a way because that curiosity, being with the group and how she so enjoyed being in that space with them. And I felt like her face like sort of sit differently to all the other characters. It was. It was this. This longing for connection. And I think, Ben, I don't know if you remember, but we were on a call. I think it was about my hair. But we also ended up talking about the character.

[Ben Stiller]

I don't think so. It must have been something else.

[Deechen Lachman]

But go ahead. I was like, she's like a doe, you know, So I sort of worked with that animal. And Ben, really, you helped me build this character. And Dan, you know, like, you guys led me through that.

[Adam Scott]

Right.

[Ben Stiller]

All right, it's time for us to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

You know, we've been working on the show for so long, it's nice to take a step back and reminisce on how the cast first learned about their roles. We're balancing so much when we're making it that we don't always get to hear what it was like for these actors to first step into these characters and to learn what their inspirations were, to find out what the clothes and voices were that helped them transform. I know I'm biased because Deechen's approach was rooted in hair, but I loved hearing about her process. And as she mentioned, this work can be daunting. I mean, it's a lot of pressure to create a character when you're becoming someone else. But there doesn't have to be a lot of pressure. When you're getting off your parents insurance, you don't have to worry about finding the perfect accent or picking the right wig for your next role. You just have to choose. State Farm Insurance. Your State Farm agent is here to help support you when it's time to get your own policy. And if things get complicated, State Farm.

[Ben Stiller]

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[Jessica Lee Gagne]

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[Kaylin Moore]

Are you someone who gets freaked out by the liminal office space in Severance? The seemingly infinite hallways, the nearly identical rooms, the sea of fluorescent lights? Well, did you know the design was inspired by a terrifying creepypasta known as the backrooms in episode 105 of the Heart Starts Pounding podcast? You can join me, Kaylin Moore, as I guide you through the legend of the backrooms. I also share times real people have gotten trapped in liminal spaces, like the man who entered a mall stairwell and couldn't find his way out for five days. These are the types of horrors, hauntings and mysteries I get into every week. So if you're someone who loves to follow your dark curiosity, come join our community and listen to Heart Starts Pounding on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Adam Scott]

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[Ben Stiller]

You talked about going from room to room in the episode, and we see Gemma down there and we see that she's being basically ushered into these different rooms where she's severed into a different Persona and something is done to her by Dr. Maurer in some different outfit and character disguise by the great Robbie Benson, who's one of my and why don't we listen to a clip from. When you're in the Christmas room with Dr. Maurer.

[Deechen Lachman]

How much longer do I have to do this?

[Robbie Benson]

I told you, you're done. But Christmas has a funny way of coming back around each year.

[Deechen Lachman]

It's always Christmas.

[Adam Scott]

Oh, man.

[Ben Stiller]

A holiday classic.

[Adam Scott]

That scene, it's so awful for her. It's just her entire life is Christmas with this dude. What a bummer.

[Ben Stiller]

I really have to say, the tension between the two of you, you know, he obviously has an attachment to his subject. And the way that you play those scenes together, it was just a very potent dynamic that was under the surface. And you had to go through so much in that episode because, you know, we learned that you're down there and you've been down there for a number of years, and obviously you're trying to get out, too. But how was it playing those scenes?

[Deechen Lachman]

I mean, it was incredible. And Jess was really. She really wanted to explore her being kind of like a defiant teenager, you know? And, I mean, she's such. She's so incredibly talented.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. Jessica's an amazing artist as a cinematographer and now as a director. And she was also shooting the episode. She was the DP on that episode. Was that an interesting process for you, working with her in both capacities?

[Deechen Lachman]

Yeah, it was great. Loved how loose she was with, like, oh, let's just do it this way. And she really knows how to just, like, push forward. And I think maybe it's from her experience working, like, a lot in the independent film space. Sometimes you can work with people who are very regimented within, like, a studio structure or whatever. But I. I never felt like that on this show ever. Like, there just seemed to be so much time to explore and experiment. And, Ben, obviously she's worked with you a number of times, and I think her directing style. I feel like she's learned a lot from you because she just really wanted to, like, you do try lots of different things.

[Ben Stiller]

I'd say it's the other way around, but that's.

[Deechen Lachman]

Oh, yeah, okay. Or the other way around.

[Adam Scott]

She taught you.

[Deechen Lachman]

She taught you.

[Ben Stiller]

The other aspect of the episode I want to ask both of you guys about this is that we get to see the meeting of Mark and Gemma, you know, juxtaposed with the captivity on the testing floor. We're seeing the beginning and development of Mark and Gemma's marriage and the things that, you know, happened in the beginning, the first blush of connecting, which. Why don't we take a look at that, too? The first time you guys meet.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

What.

[Adam Scott]

Do you got there? Sorry, what do you got there?

[Deechen Lachman]

Themes of religious conversion in Tolstoy's the Death of Evangelier.

[Adam Scott]

Oh, my God. Spoiler alert, please.

[Deechen Lachman]

What about you?

[Adam Scott]

Are you reading me? Well, yeah, this is a real treat. All quiet on the Western Blunt drug use by enlisted soldiers during World War I.

[Deechen Lachman]

Now stop.

[Adam Scott]

No, that's what it is.

[Deechen Lachman]

Kid's a genius. You should flunk every other child.

[Adam Scott]

I couldn't agree more. I'm sorry, who are you?

[Deechen Lachman]

Jama.

[Ben Stiller]

I thought you guys did a really good job of creating a very real relationship. How was it for you guys and Adam? I'm curious. Maybe I'll start asking you, how was it for you to create that relationship? And how did you guys go about that with Jessica?

[Adam Scott]

Well, it was really fun and really informative too, because it's such a huge part of Audi Mark's life, this loss. And up to this point it had just all been in my imagination, just trying to fill that in. So getting to actually build it with Dietjen and Jess was great. But what I love about it, what I loved about doing it is like other things on the show, like you were saying, we kind of found the tone and the characters together. And part of finding that together is we get micro specific about all of it. And we need to, because it's not the kind of writing. It's not like Dan writes in a way where it's like, well, I used to be a teacher and I'm not anymore because of this, this and this. It's not expo heavy dialogue. So we as a team want to build everything as specific and big and complete as possible and then kind of decide how much of it we're showing. And so this relationship, it was really important to build exactly what it was. And then in these scenes we got to see these nice little glimpses. And I think just building such a complete relationship in such a complete world, we could do these little flashes and get what felt like a complete picture.

[Ben Stiller]

You, Deechen, had to go through so much in terms of the miscarriage and incredibly emotional, sensitive stuff. And then also showing, you know, the great times in the marriage. And it was all shot within, I don't know, five days. How do you prepare as an actor to do that? Cause you did a great job with it.

[Deechen Lachman]

Oh, gosh, to me, it wasn't so difficult as much as it was, like exhilarating and fun. Ben, when you came, came that day or a couple of days actually, with that little camera, I don't know what.

