S2E24-SPECIAL-PT01-Interview-PropMasterCatMiller

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Severed, the Ultimate Severance Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hello Refiner, and welcome back to the Severed floor. The
complete Severed season two rewatch will continue, but not this week.
As we approach the dog days of summer, volunteer researcher
Vinnip and I needed some more catch up time. The
season two podcast episodes are very full and detailed. I'm
busy scripting and producing while Vinnie continues researching and proofing.

(00:35):
We will be back with part two of the Cheeai
Bardo Breakdown in two weeks, but we didn't want to
leave you with nothing while we're working on more scripts. Thankfully,
Catherine kat Miller, the incredible property master on Severance, agreed
to sit down with us for an interview. We got
together via zoom on Saturday, August second. We proceeded to
talk for nearly three hours and it was fascinating. Our

(00:56):
entire discussion will be released in two parts this week
and next. Also, we're going to do this with limited
commercial interruptions in order to keep my podcast server happy.
I do have to take breaks within the show, but
we can do it this way. We're going to take
a break right now, then we won't take another one
until I'm saying goodbye at the end of this segment.
That way you get to listen to Kat without interruption.

(01:18):
It's not as many as the server would like, but
at least I'll have taken a couple of breaks. So
we're going to take a break right here, and when
we come back, you'll be into part one of the interview. Okay,
here come the commercials. Hi, I'm Adam Scott. I play
mark s on Severance, which you likely already know since

(01:38):
you're listening to sever to the Ultimate Severance Podcast. All right,
Zoom says, we are recording Welcome refiners. This is a
very special edition of Severed, the Ultimate Severance Podcast. I'm
your host, Alan s and today, instead of continuing to
break down season two, we are lucky enough to have

(02:02):
Katherine kat Miller, who is the property Master on Severance
with us today talking about all things props and the
details about pretty much anything anybody puts their hand on
or sits on anytime during the show. Kat had something
to do with it. So we have a ton of
questions for her. Volunteer research for Vinnie p is here

(02:23):
with us in the Zoom room today, So Vinnie is
going to be listening in and making sure I don't
forget anything or miss something. And he's going to be
shooting me additional questions through the chat if need be.
But you probably won't hear Vinnie on here, but I
just wanted to make sure that you know he is
with us. So Kat, welcome, Hello, Hi, So glad to
have you.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Thank you for wonderful. I got to mit him a
little nervous. I feel like you might know more about
this show and the props than I do at this point.
Are so well versed in everything severance. I learned so
much when I listen in on your podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Oh well, thank you so much. That is quite a compliment. Now,
Vinny kind of tracked you down. He started sending you
some emails and kind of checking in with you on things.
Eventually you agreed. He said, I'm talking to you guys
in an interview about this stuff. That would be fine.
And he said, so what is your audience like? You
cannot get too detailed for the severed audience. We're into

(03:18):
getting detailed, so we like to really really break it down.
But before we get too detailed, I want to congratulate you.
You are a member of the prop Master Property Master's
Guild and they have their own industry awards, the mcguffin
Awards for a creation of interesting props, and you guys
have received nominations the Severance Prop Crew. Can you tell

(03:41):
me a little more detail about that.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Yes, we aren't at the moment nominated, but we are
up for a nomination and we will find out Thursday,
so hopefully by the time this comes out, we will
have been nominated and hopefully up for this award. So
the Property Master's Guild is a guild that came together
of prop masters looking to lift the art and the

(04:04):
craft and the awareness of what props do and how
we contribute to the making of any project.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
They have started their own awards.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Can you give me an idea what some of the
award categories are in the mcguffins.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, So the mcguffin Awards has categories that mostly align
with what the Emmys is doing. We're trying to kind
of parallel with the Emmys. So there's one hour contemporary dramas,
there's in TV or streaming. There's one hour period drama
in TV and sreaming. There's a comedy category. There's movie categories,

