Adam Scott, Pablo Larrain and Tiffany Haddish on The Treat

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0:33It's The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. The last time my guest was here, it was for a Christmas season movie of a sort. The film was Krampus. He's been a little busy since then. Of course, there's our old friend Adam Scott, who's here for the second season of Severance on Apple TV+. Yep. First of all, so great to have you back. And I laughed out loud, I know you shouldn't, at the first episode of the new season, because the running he's doing is really a metaphor for the show. Yeah. It's running and running and running and running. We're not going to give too much away here because I'm not sure how much people will see my time we've seen this.

1:06But there's a kind of Easter egg in that hallway run that I don't want to give away. Sure. This season, I've seen the first six episodes that we were talking about, is so intensely physical. You were so much in your head in that first season. And is this the contrast that Mark is more physical this season than last? Yeah, I think. Well, first of all, thanks for having me, Elvis. It's lovely being here. I think that in a lot of ways, this season is the show sort of opening up and broadening its scope in a lot of ways and kind of widening the aperture on the world. But also the characters, all of the characters are opening up a bit and we're revealing more and more of them.

1:56We were in a unique circumstance because the way season one ended, we met the quote unquote Audis of all of the MDR characters. At this point now, we've met Mark's, obviously, but we've also met Helly's Audi, Irving's Audi and Dylan's Audi. So we start season two now with pretty much twice as many characters on the show. So, yeah, so it's, you know, it's kind of broadening it out and the show is bigger, but the characters are bigger too. We're seeing more of the iceberg, I guess, is what you could say. Well, also seeing more of his awareness of the impact he's having on Lumen, on the company, and his being unsure how to proceed with that because part of it is he's become kind of a folk hero there.

2:55But the other part is that there's still, he's still on the seventh and a half floor, in effect. There's still a very low glass ceiling. And watching the way you play that, being torn between these things, this season is really more about an awakening than I think last season. Last season was about the fight. This season is about the cost of him remaining there. And you physicalize that, too, because there's a lot of tense upper torso in this season. Yeah, I think that at the end of season one, you know, well, season one, largely for my character on the inside, the innie mark was largely about watching him become disillusioned with Lumen, with this company, which is all he knows, the world down there.

3:46Because also this conversation he had with himself about this sort of, well, I guess I have to stay here or I should stay here. Yeah. So that disillusionment we saw happen. But I think in the final episode, the piece of information he finds out that his Audi's wife is in fact alive. Spoiler alert for those who haven't watched season one. And I think that by the time he and the others kind of make the escape at the end of season one, he thought he had hit the ceiling as far as depravity for this company. He had become disillusioned to the point of, yes, let's get out of here. So I think finding this piece of information kind of blew the roof off of what he even thought was possible for evil or for depravity.

4:32So we start this season with him finding himself back down there, armed with this information and kind of redefining for himself what he thought people would even dream of doing to each other that is that horrible. That is sort of what he's grappling with. I just find it fascinating, though, just because I feel like this season really is about the physical toll that this is taking on him. and him trying to sort of fight these, getting all this information because it really is a show about getting information a sentence at a time, which I think is its power because we're waiting to see, because we're not ahead of anybody.

5:12We thought we were until what felt like a terrifying reboot at the beginning of the first episode of the second season. And then by the end of it, we sort of feel like we're lulled back into this false sense of security, which is the danger of Lumen. It's constantly sort of offering to massage you in some way or another. And I feel like, and I want to ask you about this, it feels like your reaction, Mark's reaction, now is instinctive rather than being cerebral about it. That's really interesting. I mean, I think that a lot of what I connected to and a lot of what I kind of love about how Dan Erickson, the creator of the show, writes the show, And Ben Stiller, the director and EP of the show, kind of interprets the show and how sort of the kind of base we're all working from, particularly Dan and Ben, is sort of examining these big institutions.

6:12And in this case, it's Lumen. It's this company. When you mentioned Brazil, and I always keep going back to the fact that in situations like that, and particularly in the situation that Mark, my character, finds himself in, whenever you feel like you're making progress, whenever you feel like you've kind of got a handle on what's going on, you're reminded of just how huge some of these institutions are. and just how little progress you may or may not be making, you're not necessarily always in control and you don't necessarily always have all of the information. I'm also trying to be careful because I'm not sure exactly when this is going to air.

6:59That's the tough thing about this too. I'm trying to be careful as well about this by sort of generally alluding to what happens in the show. By the way, I'm talking to one of the executive producers of Severance and its star Adam Scott. It's The Treatment, which you can also find at kcow.com slash The Treatment. But what I want to ask you about, too, is that what Ben has done so much is done these pieces about people who are defined by their work, be it the Night of the Museum movies or Meet the Parents or The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. He's done so many things about people defined by jobs.