[Ben Stiller]

It'S called yeah, the Bolex, a 16 millimeter.

[Deechen Lachman]

That was so much fun to just go and. And get random things. Like Adam, remember we had, like, little.

[Adam Scott]

A picnic.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah.

[Deechen Lachman]

We had a. I mean, just between setups, we would, like, run out with Ben, and Ben had the camera, and he was, like, on his knees in the mud, and I was like, oh, my God. Like, don't.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah. Well, it was like spring was just starting, and it was sunny and flowers were blooming, so we got a bunch of that stuff.

[Ben Stiller]

It was great. Yeah, Jessica, she sort of flipped the script on me and had me be the little second unit dp and she'd give me the Bolex to shoot you guys, you know, smelling flowers.

[Adam Scott]

It was kind of like Bendo, but with a 16 millimeter cap.

[Ben Stiller]

And more successful, I think, than Bendo. And a lot of it made it into the cut. I was really.

[Adam Scott]

I was like, well, yeah, and it looks great, too. Bendo did a really good job. I will say, because you won't do Chin, that watching you go through everything you had to go through for this episode, and just the parts I was in, because all the testing floor stuff, that's a whole other chapter that is unbelievable that you went through all of that. But the stuff we were doing, I felt like my job in that episode was just to support you and make sure you were as comfortable as possible because of all the emotional and physical strain you had to go through to kind of hit these. Because we're, like, encapsulating a period of years into one episode of tv. So you had to really hit these highs and lows. And sometimes within the span of a couple of hours, we're doing the miscarriage scene in the shower, and then we're downstairs doing something super happy together. And it was a lot. And you were just hitting bullseyes and nothing but, oh, you're so.

[Deechen Lachman]

I couldn't have done it without all of that incredible support. But it really was, like. It was extremely challenging. But I. I feel like it was the most fun I had, just because, like, those parts of the episode where it's less of a flashback, more going into the minds of these characters, it was just so much looser, you know, and free. And it was something that was just a little less, like, oppressive like that. Those hallways, which I don't know how you guys make so interesting to look at. It's incredible how beautiful the show is.

[Adam Scott]

Well, the testing floor hallways are oppressive and white, but different.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah, they are. That was our big new set for the season, really. And Jeremy Hindle and Jessica really got involved in that, and we knew we wanted to do something that wasn't. We didn't want to do a different color. We obviously thought about that, but we were thinking just, you know, what is the world down there? What's the texture? Is it. At one point we thought that might even be more dilapidated, but then it didn't make sense for really what they were doing down there. And then we came up with a scale that was a little bit bigger and different kinds of angles. But really, that's all credit to Jessica and to Jeremy. And I remember that set was there for a long time before we shot it, and we were looking forward to it.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

All right. We've been asking fans to call in with questions. We've been getting a lot of questions, and we got a few questions that we would like your help answering. Deechen. Okay.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Okay, here we go.

[Ben Stiller]

This hotline segment, by the way, is sponsored by Confluence by Atlassian. The connected workspace where teams can create, organize, and deliver work like never before. Set knowledge free with Confluence.

[Adam Scott]

Deechen. I'm so sorry. Ben just does that from time to time. He breaks into saying things are sponsored by other things.

[Ben Stiller]

And they are sponsoring us, though.

[Adam Scott]

They are, actually.

[Ben Stiller]

Okay.

[Adam Scott]

But he does do that.

[Ben Stiller]

I would probably say it if they weren't sponsoring us too.

[Adam Scott]

All right, let's get some hotline knowledge.

[Zack Cherry]

Hey, this is Zoe.

[Kaylin Moore]

So I was a freshman when season one came out, and now I'm a senior.

[Ben Stiller]

So I've been applying to colleges, and.

[Kaylin Moore]

It'S making me really wonder what kind.

[Adam Scott]

Of person applies to Gan's college.

[Kaylin Moore]

And here where Mark and Gemma taught, like, it looks pretty desolate, but maybe.

[Ben Stiller]

It'S got this really low acceptance rate.

[Adam Scott]

And is super exclusive.

[Kaylin Moore]

Should I apply?

[Ben Stiller]

Hmm, Interesting.

[Adam Scott]

It's a good question.

[Deechen Lachman]

I would say go for it.

[Adam Scott]

Sounds like Zoe was basing her question on previous sort of peeks into Gan's college, which is mostly at night when no one was there. I think in this episode in seven, we're seeing it as sort of this colorful, bustling school.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah, it's not super colorful. It's kind of muted colors.

[Adam Scott]

That's what I meant. Muted colors.

[Deechen Lachman]

Yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

I mean, but it's more colors than last time we saw it. Actually, the location is, it's Nassau Community College in Long island, and they have this really interesting kind of 70s concrete, kind of brutalist style architecture. It's pretty cool.

[Adam Scott]

It is cool. We spent a lot of time there.

[Ben Stiller]

Deeshan. Yeah. You were working on. You're Working on a short story analysis in that episode.

[Deechen Lachman]

Oh, when he comes into the office. Yeah, that's right. Hajimerat.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. And you have. That's when you come in with the ant farm. Yep.

[Adam Scott]

Which was.

[Deechen Lachman]

That was functioning, wasn't it? There were ants in there.

[Adam Scott]

There were ants in there.

[Deechen Lachman]

Yeah, there were ants in there.

[Adam Scott]

I loved shooting the first scene, our blood donation scene. That was super fun. The Lumen blood donation scene.

[Deechen Lachman]

Your beard was incredible.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah, that's.

[Deechen Lachman]

It was painstaking, right, to put that on?

[Adam Scott]

Because beards are really difficult, and Judy Chinn is unbelievable. And she was able to create a beard that looks real highly uncomfortable to have on your face, but looks real even.

[Deechen Lachman]

Like not just on the film, like in person. I actually thought that was your beard.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah. Judy is the best.

[Deechen Lachman]

Judy did such an amazing, amazing job.

[Ben Stiller]

Did she do your beard today? Cause it looks amazing.

[Adam Scott]

She did. Thank you. Judy, could you come just do a touch up real quick.

[Ben Stiller]

Does it for you every day.

[Adam Scott]

Okay, we got one more hotline question for you.

[Ben Stiller]

Hi, my name's Grace.

[Deechen Lachman]

My question is, if your innie had.

[Ben Stiller]

A wellness session with Ms. Casey, what.

[Deechen Lachman]

Facts would you want them to know about your Audi?

[Ben Stiller]

Thanks.

[Deechen Lachman]

Oh, my gosh. If my innie. I had to process this. If my innie was having a session. But isn't my any. I've got so many innies. Right.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah. What would you. What would you want one of your innies to know about you teaching?

[Deechen Lachman]

All right, I guess, like, what I was allergic to, that would be important because that's practical.

[Adam Scott]

That's sensible.