(04:42):
there's music video categories, there's commercial categories. We try to
align and I think six five to six projects get nominated.
It's within the calendar year. The nomination process closes very
soon and then we have our awards money September thirteenth.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Awesome. So nothing like scariest killer robot arm or anything
like that. That's not a category.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
No, that would be in the sci fi category.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, okay, all right, well congratulations are you guys? Also
we need to talk about the field leading twenty seven nominations. Now,
which ones are you looking at most closely? Out of
those Emmy nominations, there was a whole big list of them.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Yeah, there was. There was a huge list, and we're
proud of every single one of them, like from the
Craft's category all the way up to Best Best Drama.
We're just thrilled. Everyone was so excited that the show
was getting not their due, but a recognition and kind
of being seen critically seen as well. And we knew

(05:46):
the audience loved it, but to have to be recognized
in this way by being nominated across so many different categories,
it kind of speaks to how much everybody from the
show contributes. It's not just that the actors are good.
And it's not just that the cinematography is good, but
it's across the boards. Everybody is working at such a
high level and a creative level and letting getting their

(06:09):
talents to be showcased.

Speaker 4 (06:10):
And that's just such an awesome win.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
I hope, I hope everyone wins. I hope. I know
there's some categories where more than one person from the
show is winning, is nominated, and I hope they.

Speaker 4 (06:21):
Tie and they all win.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Man in the director category, you've got JLG going up
against Ben Stiller. Yeah, it's nuts in some of those areas. Now,
this season you mentioned, you know, feeling like you're seen.
This season got almost double. There were fourteen for the
first season, now twenty seven for the second season. Do
you feel like the second season was really twice as
good as the first season or did the Emmys all

(06:44):
of a sudden go, WHOA, we made a mistake. We
should have noticed this show.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
I think a little of both. I do you think
that second season was larger in scope? There was a
kind of an aim and a pressure we put on
ourselves to up ourselves, you know, to go one up
from season one and really dive deeper into the world
literally go deeper into the lumin building co level down,

(07:11):
go into these gigantic mammalian rooms that make no sense.
So I do think that there was a lot more
scope in season two. I will say that I think
that season one flew a little under the radar. I
think Season one is, you know, a masterpiece in itself
as well. And I think there was some big competition

(07:33):
last year in the last Emmy cycle that we were
eligible for, and there's a lot of competition that this
cycle too. But I think between the scope and finally,
you know, flying a little above radar now and being
seen has contributed to just being able to recognize the
talent that's there.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
And this prop thing is something you've been doing for
about fifteen years now. You've had some amazing prop jobs
in your career. But to that, you were a professional
dancer who actually toured with operas and concert companies.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
That's right, That's that's correct. You are correct.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
How does the opera dancer get into props? How did
you make that jump in a career move?

Speaker 3 (08:17):
It's not your typical way into props. But I will
say there, for a lot of the movie business, there's
not a typical one path that people find themselves taking
to get in. We you know, we all have different
roads and paths in our lives, and a lot of
people have taken a very very curvy and rolling roads

(08:38):
to get here. I am lucky to have family in
the business. My dad was a key grip. He's retired now.
My aunt was a prop master. Their father was a grip,
and so, you know, in an off time, I had
just finished a tour with the dance company I was in.
It was the summer I am Legend and American Gangster

(08:59):
shooting in New York, and there was like, those are
very big projects and there was no every There was
no more Union people to fill the jobs that were needed,
and so they were bringing in people outside of the union.
My dad was like, hey, you know, I can get
you a week of work in the warehouse and you
can make a little bit of money. And the money
that you make, and you know, compared to living a
poor dancer life, I was very happy, but I was

(09:22):
not wealthy as a dancer. You know, I made more
in one week than I made in many, many, many
weeks and months of dancing, and it just kind of
was like an aha moment, like huh, this work is
really cool and it's a whole world I don't know
much about, and I'm learning a lot, and I could
kind of supplement my ability to become a freelance dancer.

(09:43):
So let me let me take a look at it.
Let me let me see if I can balance it.
And I balanced it for a while, and I would
learn more about being a set dresser as I started,
and then I would I transitioned into prop, the prop world,
and my aunt kind of took me in when she
had an open space in her crew started I just
started learning stuff.

Speaker 4 (10:03):
I started learning being on.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Set and what that was like, the stories we're telling,
and how we're all coming together in different parts of
the crew to tell a story. It was a whole
nother kind of like eye opening passion.