7:32And what happens to you when so many of these things he's done about the idea of that job being taken away or that definition being taken away. And that's so central to what this is because for all the, I don't want to say evil, but for all the insidiousness and far reach of lumen, it's comfort. Yeah. And that's what is chilling episode after episode. Yeah. When we go, and we should say there's split lines between daytime and nighttime. And you don't hear the luminescent lights at night, that buzz that's really great. If you're watching it on the gray TV, you realize you think it's zzzz. Yeah.

8:10Are you smiling? Yeah, just because when we work on the MDR set, on the Lumen set, we are under fluorescent lights all day. And that buzz is there and the carpet is green. And so the reflection of that fluorescent light, when you're there for 14, 15 hours, you really do feel like you're just working an office job. and you're slowly, you know, being at the end of a long day, you feel pretty fried just by the environment, you know? No, the white walls and the artificial fabrics on every seating area. That's right. And that low light from those, what looks like tainted computers from the mid-'80s and everybody's a desk.

8:56That's why I want to ask you, first of all, about if you've talked to Ben about just that idea of it's hard to leave behind this thing that's to some extent comfortable, even if it is crushing you inch by inch. Yeah, I think that it is incredibly difficult, particularly for this character, because it's everything he knows. It's the only world this character knows. Mark, my character, he's, for all intents and purposes, two and a half years old, And all of that time has been spent down here, not only with the doctrine and the text that you're sort of raised on and that he completely believes in, but also Ms.

9:41Cobell, Patricia Arquette's character, is a mother figure for him. He loves her and believes in her. And in the first season, we see him sort of detach. Oh, there's a kind of spiritual matricide that goes on in the first season. Yeah. And I think there's a betrayal there as well as he slowly learns or chooses to believe that Lumen is essentially just manipulating him. But I think at the same time, as with any situation like that, whether it be a cult or a religion or whatever it is in someone's life, there's still a base that's in you that you that is more difficult to dislodge yourself from. First of all, it's this thing we're talking about with Ben that the idea, if you're an American, the idea of having a job and a steady job and something that defines you in some way that gives you some status there, it's a bit of a carrot.

10:39Yeah. I think that Ben is really interested in and fascinated by these subcultures and in this case work and sort of one of his ways into the kind of culture of the show and the tone of the show was the idea of the comfort of the office comedy, like the office or Parks and Rec or Office Space or this sort of subgenre. we've all grown accustomed to, except in this case, there's this kind of witty office banter and that bouncy tone at first when we start the show. But the difference being that these people have no idea who they are or what they're doing there. I think of you as being kind of, you figure things out physically anyway.

11:29And so often you play characters who know how to make an entrance into a world. And he gets, he's constantly getting entrances. Yeah, that's funny. You're right. And he's almost always surprised by the entrance that he's getting. And I want to ask you, can you find a very different way of playing them all? And it's kind of like watching silent movies. I want to ask you about it because that seems like to me the toughest thing in the show to do. You're constantly reemerging in the show. Yeah. And to find different, very nuanced different ways. Because I rewatched the first season twice to get ready for this.

12:01Oh, wow. Because there's a lot to take in. Yeah, yeah. And I want to just, the times you just want to listen to it because the ADR is so beautifully done. Yeah. And it's really, the night is really scary because it's only a few sounds at night, but there's those strategically plays. Yeah. And there's not that constancy of sort of aural busyness that we have during the daytime. Yeah. So I really want to feel that. And I think it's a show that, and it's not what I use the TV very often, it's textural. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you're right. The sound design is beautifully done, that's for sure. and a huge part of kind of building out the world and the feeling of both sides of the world.

12:41Put those entrances up because you're constantly emerging again. Yeah, what we're always trying to do is remember exactly. Because when you wake up down in the lumen world, whatever was happening 13 or 14 hours ago when you left is exactly where you left off. The people down there don't experience the act of sleeping. They finish a day of work, go in the elevator, and then they're immediately back at work and they exit the elevator and just start work all over again. Whereas in the outside world, when you emerge at the end of the day, you're picking up emotionally where you were 12 hours ago. On both sides, that's what's happening.

13:27So when we start the season, Mark is, you know, picking up emotionally, essentially from where we left him. And not to give too much away, but in this first episode, in fact, in the first two episodes, there's so much fear in him because it's almost like you getting to the first two episodes of the season. I want to be specific about this. You're serving as kind of a viewer surrogate in a way you haven't before. You're actually letting us know what's going on emotionally in ways that I think he was kind of hiding from himself in the first season. But this time around, because he's open to it, it really gives us access to Mark in a way I think we hadn't had before.