[Deechen Lachman]

It's practical because in England, every time you go to a restaurant, they're like, any allergies?

[Adam Scott]

You know, it's really, really funny that waiters love is if you're at a seafood restaurant and they ask that question, you say, I'm actually allergic to seafood. Or if it's a hamburger restaurant, you say you're allergic to hamburgers. They love it.

[Deechen Lachman]

Oh, my gosh.

[Adam Scott]

Thank you to Zoe. Thank you to Grace for calling in. And remember, if you want to call the post box for Lumen Industries severed floor, you can call 212-830-3816.

[Ben Stiller]

Deechen, thanks for joining us. It's good to see you, Deechen.

[Deechen Lachman]

Thank you for having me. Congratulations, guys. An amazing season two.

[Adam Scott]

Congratulations to you. Unbelievable work. All right, let's break down the episode. A lot of questions start getting answered. Should we listen to our first peek into the testing floor?

[Ben Stiller]

Yes.

[Deechen Lachman]

You've eaten today, honey? Yes. Done your reading? 50 pages, calisthenics yes.

[Zack Cherry]

If you were caught in a mudslide.

[Deechen Lachman]

Would you be more afraid of suffocating or drowning? Drowning.

[Ben Stiller]

If you were caught in a mudslide, Adam.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

What would you be more afraid of?

[Adam Scott]

Well, I feel like drowning and suffocating are one and the same.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. I feel like I would be afraid of choking on the mud.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

So more like that would be suffocating.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah. I guess I would first just say neither. Sounds great.

[Ben Stiller]

No.

[Adam Scott]

But if Sandra Bernhard was asking me that question, I'd be like, I don't know. What do you think? Because she's so fun.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah.

[Adam Scott]

And Sandra Bernhardt's character is named Cecily.

[Ben Stiller]

Yes, Cecily. Let's talk about Sandra Bernhardt. She is so. I've been a fan of hers since she kind of came on the scene.

[Adam Scott]

Same.

[Ben Stiller]

And she was amazing in King of Comedy.

[Adam Scott]

Oh, my God.

[Ben Stiller]

She had this breakout performance in this Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese movie, which is one of my favorite.

[Adam Scott]

Me, too.

[Ben Stiller]

Of the De Niro, Scorsese.

[Adam Scott]

Me too.

[Ben Stiller]

Oeuvre. Me too. And she is just a brilliant standup comedian, and I have known her over the years a little bit, and it was so fun to see her in this role because she is so funny and she can be so crazy and out there, and it's just very unique energy. But it's always fun to see somebody like that when they're putting a lid on it. And there's just so much going on behind her eyes.

[Adam Scott]

So much going on with Sandra in this role. It's so great.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. So it was really fun to really get to spend some time with her when she was working on the show. And that scene is. Yeah. This setting up this world of the testing floor, this new environment. Obviously, anytime we have a new space on the show, new characters, it's always something we're kind of trepidatiously going into and wanting to figure out how to make it feel right with the tone of the show.

[Adam Scott]

And you're worried about timing, I'm sure, as well. Like, when in the season you're exposing the audience to all of these answers.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. I think overall, this episode there was, for us, a feeling of, like, okay, we know that we have to tell this part of the story, and we want to try to do it in a way that feels organic and exciting, but it's always, like, a little bit, you know, when you step off of the severed floor, it's always a little scary.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah, for sure.

[Ben Stiller]

But I thought Dietchen and Sandra were so great together. And of course, I Just have to say Robbie Benson, who plays Dr. Maurer. Yes. So good. So good in the show. I've been a fan of Robbie's also for a long, long time. He's been an actor and a director and writer and he was very famous as a young man making in the 70s. And he made a movie called One on One, which is about a young kid who gets recruited to a college to play basketball and gets cut from the team and has to work his way back onto the team. That's one of my favorite movies of all time that he wrote.

[Adam Scott]

Wow.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. And starred in. And he's got one of the most incredible voices.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah, he does.

[Ben Stiller]

He's the Beast.

[Adam Scott]

He's the Beast. That's right.

[Deechen Lachman]

Yes.

[Ben Stiller]

He's the voice of the Beast. And Beauty and the Beast. He's a great director.

[Adam Scott]

Directed many episodes of Friends.

[Ben Stiller]

Yes. Yeah. And then on top of that, just really the sweetest person I've ever worked with.

[Adam Scott]

Really nice guy.

[Ben Stiller]

And it's been a long process making this show. The second season, and the first thing we shot with Robbie was in episode five and then episode seven. And it was just over the course of a long time between those two episodes. It was like months and months. And the strike happened. So he was always connected and always there and always engaged. And I love his interrogation scene with Gemma.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

Where he's asking her what she remembers and what she doesn't remember.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah.

[Robbie Benson]

How many rooms did you visit today?

[Deechen Lachman]

6.

[Robbie Benson]

The Billings Room, the Lucknow Room, St Pierre, Karen's Zurich, and the Wellington room. The Wellington. Excellent. And what happened in the room you remember? Nothing.

[Deechen Lachman]

Nothing.

[Ben Stiller]

His voice is both so soothing and also so scary.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

At the same time, I love seeing.

[Adam Scott]

His attachment to Gemma grow over these scenes and shift depending on which version of her he's getting. Like, in some, he feels like he can be more open about his feelings for her, like in the Christmas scene, for instance. And in some, he feels he needs to be more of an authority figure. He's yearning for something with her that is deeply unhealthy, but also not easy to put your finger on what it is he wants from her.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah.

[Adam Scott]

Scary.

[Ben Stiller]

And the looks he has in the episode are just. I mean, the flight attendant looks like. I don't know. That just gets me. And then there's the trainer, the physical trainer that when we see him in the room with Drummond, where they're watching, and he's obviously in some sort of like,'70s track suit, and he looks like he's just come out of. I don't Know, like the movie Munich or something.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah. Or rollerball or something.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. And he has these incredible piercing blue eyes.

[Adam Scott]

Yes.

[Ben Stiller]

Let's take a listen to the first time we see him on the testing floor. Cause we get a little glimpse of him, but we don't get to see his face in episode five. But on the testing floor, the first time we meet him.

[Adam Scott]

Still a total babe.

[Robbie Benson]

There she is.

[Deechen Lachman]

Could I please get a break? Just for a little while?

[Robbie Benson]

But it's been six weeks.

[Ben Stiller]

I was just here.

[Robbie Benson]

I know. Nobody likes the dentist. I should have been an accountant, like my mom wondered. Please, have a seat.

[Adam Scott]

Oh, my God.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. Here we see him as a dentist who obviously is a fan of Gordon Lightfoot.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah. Humming that song.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. One of my favorite songs of all time.

[Adam Scott]

Is it?