Speaker 4 (10:15):
Wow, this is really cool. Everyone knows what they're doing.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
Everyone's like hopping into action as soon as they need to.
And then I have a part in that. I have
a role in that I'm getting the cup of coffee
into the actor's hand because they can't do the scene
without the cup of coffee. And then I understood we
were making a story and these stories ken can not
all stories, but they can have the potential to impact

(10:40):
people and bring and create community and bring people together,
you know, much as Severance is done. I'm so lucky
that there's a lot of fans and a lot of
people who are in love with the show, who reach
out to me from all over the world, Like people
from everywhere are into this show, and so being able
to create a community with that, with telling a story
and it just kind of I got bit by the

(11:02):
bug and then I just worked my way up into propmastering.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Also, in props, you don't blow out your knees at
age thirty and your career is done.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
So I might have been that's okay.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
So when it comes to Severance, what's your hiring story?
How did you become a part of the Severance family.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
I got a call from the production designer Jeremy Handel
in December of twenty nineteen, and he said, there's this
new project. The way that you get hired on most others,
there's a you get called by a production designer usually
or a line producer or upm. Jeremy said, you know,
I have this project and I want to know if
you're available and if you have any interest. He said,

(11:44):
it's like an office drama, but it's it's going to
be more than that. And I said okay, and he's like,
let's come in, come in for an interview. And I
went in for an interview with him, and he made
me feel very comfortable and we talked a lot about
projects I had done before, about about the script for
the pilot of Severance. I knocked over a vase that

(12:05):
was on the table and it went crashing to the floor,
and I just I was like, oh my god, this
is like the like a huge production designer, and you know,
I just knocked a vase off the table, Like what.

Speaker 4 (12:15):
I just started laughing, Like what else can you do?

Speaker 3 (12:18):
So I started hysterically laughing, and he's just like, yeah, okay,
You're You're gonna be fine where we can do this.
And then next step was to meet Ben So so
after that I we arranged to meet.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
So you had not worked with Jeremy Hndle before, No.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
I hadn't, you know. I've I had heard of him
and everyone's heard of him, and I knew he was
a big time, big time production designer, but I never
worked with him.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Do you know what it was about your work that
caused him to call you.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
I'm not sure, actually, I know. I think he got
a couple of recommends, like I was recommended by a
couple of people, and a lot of times that's how
we get calls. Like people take recommendations very seriously in
the business, and yourtation and your work reputation kind of
precedes you. Uncut Gems had just come out, and that was,
you know, a very challenging prop job, and I was

(13:09):
very happy with how me and the team had worked
on that, and it was getting a lot of buzz
and I don't know if that influenced that or not
at all. And then a lot of the times, once
you get your foot into the door for an interview,
it's really about is this a person that you're going
to want to work with intensely for anywhere you know,
jobs can last three months to two years. Really, the

(13:32):
personalities in the community that you build in a crew
are almost as important as the talent of the crew too,
because you're with them all day long, very very long time.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
You were so you were propping it up first season,
big time season drops minor hit, a lot of talk,
getting you know, getting some listeners out there, but then
that long downtime did you head off to other projects
during that time?

Speaker 3 (13:58):
I did. Yeah, I me and my team keep very busy.
I left as soon as we finished shooting season one.
I think it was in June of twenty twenty one.
I ran up to Boston. I shot a movie up
in Boston. I came back, I shot a movie in Connecticut,
and then I did a kind of a longer series,
Murder at the End of the World, which was an

(14:20):
FX series, and then season two was starting up right
after that.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
So does the kind of elongated streaming schedule does that
make it tough to keep a crew together or to
like bring the same crew back when you come back
for a second season when it maybe is eighteen months
or two years later. It used to be had three
months off between seasons, then you were back in the
fall with the show, so you didn't people didn't scatter
to the wind or go to other projects. But now
we've got this huge amount of time and it's not

(14:47):
just Severn. Severn's happened to get hit by both the strikes,
and there was a lot you know, we've all gone
to over that story, but everybody is taking these longer
periods between dropping seasons. Does that make harder on you
as somebody who works kind of you're kind of a
job are from project to project. When they're done with
you and the shooting side of it, you're done. You

(15:08):
have to then go find another job and then when
second season rolls back around. Is this difficult to get
coordinated again?