14:06Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. I think that as Mark both in both worlds, again, trying not to give anything away, but as Mark in both worlds has to kind of shift into somewhat in detective mode somewhat, we're able to sort of seek out these answers along with him, maybe in a way. I tell you, we'll take a break. We'll talk more about what we're not going to talk about in the second half of the show. I'm so sorry. it's always great to have my guest Adam Scott he's the star one of the executive producers of Severance on Apple TV Plus this is KCRW's The Treatment Is More to Come stay with us

15:00it's really hard to not give anything away of the second season of Severance with its star Adam Scott The show is on Apple TV+. This is The Treatment. You can also go to kcow.com slash the treatment. So often you get to play really big moments. Part of the fun of what you do is you're sort of being presentational about these moments sometimes, like having fun at sort of being presentational. And at no point does Mark get to be presentational in this way. Yeah. I mean, in this second season, I mean, especially the nighttime stuff, he's really trying to piece things together and not give things away.

15:39The demands of this, just what you were just talking in the first half about, being in that really exaggerated office setting where we can sort of smell the polyester and the fiber of the carpet and the ceilings are a little lower than they should be. And it's that flat white that bounces the fluorescent lights back, but also it's kind of that noise is trapped in there with you. I wanted to ask if you've ever done anything this physically demanding before. No. This season of the show was certainly above and beyond anything I'd done physically before. But it's also not like I'm asked to jump over ravines or ride motorcycle, you know.

16:25So, you know, certainly for me, it's the most physically demanding. But for, you know, Chris Evans, it probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal. But I will say by the end of the season, I was exhausted, you know, physically and emotionally, but in a really good way. because this is everything I've ever wanted to do. I've always wanted a role that demanded everything from me. That's what you're wishing and hoping for is that thing that will suck it all out of you. So when it wraps, you feel like you have to go away and recharge a bit. I think that's really fun. I think it's interesting too, just because he's really a, I don't want to say a different person because he's not, but we're seeing more of him in this season than we saw in the last season.

17:21And that's got to be part of the fun of it too, to really like let people know what he's seeing. So I think it's, again, it's kind of daring that by showing us all these things going on in his head in these first two episodes, I feel like we were getting to know Mark in a way that we weren't because he was more in service to trying to get through the mac and it really is, you're just talking about the Sidney Pollack, it's kind of three days of the condor the first season. Yeah. But now we know who he is. Because as a viewer, and maybe even to you as somebody participating, you've got to wonder how they can handle all that in the second season.

17:51Yeah. I think that the thinking really was, we made the first season in a complete vacuum and having no idea how it would be received or if anyone would like it. And if they did, would it catch on? Would people like it? All of that stuff that you just never know until it's out in the world. Did you not have a sense? Because it's so different. You must have thought it. You didn't think people were going to really get it? Really didn't. I mean, we loved it and knew it was different. But until it's out there, because, you know, it's not like Ben could take it and test it with audiences or anything.

18:29And I guess it wasn't until I started hearing innies and outies and waffle parties and goats and all of that out in pop culture that I, it was very strange. And also we had to start having top secret emails and code words for story ideas and stuff like that, that, you know, we started having to have some security around what we're talking about for season two, which was just kind of hilarious because we had all been working on season one for years and no one cared at all about anything we were doing. because all that stuff, it's a really big swing in every way. So you could see if it hits culture wrong or you just don't know if you're just going to be made fun of or if people will like it.

19:17You just have no idea. So the fact that it landed well with people was just a huge flattering relief. But for a lot of people who weren't as familiar with your work and knew you basically from Parks and Rec and with Ben, And a lot of people were saying to me, they were trying to make themselves think it was a comedy in the first season. And you must have asked this, too, if people have seen that for a couple of episodes. Because provisionally, it's certainly, I don't want to say satirizes, but it mocks a certain kind of behavior. So you can see how people would think, well, maybe it's just really subtle.

19:52And if I give it more time, the belly last will come. Yeah, sure. And I was trying to say to them, no, this isn't, and we hadn't spoken about it at that point. I said, I'm pretty sure this is not a comedy. Right, right, right. But people are trying to will it into this thing. And then there's this pivot where for the audience, they kind of go, oh. Yeah. And it's funny because you're talking about the fourth episode. I think for me, in talking to people about this, I want to ask you this response you got too. The fourth episode really tells you where you are. The fourth episode of season one. Yeah.

20:23And then. And it's interesting because it happens on the same point in both seasons. You kind of go, oh. Yeah. That's what this is. I think that if Severance was starkly serious all along with no levity whatsoever, it would be a tough world. It would be a lot to ask of the audience to stick with. And I think, you know, Dan writes really funny stuff into the scripts. Ben is always looking for moments of levity. We all are. So I think that the lighter moments and the absurd moments are certainly important to the show. But overall, you know, part of what I loved about it when I first came in contact with it was it felt like a mixture and kind of an amalgam of several different things that I love as a fan, as a viewer, kind of all pulled up into one.