[Ben Stiller]

Yes. I'm a big Gordon Lightfoot fan. And then we get to also see in this episode, when we come down through that center post of the MDR cubicle and come out, follow the wires, this crazy shot that. That Jessica designed and worked on for a long time. And we see that he says the severance barrier is holding.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah. That's super interesting.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. And we see the names of these rooms, like Allentown, Cairns, Drainsville.

[Adam Scott]

And these are names we've been seeing over the course of the last season and a half. Pop up on the computers.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. On the Rolodex for the file names, which I don't know. I wonder if anybody watching the show noticed that, do you think?

[Adam Scott]

I don't know. That's a good question.

[Ben Stiller]

I'm gonna guess that I don't know that the people who watch our show did notice that. Maybe. Anyway.

[Adam Scott]

So Gemma tries to escape.

[Ben Stiller]

Yes.

[Deechen Lachman]

I want to go home.

[Robbie Benson]

Your husband remarried last year and he has a daughter now.

[Deechen Lachman]

I don't believe you.

[Robbie Benson]

You've been gone a long time, Gemma. He's moved on. Maybe you've moved on, too. In one of the rooms. What do you think? Do you feel yourself gravitating towards one room or another? Maybe you felt things behind those doors you never thought with Mark.

[Ben Stiller]

Maybe.

[Robbie Benson]

I've seen it. The death of Ivan Ilyich. Let me guess. He dies at the end.

[Ben Stiller]

This is a great sequence that Jessica did in one shot. Yeah. After she knocks Maurer on the head. And then she goes out into the hallway. And this is again, this question of what happens when somebody tries to leave or escape. And the ultimate thing that's keeping her there is that she's gonna sever into Ms. Casey.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah. Like she's home. Free, essentially. And then she turns into Ms. Casey.

[Ben Stiller]

And I think Jessica just did such an elegant job with that shot when she comes out into the hallway, which is basically one shot that kind of takes her through the hallway in the dark. And it was just really beautifully done shot that Jessica did on a dolly. It's not a Steadicam shot and it's a pretty long involved shot that was a real dance between her and Deechin.

[Adam Scott]

And also Teddy's music in here is perfect and really complements the shot.

[Ben Stiller]

And then that moment too, when she comes back down and she just has this emotional moment in the elevator where she's been kind of foiled again. And you just see Sandra's hand come into the frame and it's kind of almost in a way sympathetic because it's not like she's forcing her there with any physical way. It's just sort of like this is the reality that she's stuck with.

[Adam Scott]

It's really rough. And the relationship between Dietchen and Sandra is interesting too, because like you said, there is like some sympathy there. There is. They know each other, but ultimately Sandra is her captor.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. All right, we're going to take a quick break and then I'll be back to talk with the director of this episode, Jessica Lee Gagne. The MDR team continues to search for answers as they try to piece together memories from the overtime contingency. But luckily you don't have to take a mind erasing elevator to work every day. So your workplace productivity can be much simpler with Confluence by Atlassian Confidence Confluence is the connected workspace where teams can collaborate and create like never before, where teams have easy access to the relevant pages and resources their projects call for while discovering important context they didn't even know they needed a space where AI streamlines the things that normally eat up their time, letting teams generate, organize and deliver work faster. In fact, with Confluence, teams can see a 5.2% average boost in productivity in one year. So goodbye severed workplace alienation. Hello teamwork with Confluence. Set knowledge free with Confluence. Learn more at atlassian.com confluence that's a T L a-s s I-a n.com c o n Fluence this message is brought to you by Apple Pay. We all know that our credit card numbers can be stolen. But you know what's harder to steal?

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Your face with Apple Pay, your purchases.

[Ben Stiller]

Are authenticated by you thanks to Face id. Just double click smile and tap. With each tap your card number and your purchases stay secured. Pay the Apple way with your compatible device anywhere. Contactless payment is accepted. Apple Pay is a service provided by Apple Payment Services, llc, a subsidiary of Apple Inc. Any card used in Apple Pay is offered by the card issuer.

[Unknown]

I've been working with a nurse dietitian for the last six months and it's been life changing. I've lost weight, healed my relationship with food, and have way more energy.

[Zack Cherry]

Working with a dietitian online to create.

[Unknown]

A personalized nutrition plan was so easy, thanks to Nourish. The best part, I paid $0 out of pocket. Because Nourish accepts hundreds of insurance plans, 94% of patients pay $0 out of pocket. Find your [e-mail] that's usenourish.com.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

This is like. It feels like we're filming right now. Yeah, it looks like your, your zoom looks like it's lit.

[Zack Cherry]

It looks like it's lit by me.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Yeah, it looks like it's lit by you. It's very.

[Zack Cherry]

Yeah, it's like mole beams.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Yeah, mole beams, which you love. Tell people what a mole beam is.

[Zack Cherry]

A mole beam is just, it's a type of light we use in film for lighting. It's tungsten, so it's very warm and it's, to me, it's the light that most looks like the real sun. So I love using it because it looks real.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Right. And you use them actually a lot in episode seven. But first of all, I just want to say I'm thrilled to be joined by the director of this episode, the brilliant Jessica Lee Gagne. Thank you for being here, Jessica.

[Zack Cherry]

Oh, thanks, Ben.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

You and I have worked together for a while, but just to let people know, you've been the cinematographer on Severance from the beginning and have shot the majority of the episodes. And I also want to talk a little bit about, you know, how you approached the episode as a director or first time director. But maybe we should talk first about how we started working together. Just because we've been working together for about. Is it coming up on like eight or nine years now? Eight years maybe.

[Zack Cherry]

I think it's at least seven. We're at seven.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Everything all of a sudden becomes 10 years very quickly these days.

[Zack Cherry]

But I see everything in cycles of seven years though.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Right, right. Well, then we're at the end of our first seven year cycle. But we met when I was directing Escape at Dannemora, which was a limited series that I was looking for a cinematographer for and happened upon your work in a really wonderful movie called Sweet Virginia that was a sort of noir Thriller that took place in the Pacific Northwest and reached out to you and we met up and I feel like for me it was fateful because we started working together a lot and, you know, we had a real creative bond. What did you think when we first started talking about doing Escape at Dannemara?

[Zack Cherry]

You know, I don't know if I ever told you this, but I. You know, you speak about fate, and I definitely believe in certain things being timed and. And faithful. But when I got the email from the producer about this, I cried because I knew it was gonna happen. And I like the moment I read the email. It's like my life kind of like flashed before me and I was like, this is going to be amazing.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Well, this is a whole other thing about you that I don't know how much we want to get into it, but you are very perceptive to the point of you have, I think, a connection with sort of other vibes that are beyond the literal. And in our day to day life, you feel sense.