Speaker 4 (15:14):
I think for a lot of shows it is.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
I think that is a challenge because if you don't
know when a show is coming back, and you book
yourself for a ten month job, you're not going to
bail on one job to go do another job. I
will say Severance was different as a prop team as
and I can speak for my team, but almost all
of the crew came back. It was a very meaningful job.
We were able to contribute creatively a lot, and everyone

(15:41):
on the team wanted to come back, and so that
was not an issue for us. There was a sense
of like, thank goodness, it's coming back, and I was
able to kind of roll my team. We were able
to keep the team together for the jobs in between,
and everyone did did want to come back.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Cool. Now you mentioned your team. When you're hired by
Jeremy Handel as the property master, is that understood you
were going to bring your team with you or are
some team members provided to you? Is it a combo?
Tell me about your team, how many and who are
some key players that we need to know.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
So basically, the prop master and for most of the
department heads like the key grip or the gaffer, chief
lighting technician, they'll bring their own team on. So the
department head gets hired with the understanding that they have
a team that they will assemble and bring on. We'll
manage that team, Jeremy. And then when Ben, when I
met with Ben and actually Ben hired me, it was

(16:37):
me that they were hiring and my team would come on.
My team is amazing. My team is like the best
team prop team in all of New York. Travis Anderberg
is the assistant and prop master. Colleen Dolan is the
onset prop master. She runs set for us. Katie Dolan,
her sister, is the assistant onset Prodmaster. Brian Walsh is

(16:58):
our shopper. Is Gardner is our prop assistant, Sam Tesler
prop assistant, Jason Turner proposistant, Aaron Hadson is a prophesistant,
and Tess Pelzer Rolo.

Speaker 4 (17:10):
Is our prop coordinator.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
Because there is so much coordinating going on because of
the seat When we're working, it's so expensive. We're prepping
many crossboarded episodes, shooting many crossboarded episodes, sometimes tandeming, having
two different teams working shooting at the same time. So
there's a lot to coordinate with that. But that's my team,
and my team is awesome and they're dedicated to the

(17:33):
show and they put their their heart and their soul
into it.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
I lost count. How many is how many are we
talking on your team? Like? A dozen? Right?

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Ten? Ten people?

Speaker 2 (17:44):
Ten? Wow with me?

Speaker 3 (17:46):
It's ten. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Now, when you say a crossboarded show, that's where you're
shooting scenes from multiple shows at the same time, working
on different episodes.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
Correct. We originally tried to block the first three episode
and then episodes four, five, and six, and then seventy
eight nine, And that was the intention in both seasons.
As all the scripts were coming in and we saw like, oh,
the boardroom that we would have was being built at

(18:15):
Bell Labs. We're gonna be there in episode seven or
six or not. We should do all those scenes at
once so that we don't have to go back there.
And so as those types of situations came up, we
ended up interlocking a lot of the all the whole
season into into crossboarding. So we were anywhere from episode

(18:36):
one to ten at any given time, and the strike
was in the middle of that, so we were coming
back and we were doing parts of episode one during
the aftermath of the strike when we came back to production.
So yeah, there was a lot to always keep track
of in terms of story and making sure we weren't
putting something in a scene that shouldn't go and trying.

(18:58):
You know, our fans are very very diligent with the consistency.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Actually, I talked to the guy who's the building manager
there at the Bill Works. Okay, yeah, gross and most
you said, you guys left that set up through the
strike just in case you had to come back and
do more boardroom scenes. And he said, really, he doesn't
think they minded. It was such a cool looking boardroom
that he thought the folks around Bellworks thought that was okay.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
It was. It was an amazing set and what they
did with the walls being like reflective and the custom
chairs David put in David Slessinger, the set decorator, No,
it was.

Speaker 4 (19:39):
It was an amazing set. Jeremy designed a great set.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
The Quincy Ellis table that on.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
We had to in one of this I think it
was episode two where Helly is recording Helena is recording
her apology. We had to put the tripod on that
table for the camera. And there are so many people like,
don't scratch the table, don't scratch that table. Okay, guys,
just don't scratch the table.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
So what happened to the table after you guys were
done with it. That's a pretty unique piece that goes.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
Everything goes back into storage. So everything in between seasons
and once we strike sets, very little gets thrown out
or discarded or recycled in any way.