21:22It's The Treatment. We're talking to our old friend Adam Scott about being elusive of the new season of Severance on Apple TV+. It's The Treatment. You can go to kcrw.com slash the treatment. I guess, though, for me, it's a question of, I guess, surrealism. Because it's like watching, at some point, it's almost like watching, you know, Eugene Ionesco or somebody like this. It's like watching, especially with this sort of reboot, sort of the happening in the first episode of this second season. And it really does feel like rhinoceros or something like that. And I know you've got Bo Wilman on, who's also a playwright.

21:57And I wonder if that's part of it, too, if you're modulating it as if you're doing theater really close to people. Because it's hard to watch it and not think of the absurdists in the stage and those office setting pieces. Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, that's largely a Dan and Ben idea and question. Though I think that... But you're playing the modulation though as you. Yeah. Thinking of the world and thinking of Lumen as dictating the world as these people understand it. All four corners of the world as they understand it has been fed to them by this company. And all they know is the doctrine.

22:44That world that they dictate is slightly surreal. the way they've chosen to interpret the world to these people is surreal and its own thing. So, yeah, reacting to it is something that takes some getting used to because you can't react to it as you would if you lived in the outside world. You have to react to it as if this is the only world you know. And now them having had a peak of the outside world, how much does that change their reaction to what's being fed to them down there? For me, watching this, especially watching you in it, you have to be someone who's at theater training because of the demands of knowing how to use a space and a very small contained space.

23:35And so much of what he's doing is like rebelling and very, very, very small gestures. Yes, yes. As if sometimes he's rebelling only for himself. Yeah. Because he's finally the only person who can ask, am I being honest with myself about this or not? Yeah. Am I making progress or not? Yeah. And I just wanted to ask you if you felt your training, your theater training really came into play for you here because it feels like that to me. That's interesting. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, thinking of it as particularly this season, I really felt like any skills I've managed to gather over the last 30 years of because I started working professionally or like auditioning, you know, trying to get professional work in the fall of 1993.

24:25So now it's like 31 years, which is crazy. And I went to theater school before that. So, yes, everything I've kind of managed to gather over all of that time, I spent it making this season just because we were doing so much that, yes, I'm sure that training came in handy because we were all using everything, our whole bodies and whatever we had to dive in and get the season done. To me, the fascinating thing that he's, again, kind of this folk hero, but nothing has changed. Yeah, I think that all information being controlled by the institution you're a part of, you know, you have to, for yourself, discern what to believe and what not to believe when you're in the middle of it.

25:23And sometimes the perspective, particularly when you're in a sea of white walls, is really difficult to find purchase on trying to climb that particular mountain. I think you have to watch it a couple of times to see how it's worked out and to get a sense of the demands. Because what I realize in watching the second season is how much it takes out of you to watch. Because you tend to stop watching it. And I find for me, it's not a show to binge. Yeah. That kind of six, seven day break in between episodes is a good one. Yeah, I think you need that for it. Do you know what I mean? Sure. I feel like it's, and the shows that do that are the shows I think that are more resonant than the shows that you can digest.

26:11Cool. I'm glad you feel that way. That's cool. So I'm going to do something I don't normally do and ask you to come back when the season is over so we can actually talk about things. Please. I would love to. I'm so sorry. I feel like we're having like one eighth of the discussion that we should be having. Well, I just want to tantalize people and remind them how terrific the first season was and to watch or rewatch that to get ready for the second season. Because it's just to show that it's worth the demands it asks of us. And, you know, Ben Stiller and I are actually making a podcast where we rewatch season one that comes out January 7th.

26:48And there will be an episode every day leading up to the premiere of season two. And with season two, we'll have a weekly one that comes out. But we rewatched the entire season. We just finished recording it yesterday. What was that like to do? It was super interesting going back and watching the episodes after not having seen it in a couple of years. It was interesting doing that, but also interesting watching it from the point of view of, you know, knowing we would need to discuss it. And we have all the actors on and then some like guests that are just fans of the show. So watching it for the express purpose of discussing it and revisiting it from a completely different angle was super interesting.

27:34So it could be a fun way to rewatch season one if that's what you're interested in doing. Well, if you're not too talked out when talking with Ben, I would love to have you come back. I would love to. I would love to. Well, my guest is our old friend Adam Scott. He may come back to talk about... I'll be here. Well, there's a spot for you to talk about the second season of Severance after its completion. I've only seen the first six episodes. I've got to tell you, I'm still hanging here waiting to catch the rest. It's always good to see you, Adam. Thanks so much for doing this. You too, Elvis. Thank you.

28:08Just when he thought he was out, they pull him back in, then out, then in again. Adam Scott is the star of the Apple TV Plus series Severance, now in its second season. I'm Elvis Mitchell. It's The Treatment.