[Zack Cherry]

Yeah, yeah. And it's weird because it relates to Seven a little bit. And, you know, people ask me, why Seven? And to me right now I think it's like seven found me in a way. And I feel like that about severance. Like, I think severance found you and it found Dan and it found the right people to make it. And this weird. Like, it's this weird force that moves at its own pace.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Yeah, well, when we started working together, we. We hadn't known each other at all and delved into this eight hour limited series. And I was taken with your work because it felt very filmic and you're growing up in Montreal and watching movies. You worked at your dad's video store. I'm wondering what you watched growing up that inspired you.

[Zack Cherry]

I watched so many different things. And I did work for my father in his video stores, plural. He had many of them. And I used to actually work with him sometimes in the summers and travel with him in his truck because he was also a distributor. So he would bring movies to like small grocery stores or little stores in little towns, and we would go in there and switch up their vhs, bring them the new stuff and crazy, interesting little life journey there, but just already.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

It'S a little anachronistic because, you know, you're of an age when you were a kid that people were switching over.

[Ben Stiller]

To at least to DVDs.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

At that point.

[Zack Cherry]

I saw the transition from VHS to dvd. I really lived that and I saw, you know, how that impacted that industry. But you Know, one thing that's really interesting that I see intergenerationally in my family between my father and I, is here I am now shooting for Apple and Netflix or whatever, you know, all of these streaming services. And my father doesn't have any of these services and is still, I think, you know, feels how they impacted his business. And I'm kind of like, going into that next generation, which is interesting. That always has stayed with me.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Did he make a conscious choice to keep the video store open in the face of the changing world?

[Zack Cherry]

It survived because of the culture of Quebec, in a way. And I started a documentary that I never finished, but maybe one day I'll finish it about these last video stores, because I believe they were probably some of the last video stores in the world, or at least in North America. And they survived because they were in regional areas. And in Quebec, it took a long time before, like, Netflix really introduced French content or those streaming services did that. And there's also regions that Internet is actually really expensive, and it is the way that people get together is going to the video store and watching movies together. So for a long time in those regions, it was. I mean, I think the stores closed, like, one or two years ago now. The last one, really, but they were still functioning.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

That's a long time to keep going in this day and age. Yeah, but would you take movies off the shelf and go home and watch.

[Zack Cherry]

Them all the time? I always had, like, a box of VHS at my house. And some mornings before school, I would start a movie, and then I'd come back after school and I'd finish the movie because I wouldn't have time in the morning to watch the whole thing. And, like, my dad would bring us to the movies several times a week when we were kids, and we're watching American movies mostly. Like, I grew up watching American films even more than French Canadian films. And it's when I started going to school in film production, that's where I really got into more international filmmaking. And my mom kind of also pushed me into that because she introduced me to, like, foreign language films and things like that.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

And who were the filmmakers that you loved that made you say, I want to do this?

[Zack Cherry]

Well, the first film that made me realize what filmmaking could be, I think, was City of God by Fernando Maraes. That movie, it's like, it blew my mind. Like, I loved American films growing up and was, you know, watching things like Little Shop of Horrors and all those things. But when I saw City of God, I was like, okay, this is like you can create something on a whole other level. And that really fascinated me. But then I went through several phases, and I think the films that brought us together are the ones that really kind of define the aesthetic that I gravitate to the most. And those are those, like, American 70s pictures, you know, that we bonded over Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon. And for me, Klute is always a big one. I think any cinematographer tends to gravitate towards that film because to me, it's almost like cinematography perfection for me. Like, I gravitate towards a heightened realism style. And I think that's what spoke to you a little bit. It's a very gritty style, but at the same time, it's really aesthetic and it's really specific, which I think, you know, resonated with you. It's like. It's intentional.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

And I feel like when we went from Dannemora, which was very much 70s inspired for the vibe of it, even though it took place in present day, when we went into Severance, there was also kind of a similar influence that was from a very different genre. And I feel like. I don't even remember how we started to develop this look, but we'd already worked together, so we kind of rolled into it. And I know with you it's always imagery is like a big part of it and saying, hey, check out this photographer. Let's look at these pictures. Let's maybe look at this movie. Or let's look at this movie you've never heard of. I remember when we did Dannemora, you showed me Tarkovsky's movie Stalker, and it blew my mind. And of course, I'd heard of Tarkovsky.

[Ben Stiller]

But I'd never watched.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

And you opened me up to that.

[Zack Cherry]

That was fun, because I feel like when you see these things for the first time, it's magical, the experience of seeing something like Stalker. And I do work with a lot of images, so my intention, usually with directors, is to just make sure we're speaking the same language. So the easiest way to do that is photography and references. And photography is very fast. And I can just make sure, okay, this we like. We're okay, great. This, you like this. Okay, great. I know I can go there. And to me, the most important thing is that when we're on set, you don't have to stress about the cinematography that you can, like, let go. And, you know, I always say that you kind of could be your own cinematographer, so I. But I'm very, very serious about that. And I heard that in six, you're talking about you and the camera falling.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

When I fell over, yeah, that was your fault because you encouraged me to operate the camera.

[Zack Cherry]

I just think you're. You're a great operator. Not when you have to do, like, really complicated camera operating, but maybe the air mattress threw you off.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Anyway, you're being so much nicer to me on this podcast than you are in real life. About my outfit.

[Zack Cherry]

Here's the thing. We can also. Well, we can also talk about how focused I am on set, and I'm so curious to hear, like, an actor's perspective also about how I get really in a flow state and in tunnel vision, and sometimes it kind of gets the best of me. But I learned a lot throughout this process.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting on episode seven, which we can get into talking about, you know, you also acted as your own cinematographer. And how did that go for you? Because I felt from my perspective, watching you do your thing, it sort of, like, was sort of seamless in that it was just sort of an extension of you sort of being able to express what you want to express.

[Zack Cherry]

So I DP'd the innie part of the episode.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

You brought in Max Goldman for the film portion of the Gemma and Mark story.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah.

[Zack Cherry]

I think I have to just go back to the decision of shooting my own episode. Like, what. Why did I allow myself to do that? A lot of people asked me, are you sure you can handle this? It's the first time you're directing. Directing. Do you actually really want to shoot it? I knew where it would become a problem, and that was going to be these flashbacks. I needed someone else. And it was also interesting to work with someone who had a new eye as well, because it's a new world. So all of that, I thought, made a lot of sense. And working with Max was great, but working with myself was very weird. I did not understand what it really meant. But there was this one moment on set, and I had this feeling of everything's moving so fast. Everything's happening really, really fast, and I don't feel like I can breathe. And. And I realized at that moment, I was standing in Gemma's suite, and I realized that conversation that happens between a cinematographer and a director wasn't happening for me. And that kind of was giving me anxiety. At one point, I looked at Sam Evoy, our script supervisor, and I'm like, sam, I'm gonna talk to you like you're my cinematographer. I'm sorry. I just. I need that time because I needed to Breathe. And I needed to know that, like, that it was okay, you know, because that relationship is important.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Right. It is very lonely directing, I find, because ultimately, it's a subjective choice that you're making, and you can look around to everybody, but at the end of the day, it's your choice. And, you know, I found working with you, you always gave me a lot of confidence as a director to take a chance. But you didn't have that for yourself. Except, you know, every once in a while I'd pop over, but you had me shooting second unit, which I was very.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah.