Speaker 4 (20:23):
Everything's kept because we don't know what season.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
Three is going to be, or somebody might know what
season three is going to be, but we want to
make sure that all the options are open and not
having to We don't rent very much stuff because it's
so bespoke and because we have to customize everything that
we do put on camera, we tend to not rent stuff.
We tend to purchase it or more likely fabricate it
from scratch.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah, we're going to get into some of those stories.
All right, So we've met you now and we're going
to move to another topic, but before we do volunteer
research of ANYP has come up with a couple of
what he refers to as lighter questions. He also came
up with a lot of hard hitting ones, but I
like these light hearted ones. So as a palate cleanser
between topics, we got a lighter Vinny P question. So

(21:07):
if you're ready, here we go. If you were a
refiner working in MDR. First, which refiner do you think
you'd be? And the second would you prefer an MD,
a melon bar or a full marching band to brighten
your day on the severed floor?

Speaker 3 (21:22):
Danny P. That's actually a quite a complicated question there.
That is not a light palate cleaner because you can
go deep with that. What refiner would I be? I
would be helly. I would be helly, always fighting to
know a little bit more. I mean, I would need
a music dance experience on so many levels.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Got yeah, And they have.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
The best props in the music dance experience, So I
would definitely.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
Oh all right, well, now let's talk duties of the
prop department. You guys are actually a part of the
art department, right we are?

Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Is that pretty common?

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah? In all projects, we're considered part of the art department.
You know, my bosses per se are are the production designer.
I answer to the designer, answer to the director. I
answer to the actors. I answer the producer. You know,
I answer to the accountants, even though I'd like to
not do that sometimes, but yeah, we are.

Speaker 4 (22:18):
We are within the world of the art department.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
So do you get your own graphic designers that work
for you or do you have graphic designers within your
team or do you just get to share the ones
that are there.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
We, on severance, have what I call a graphic guru,
and she is Tanzi Michoud and she is the heart
and soul of Lumen in so many ways, and so
she is the lead graphic designer. I work directly with
her on all graphics for all props.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Now, Tansy we've mentioned in the podcast, but just to
kind of quick thumbnail, she's the one that created the
Lumin logo, did the cover to the U you are
just some major graphic design items within the show Tansy
was responsible for and from the beginning, going back to
the very roots of Lumen. So this is who you
work with. Then when you need graphics on something when

(23:12):
we were talking kind of as a pre getting ready
for this and something that I had just seen and
I mentioned to you the pizza box in the George's
living room behind Dylan's head. You never really see it
the full thing, but it's a custom made pizza box
and it says Cure's favorite slice. And it's just things
like that that I think about the work and the

(23:34):
time that went into that. How do you guys sit
down and look at a scene and say, Okay, this
is definitely going to need a pizza box back there?
Who makes that call? Is it Jeremy?

Speaker 3 (23:44):
It's all of us, to be honest, The way the
show works is we will we'll get the script. Well,
I'll do my own breakdown, Tansy will do her breakdown,
Jeremy will do his, David will do his, and will
all contribute to what a scene needs. And for like
that particular scene, first we need to find out what

(24:06):
do we think they're eating. So they're a family that
both parents work, and you know what's a quick fixed dinner,
you know, on the go pizza? Ben. We talked to Ben.
You think they should be eating some pizza. That's a
great idea, Well, where do they get the pizza there?
We're not going to have pizza from Domino's or Pizza
Hut or anything like that.

Speaker 4 (24:27):
Here would have its own pizza shop.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
And what does that come in that would come in
their own pizza box? Tanzy, we need a pizza box.
She's like, yeah, I was thinking the same thing, and
so she'll start coming up with different layouts and different
graphics for a pizza box.

Speaker 4 (24:42):
We knew we're going to see the side of it.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
We knew we probably weren't going to see the top
of it, so we wanted to make sure that we
got here and the nod too, that this is our
branded the town's.