[Zack Cherry]

And those shots came in handy, like, they saved us the Bolex.

[Ben Stiller]

But that was.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

What was your idea in terms of just the shooting on film for the flashbacks, which is something we hadn't done before on the show. What was your thinking on that?

[Zack Cherry]

Well, the thought about shooting it on film, to me, it's funny because originally I am the cinematographer of this show. And, you know, when it comes to, like, choosing cameras and lenses, I'm like a huge. I mean, I'm a huge part of that process. You know, I'll show you different things, and then I'll see how you react from them. And then ultimately we're like, making this decision. But we had chosen not to shoot on film. And I don't know if you remember, I was always adamant that I never thought severance should be shot on film.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

I wanted to shoot on film.

[Zack Cherry]

Yeah. I mean, so many directors want to shoot on film. I understand that. And so many DPs do as well. But then when this idea of flashbacks came up, I was like, oh, crap. I'm the one who has to bring up the fact that I think this should be shot on film. Now I get to be like, that person. But there's. There's, you know, I don't like in post, adding a look to something to make it look like a flashback. I was like, what's the most natural and simple way to do this? And basically, shooting on film evokes nostalgia right away now for. For us and for where we are in society now. So I was like, well, this is the simple answer. Let's try and do this. And then we ended up doing it.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

And by the way, the house. Can we talk about the house? The house was the house that Jessica was renting in Nyack, New York, while she was making severance, that Jeremy Hindle, our production designer, and you decided, oh, what about your house?

[Zack Cherry]

To shoot pajamas doing what? People say you never. You know, any filmmaker will say, no one will Ever get to shoot in my house. You don't let anyone touch your house.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Of course, because it's people carrying equipment and sitting down and crews, you know, I mean, everybody tries their best, but it's. You don't want to do that.

[Zack Cherry]

But this house was made for it. And I say, do you know about how it happened originally? Like, I was describing what I thought this place, I thought it was an apartment at first. I was like, oh, I think they should live like in an apartment with moldings and there's libraries and that's an old place. And it has like, the time is like on the walls. And I'm talking about this space. And Jeremy had been to the house I was living in, which is an amazing, beautiful home. I was renting it. And he was like, you realize, Jessica, we're going to be shooting this in your house. And I was like, oh, I had never thought about it. I just was speechless for like a minute. Like, oh, my God, he's right. We're shooting this in this house.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Yeah, it's pretty amazing because it was also at the very end of our shoot, I think we had a. Well, it was like 186 day shoot this season, and it was at the very end and spring was coming and, you know, the leaves were on the trees and intentionally, it's one of the only scenes you'll see in the show that has green trees in it because it's a different time. And it was just the feeling was it was a stripped down crew to a certain amount. And it was just a different approach for that week of shooting. And you just made, I thought, some really amazing, beautiful choices in that house. Those scenes in the kitchen or her sitting alone, or Adam with the crib, you know, trying to break the crib down, or the scene in the bathroom where she's going through that really tough time was just so sensitively and beautifully shot and felt to me like moments from like. Could be from like a Bergman film or something like that. I mean, it had that. That kind of feeling of that starkness and that beauty and gives it this unique quality that was very important because this is the only time we're ever really seeing Mark and Gemma's relationship in the past.

[Zack Cherry]

Yeah. And the show, I feel. I mean, you tell me if you feel this way, but I feel like we are seeing this show through the perspective or the way Mark's character views life is like the visual tone of this show. And in the timeline where we are when we're in this story, we're Living it with him in. In a way, now we're in season two. What's amazing is we get to, you know, go out broader and we see other people's perspective, but it does kind of taint the whole show. And this was a moment where it's like, okay, this is before the decision to sever. So this is life before. What did life feel like? How do we evoke that? There were so many things. Every department brought something special where it's like just the plants, the colors, the lighting, everything was. Was tweaked in a different world. And we introduced things that we had never really done in severance, but that was intentional and the meaning was just to evoke a completely different feeling.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

And a different time. You know, I also thought, you know, just in terms of visual storytelling, you know, how you blocked and came up with even the scene where Mark's sitting alone and the police come up. You know, what a tough scene to have to figure out how to shoot. Because it's a scene we've seen a million times in movies and TV shows and not have it seem cheesy or cliche. And the way that you did it with no dialogue, just seeing the police taking their hats off. Well, you just, you know, and I love that dissolve as he turns away. You know, there's outline of Mark's head and you see the hallway and elevator with Gemma in it.

[Zack Cherry]

Yeah, the transitions were to kind of evoke sometimes like transitioning from an emotional state to another. Sometimes the emotional states match and sometimes they don't, you know, depending on the transition. But this specifically for both of them, there's this like heart dropping knowingness that happens for both of them in different. They're in different timelines, but they're shown at the same time.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

That, to me, really. That really connected them though. What you did was they're in different timelines. But the whole idea in the episode is that you're watching, you know, Mark journeying and Gemma is having these moments and these flashes and thinking, you know, about Mark, but you're connecting them visually even though they're both separate. So it doesn't feel like a flashback per se. It feels like we're connecting both of them as people emotionally.

[Zack Cherry]

Yeah, there's a lot to say about that and about how we view life depending on the things that happen to us and how we choose to see things. And I think that this episode, for me, one of the reasons it found me is because I love all of these crazy things about consciousness and time and space. I'M a sucker for this stuff. And I was like, oh, I get to explore this in a cinematic language. And that. That, to me, was like. I was like a kid in the candy store, being able to do that because we have these three different timelines. And there was this idea of a whirlwind of things just all happening all at once. And I don't actually believe in the concept of time. I use it as a word in the English language. But to me, it's not really. It's relevant in my personal experience and your personal experience, but you can see above it and this episode, it showcases that. That everything is happening kind of all at once. So we are constantly affected by everything. And in this moment, they join at the end of the episode in that emotion, in that vibration, and you see them move through space in this, like, opposite way, but they're feeling the same feeling of not of having lost each other. Like, I sometimes would know things like that. But then also, some of this was, like, purely intuitive. And I feel like, as filmmakers, that's what happens, right? You just try and follow your intuition and what feels right. Yeah, because it got really technical and that. That was always one of my fears as a director, that I would not be a good director because I would be the technical one. You know, it was something that was in my head for a long time, and I feared this. But then doing this episode, at first I didn't think it was going to be as emotional as it was, and the writing kept getting more and more sensitive and more and more emotional, and I just stuck with it, you know, even though I was really afraid of it, but I was actually able to go there, which surprised me. And I feel like that technical and emotional aspect together is also what make seven strong.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's a combination of these visuals that are very technically, you know, kind of crazy to pull off. And also just this pure, simple emotion. The shot going down through the center console down to the testing floor, that was one of your little sort of side projects.