Speaker 4 (24:52):
Pizza, local pizza shop.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
You know. She's great about that. She'll think like, Okay,
on the side, we can write this, and then we
do a couple of R and D rounds and we
print a couple out, and we'll show Ben and whoever
the director is of that episode, and we'll I'll discuss
it and we'll figure out which of the layouts is
the best, and then we'll have our print vendor and

(25:16):
fabricator printed out and then we put it in the
scene and we make sure we have enough because if
the pizza grease gets on the bucks, so we just
to make.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
Sure we always have Enough've got to make multiples of them. Sure,
So that's all happening then within the art department. Now,
when you then kind of step out of the Art
department and maybe get to some of the other departments
paint and construction, how are you working with them when
you're getting to bigger things and things that you're having
to interact with in larger spaces.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
We work with the paint department that we call Scenics
and the construction team, which consists of construction grips and carpenters.
A lot and a lot more on Seven than we
do on other projects, just because we're building so much.
So we build stuff in house, or we need to
custom paint everything to match a Pantone. You know, the

(26:05):
MDR Blue is a custom color. It's not an actually
there's no Pantone color match for it. It's based off
of the data data General Dasher computer. So that blue
actually informed what MDR Blue was, and our SCENICX had
to kind of reverse engineer and mix a paint and

(26:27):
find that kind of that solution that mathematical problem that
equaled mdr blue and then you know, I'll go to
them and be like, I need this degrouter to be
the same green as all the as all the other
things in Gemma's Christmas room. But it can't have any
scenes and it has to be this gloss. And so

(26:49):
we work together and R and D different colors all
the time, and then we have to camera test those
colors too, because the color that you have in real life,
once it goes through the camera lookup table, the lut
that Jessica established for the show, it changes wildly. There's
no real way of translating what a color is going

(27:10):
to do after it goes through the lookup table, and
so we always have to camera test any new color
or any color at all that we're putting in front
of camera into a scene. It really desaturates a lot,
but it doesn't desaturate in the same rate for all colors.
It turns grays blue. It's a very strange, unpredictable or

(27:30):
we can't. We haven't found the predictability of it yet.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
It's designed to create that look that we kind of
associate with outside as kind of bluish. Inside is harsher
with the whites. Are kind of amped up and blown
out that that's what you're talking about. She's highlighting certain
colors within those scenes, and then what you're creating has
to fit that or it gets interpreted differently. Correct right,

(27:53):
your I might see it as a certain as a
bright green, but the camera is going to see it
as a very dark green, or maybe as something entirely different,
because it'll pull some other color out of there.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Correct. That's a challenge formula that we use every time
we're on a severed floor. We use that, or the
Jessica or the cinematographer uses that. Whenever we're on the
outside world. We use a different, different look up table formula.
Very early on the first time we saw the results
of the first camera test, I remember what's cool is

(28:24):
we do a camera test and then we all go
to Company three, the department heads, and we all sit
in one of the editing rooms and we review the
camera test footage with Ben and Jeremy and the department
heads and the creative team, and we get to all
discuss in the moment. And that's one of the coolest
things about being able to really define the world of
it while we're all looking at the same thing and

(28:46):
talking about it, and so Sarah Edwards, I think camera tested.

Speaker 4 (28:50):
I think it was like a purple shirt for Helly.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
And we saw it in the camera test review footage
review and it was like like blue and no, and
everyone's like, where's the purple shirt? What happened to it?
And she was like, no, that is the purple shirt.
What happened to it?

Speaker 4 (29:08):
And so from there we were like, okay, we have
to camera test everything.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, we've heard about the nows and chairs being dyed
that David Schlessinger to get the right purple because they
didn't come into purple anyway. Even the purple they came
in probably wasn't going to camera test well, so he
had to come up with his own purple.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
And they're a lot brighter in person. Those chairs are
a lot brighter in person than what they read on and.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
How they read. Wow. So, how as you kind of
alluded to it there, what is the general vibe on
the Severance set and kind of compare it to other
places where you've worked. I get the sense it's kind
of freewheeling, a lot of creative input, a lot of
freedom to do things. Am I interpreting that right? How
do you feel on the set obviously brought you back
for a second season. You enjoyed it enough for.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
Me, and I can only speak for me. One of
the most creatively satisfied and creative opportunities to contribute that
I've been able to experience throughout any of my endeavors,
whether it's in film or in dance and performance. The
actual onset and the filming is everything's already. There's no

(30:17):
surprises there. Everything is already and there's nothing random. Everything
is already very much camera tested and researched and planned.
The creative part comes.