[Ben Stiller]

Scott McGuire, as you call Scott.

[Zack Cherry]

Yeah, it was like. Like Scott McGuire side project.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Scott McGuire is one of our camera operators, a great camera operator.

[Zack Cherry]

Yeah. And, I mean, everyone in the camera department participated in this shot in their own way, you know, like, Mike Guthrie is always a big part of, like, technical development stuff with us as well. He was the AC on the other camera. But can I just say that I.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Feel like it was very important for you on that shot to start off of Gemma and start to go down, which was a crazy shot. I mean, we could get into the rain on Mark.

[Zack Cherry]

I mean, shout out to Adam for that, though, because, like, we were talking about, like, really technical things and emotional things at the same time. Those two scenes were very strange to put back to back. You know, the very sensitive scene about this miscarriage, and then going into this scene in mdr, and I remember there was, like, questioning about that. Like, is that the right thing to do? But in my mind, it's like, that's life. You are sometimes living a moment in your life, and there's a part of you that's reliving a very traumatic experience at the same time.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Yeah. And so all of a sudden, we're in this moment. But what you did visually was that, you know, you have the. The shower water coming down on her and Mark. And then we transition into Mark and MDR back from the scene from season one to sort of connect that, you know, those two thoughts. And what.

[Ben Stiller]

What you did was you had the.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Rain coming down, or I call it the rain, the shower water. And then you literally had a shower water set up in mdr. Because you and I think the show. We've always been focused on not wanting to do CG when we don't have to do CG stuff. And you wanted to do the shot going down the center console for real. So that's a real shot. That's not like a cg, you know, wires and vortex, which was really crazy. But you had the film running backwards on Adam. So when you get into mdr, the rain is going up and he's getting dry, which is just, like, insane.

[Zack Cherry]

I had to explain that to Adam, and I think there's probably, like, a point where Adam started, like, I'm okay. Like, he had to let go of the technical thing and do his own thing, I think, because it was so I'm like, at the beginning of the shot, you are in mdr, and then you have to imagine that you end up in the shower with Gemma. But we're going to play it back in reverse in the edit. And then there's, like, rain and a bolt arm and all these things.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Reverse acting is hard for actors because you're asking somebody to imagine doing something backwards and you understand theoretically what it is. But it's really, I think, hard to, like, for your mind to compute it.

[Zack Cherry]

Yeah. I felt bad almost asking Adam to do that. There was a part of me that was like, why? Why are you doing this? This is horrible to ask him.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

He loves to do stuff. Like, he's like the most technical actor I know. I mean, he's so good at that stuff, though, isn't.

[Zack Cherry]

Well, thank God. No, but thank God for him for that. Because I feel like both of them were like, amazing technical actors, Dietzhan and Adam. And I feel like for this episode, you needed that. You needed people who were like, I'm in it. Let's do it. I've got this. I can hit that. I can be there and then still perform at the same time. So it was quite challenging. But they both, I think, showed up brilliantly. And then being able to do these flashbacks, these memories, to me, I just want it to be as simple as possible to just, like, let the story. The story tells itself. You just didn't want the technicality to get in the way of that part of the filmmaking. So we really stripped it down. Honestly, if you look at it, it's shot, counter shot. I wanted it to be really simple because of all the technical stuff we were doing.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Right. Okay. I want to talk about the testing floor. Because the testing floor was a new environment and we knew that this was a big thing because we were going to finally go off of Severed Floor.

[Zack Cherry]

Yeah.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

What was important to you about. About it for the episode?

[Zack Cherry]

So we were questioning a lot at the beginning, should we do something very new, something very different, or should it still be in the aesthetic of Lumen? And we were going down the route of keeping it in the Lumen aesthetic. And I think the only thing I knew very clearly, which was very much like a cinematograph photographer thing, I knew I wanted it to be lit because the end sequence of her running away, I knew that I wanted it to be lit by these. This type of lighting.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

The floor lighting. The floor. The floor lighting. Because we'd done the sort of energy saver lighting on the top lights. But this floor lighting that you came up with is so great because it's just a totally different thing. And the way you use it in that shot where you see the light, you hear the footsteps, but you don't see the person is very specific and I think really cool.

[Zack Cherry]

Yeah. So that kind of like inched it in a direction. But then we wanted to do a set that was very confusing in its own way. And we had a very new kind of language. And we went with these diagonals and triangles, which is interesting, you know, the triangle of Helle, Gemma and Mark. But one thing that was a total synchronicity that we found out later with this set. And I think Jeremy and I, our minds were blown with this And Severance is a show that has been blessed with many, many synchronicities. But when we went back to that college, Gan's College, which is Nassau Community College in New York, and when we went back there, we had to find an office. And then when we went to look at the offices that were available there in this, like big tower, we take the elevator and the doors open to this floor. And this was after we knew we wanted to do a triangular set. But as soon as the doors open, Jeremy and I walk in and we have this moment where we look at each other and we're speechless. Again, all the angles were triangular in this building. So Gemma's office. You, you know, you'd have to. I tried to show it in that one or shot of him coming out of the elevator, but it was very, very challenging optically to see it. But those hallways are all based on a triangle form. That's when we kind of know, like, things are done right, you know. And I think Jeremy's great at following his intuition and just seeing where things go. So he's, he's very open, kind of like you. You guys both have a very similar process with that where you're just open minded. For me, it's been a big lesson on sabrent and working with you in general is your open mindedness to seeing how things can move with their own force.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Yeah, I just would say for me on my end that I feel the same thing with you that you have opened up for me too creatively. The sort of the willingness to take a chance with something and to go with your intuition for me is something that I've gotten from working with you.

[Zack Cherry]

I guess I'm not afraid of doing bold, bold, bold things for sure. But when I don't have to own them, it's a lot easier, you know. And like the biggest fear of directing is like, well, you have to own these choices. So it's very easy to like comment on other directors as a cinematographer, as a critic, you know, but like the act of directing and putting something out in the world that you're signing is very courageous, I find. And it's, I think is like the most stressful thing about it. I have to learn to be okay with the fact that not everyone likes everything and that's fine. But it definitely had been blocking me for a long time. And I feel like to get to that level of craftsmanship, you do have to be open to go there.

[Ben Stiller]

Right.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

So how was the experience of directing for you coming out of it? And will you ever Be a cinematographer again or you now just a director.

[Zack Cherry]

The experience was very scary. I didn't really want to do it at first. You know, it's funny because you had asked me years ago, like, hey, you know, would you ever direct? And I, I was like, no, I would not do that. And then in my mind I was like, but I feel like I'd be interested in like something kind of like Nolan esque, you know, I don't know why, like that, if I were to direct. And then this came around and I realized that there would be no better opportunity for me to try this. And I went through a lot of personal experiences and personal growth and I realized that, like, I, I needed to face this fear of mine and there was just not a better place. You know, being supported by you in this environment, having a crew that knew me on a show that I knew and understood, knew the writers, there was just never going to be this, this was not going to happen again. So I'm like, okay, we're going to do it and we're going to, we're going to see what happens. But I felt very sick the first couple of weeks. I didn't feel good at all. I just kind of moved through that feeling and I tried to be as present as I could. And you really helped me with actors. And I feel like you were slowly coaching me, like, throughout the season, you know, kind of like sometimes saying, you know, you know, with actors like this, this and that, and I'm like, okay, I'm holding on to that because I feel like he's trying to tell me something. I need to, because.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

And then you just do the opposite of whatever I told you to do, right?

[Zack Cherry]

Not really, no. I feel like you helped me how to. You helped me understand that it doesn't need to be complicated, you know, and it's really just about being present and accompanying them because they're gonna find it, you know, and tonight is just a little push in one way or another and exploring and like, I think what the beauty of severance as a show is, there's room for exploration and there's room for intuition. And I think it's what makes severance severance, you know, I think you're right.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

I think you're right, like, allowing space, even though, like, there's not a lot of improvisation per se, script wise, there's room for just things to happen. And I have to say, I remember one, one day we were shooting on Dannemora camera and I yelled cut after a scene and you came up to Me go, why'd you yell cut so soon? Do you remember that?

[Zack Cherry]

I do not remember that, but you.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Said you yelled cut too fast.

[Ben Stiller]

And I was like, what?

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

And it's like, maybe she's right. So then the next take, I let it go, and it just went on way too long, and the actress kept just acting, and I was like, oh, wow. Stuff happens here that you would not have happen. So I have to thank you for that because it just opened up so much for me. But throughout this whole answer, you still have evaded my question, which was, will you ever go back to just being a cinematographer ever? And I think, you know, obviously everybody wants you to be a director because you're really, really good. But I'm just. What's your answer to that?

[Zack Cherry]

You know, I. I've learned in my life to never say never. But I fell in love again with directing. Cause I guess I had done it in film school, you know, but it brought a new happiness for me that I had kind of lost, and it brought kind of light to my life again. Ironically. I think being a cinematographer is definitely part of my journey and will affect the type of director I'm becoming, but I'm. I'm just in love with it, and I feel I have to just keep going. I'm afraid I have no idea what's next, but I just want to move in this darkness and see what happens.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

I think you should keep directing for sure. It's great talking to you.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

Thank you.

[Zack Cherry]

Thank you, man.

[Adam Scott]

That was really great. So glad you two got to talk about this episode.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah.

[Adam Scott]

Jess is just such a terrific, terrific director. It's exciting thinking about her directing more in the future.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah. Okay. Before we go, there's one more thing we have to do, and this is something. Something we're contractually obligated to do at this point.

[Adam Scott]

Oh, okay. It's about that time. Yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

Time for us to check in with Zack Cherry and hear his prediction in air quotes that I'm making about what he thinks will happen in episode eight.

[Adam Scott]

Here we go.

[Jessica Lee Gagne]

All right.

[Ben Stiller]

Let's hear how spot on Zack Cherry is.

[Unknown]

Wow, another exciting episode of Severance. Now, of course, I'm ready for my predictions, but I do just want to say, I noticed last week, Adam, that you called this my face favorite segment. This is not my favorite segment. This is sort of the fans favorite segment. The people, you know, the nation's favorite segment. My favorite segment is the end of the podcast when I get to go home to my loving family. Now I'll go ahead and get on with my predictions for the week. Next time on Severance. I can't believe we spent some time at the dentist. The dentist is my favorite part of being alive. So I predict that in the next episode of Severance, we go back to the dentist and see each character we've ever met on the show get their annual dental cleaning. Wow. Dental hygiene. It's so important. Call in and let Ben and Adam know how important dental hygiene is to you.

[Adam Scott]

Why would we.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah, I mean, first of all, why.

[Adam Scott]

Would we do that on the show?

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah, obviously. Don't. Don't do that, please. Yeah, Zach, I don't know if there's like a. Like there's this layer of sarcasm or something that's in the. When he says, wow, it's so insincere.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

And then he's saying basically his favorite part of the whole thing is going home.

[Adam Scott]

Yeah. That felt insulting.

[Ben Stiller]

And then he said that the nation's favorite segment was him. Again. I just wonder, even, like, let alone reading the scripts, whether he's watching episodes or if he's just sort of maybe doing a couple of things at the same time. Like, he's scrolling through.

[Adam Scott]

Oh, he's for sure doing like six things.

[Ben Stiller]

I think he's scrolling through his next fallout script on his phone while he's sort of like, side eyeing catching what's going on on Severance.

[Adam Scott]

I'm questioning his loyalty.

[Ben Stiller]

I'm questioning if there ever was any loyalty. I feel like it's every man for himself with Zack. He sure is. You know what? It's great. He's lovable. He's lovable and cuddly. But there's something else there, too.

[Adam Scott]

He's a very, very good baby. Okay, that is it for this episode, the Severance podcast with Ben and Adam. We'll be back next week to talk about season two, episode eight.

[Ben Stiller]

And you can stream every episode of Severance on Apple tv with new episodes coming out every Friday.

[Adam Scott]

And then make sure you're listening to our podcast, which drops right after the episode airs the 7th. The conference podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott is a presentation of Odyssey, Pineapple Street Studios, Red Hour Productions, and Great Scott Productions.

[Ben Stiller]

If you like the show, be sure to rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts, the Odyssey app, or your other podcast platform of choice. Our executive producers are Bari Finkel, Henry Malofsky, Gabrielle Lewis, Jenna Weiss Berman, and Leah Rhys Dennis. This show is produced by Xandra Ben Goldberg and Naomi Scott. This episode was mixed and mastered by Chris Basel. We had additional engineering from Javi Cruces and Davey Sumner.

[Adam Scott]

Show clips are courtesy of fifth season music by Theodore Shapiro. Special thanks to the team at Odyssey, Maura Curran, Eric Donnelly, Michael Lavey, Melissa Wester, Matt Casey, Kate Rose, Kurt, Courtney and Hillary.

[Ben Stiller]

And the team at Red John Lesher, Carolina Pesachov, John Pablo Antonetti, Martin Valderruten, Ashwin Ramesh, Maria Noto, John Baker and Oliver Agar.

[Adam Scott]

And at Great Scott, Kevin Cotter, Josh Martin and Christy Smith. At Rise Management, we had additional production.

[Ben Stiller]

Help from Kristen Torres and Melissa Slaughter. I'm Ben Stiller.

[Adam Scott]

And I'm Adam Scott.

[Ben Stiller]

Thanks for listening. Listening.

[Adam Scott]

And remember, nothing says Christmas like grouting or de grouting or de grouting.