Speaker 4 (30:27):
Before we get to set. We're building this world.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
Ben is great at having everybody, trusting everybody on the
team to bring their a game. He has no ego
about taking anybody's ideas, listening to ideas, and like aggregating
the best ideas.

Speaker 4 (30:44):
And going forward with those if it's in line with
the story.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
Which he trusts it always is, because we're all contributing
to the story and not kind of coming from an
ego place. If it's really good, it will make it
in and it will influence the story. Like there's so
many examples of us making stuff. You know, me and
my team coming up with an idea for a prop,
showing it to him and him being like, now you're
going to make me do an insert of this. Now

(31:09):
I got to do an insert of this prop. We
got to write this in, now, Dan, we got to
write this in. And that's just the most satisfying thing
when you can directly contribute to the story and how
you can tell the story, like that's that's awesome. So
we're always talking. We're always talking about you know, one
of our first discussions was about what do they wear

(31:31):
on the severed floor, and you know, kind of opening
up the broader discussion of Loomin as a corporation controlling
even what they're allowed to wear, and that there would
be a kind of dress code of things that they
could go out and buy and wear. There'd be stores
in out in the world. There'd be the Severance were
stores that then informs, Okay, what kind of watch are

(31:55):
they going to wear? And what kind of lanyard are
they going to have? They can't have their names on
it has to be color blocks, and you know, they
can't have any tags on their clothing. So everything that
you buy at a Severance wear store would have no
tags on it. And so just kind of like expanding out,
kind of like a ripple effect of the world when
it's all being contributed to by people just talking and

(32:17):
coming up with it and dialoguing and really really listening
to each other, which is rare.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Now this kind of dovetails into a question that Vinnie
sent me just within like an hour before we got
on this and started talking. On a recent episode of
the Ben and Adam the Official Severance Podcast, they talked
about Sarah Edwards had done a handbook for the fashion
of the severed floor and what severed employees could wear,

(32:44):
and there was talk of turning that into something like
the Sevy Book or the you know the other books
that exist. Have you moved ahead on anything like that?
Can we look for a Lumen fashion guide coming in
the future.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
I thought that was brilliant. I was like, Oh, I
should have thought of that last season. I should have
thought of that. Yeah, it's it's stuff like that, where
the Sevy book the employee oriented MDR.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
It's like the quick start guide for him.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Yeah, exactly, that never exists.

Speaker 4 (33:14):
That's a great example that never existed.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
She was just looking at something that explained, explained it
and then Tansy was like, huh, why don't we make it,
you know, kind of a user friendly. Hey, Severance is cool,
like learn about this while you learn how to use
your computer.

Speaker 4 (33:32):
And so she just created that and.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
Showed it to Ben and it was like blue Ben's mind.
And Ben was like, yes, now we're going to use
this and this is going to be a thing, and
so as things like that, like I would love to
do a handbook where we outline and have sev in
different costumes and different you know, wardrobe that you're allowed to.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
Wear, or lady and the men's.

Speaker 3 (33:56):
Skirt and Sebbi in a little sweater.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
I want to move to a little bigger prop under
the aegis of the props department. You also handle the automobiles.
On a normal show, you would handle these directly as
the prop master. But because Severance decided they need thousands
of cars on camera, I'm maybe exaggerating a little bit,

(34:20):
but they.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
Have maybe not that.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
You actually have what is called a picture car coordinator
named Peter Dancy, who is He's not in the props department.
He's in the transportation department, which is usually the behind
the scenes vehicles, the ones that are haul in equipment
around that you don't see, but he has this very
specific division of that, which are the cars you do
see on camera. Talk to us about the challenges of

(34:46):
the car's severance is using these older vintage vehicles. What
is that like and what you and you and Peter
are working together, what are the challenges of that.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
So in New York, with Local fifty two, which is
the union, local prop masters are in charge of cars.
In most other locals in the country, the picture cars
are coordinated and handled by the Teamsters Union. So New
York is unique in that effect. So I am very
used to doing the cars. Any prop master in New
York is very used to doing the cars. I work

(35:18):
with Pete on larger car jobs when the work of
coordinating car is so broad that another kind of department
head needs to come in. And Pete's a prop master
in his own right, and he loves doing cars. So
we've worked together. We have a shorthand we together come
up with the car ideas and present them together to

(35:41):
Jeremy the designer and to Ben and have you know,
options for people to look at. We have color options,
We'll get paint swatches. You know. He was contributed to
a bunch of different motorcycle options, and we finally landed
on the Miltchick motorcycle. So Pete and I work in tandem,
and I would consider him part of the art department

(36:02):
and the prop under the prop umbrella. But because a
lot of the rest of the country has them under transportation,
that's how it's credited. Basically, the cars we decided early
on before, you know, in prep for season one, when
we were kind of working through time, is this really
here and now? Do we want it to be a

(36:23):
slightly alternate reality, timeless and in time and out of time.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
At the same time, we.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
Decided that the cars would be a step back from
what they are now. A lot of that came from
the fact that we were moving towards a brutalist aesthetic
and sharper lines, less curves.

Speaker 4 (36:43):
If we dial back twenty ten, fifteen, twenty.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
Arty years of cars, we're getting much harsher lines, which
are really much more graphic and film better.

Speaker 4 (36:56):
Also have a timeless feeling.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
The rabbit, the Cobel's rabbit, is kind of timeless when
you look at it, and the volvo of Mark. We
all remember them. We could all see them on the
road now, because cars can delineate a place in time
so much. We're just trying to find shapes of cars,
esthetic shapes of cars that helped us with our esthetic.
There was a lot. We ran with a lot of

(37:19):
cars because once we set that as our aesthetic, we
had to curate every car on every road that we saw.
So we ran with a fleet of older cars that
we handpicked for their look and their color. We had
I think four Cobel white rabbits we had to They
were very hard to source. Pete had to convert one

(37:41):
of them from a diesel engine and take out the
engine and put a gas engine into it. We had
some transmissions that fell to the ground. We had some
you know the older cars. These are like forty year
old cars we had. We had many of the cars,
especially because we had to take those cars and Hampton's
truck up to Canada. So when we filmed up there

(38:03):
for episode eight, the salts Neck episode.

Speaker 4 (38:06):
And that was in kind of very extreme weather.

Speaker 3 (38:09):
It was very very cold. Those roads were very rough
and rocky. There was salt, you know, salty mud corroding
them from the bottom. We had a couple conk out
up there, so we had all four of those up there.
I think we had three or four Hampton trucks as
well up there. Yeah, we just we would we would
move this kind of fleet of older cars wherever we

(38:30):
were shooting in locations.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
And I know Peter had mentioned most of the cars
you worked with pre date fuel injection, you're working with carburetion,
and he said, boy, you get those in the cold,
they just don't want to start.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
They don't want to start. I mean, some of us
don't want to start in the cold, but those cars are.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Really no, they definitely don't want to start. Now we've
talked about then some other departments, and where do you
find the most overlap between departments? And I guess there.
I mean, when does a prop stop being a prop
and it becomes set dress or it becomes wardrobe. I
know we've heard you in other interviews you talked about
providing Mark with his Russian watch. Now is that still

(39:09):
a prop or does that become wardrobe? How do you
determine that or does it matter?

Speaker 3 (39:14):
There's some very defined lines about what a prop is
and what isn't, and then there's very gray lines, and
then there's severance where we're going to all work it
out together. Traditionally, a desktop computer is a piece of
set stressing, and so the MDR computer conceivably could have
been done by the decorator. Because it was something that

(39:35):
was going to be interacted with so much, Ben wanted
me to take it on, and because it was going
to be a fabrication of an older, older style and
a CRT screen, that was something that was decided would
be tasked by.

Speaker 4 (39:48):
Props and tackled by props.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
Things like watches, ring wedding bands, glasses, those are all
considered personal props and so those things are always taken
care of by the props. The crossovers with costumes comes
with gloves and the lanyard and the color of the
hall pass and trying to create the picture that Sarah
Edwards needs for the costumes and trying to work with

(40:15):
her with colors, like we did a lot of testing
of the key card color with all of the different
colors that Helena is going to wear and all the
different colors that Helly at the time and Mark was
going to wear. You know, the hall pass was really
interesting because that was supposed to be dark blue.

Speaker 4 (40:32):
We went through a lot of R and D at first,
it was going to be a sticker.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
Because that was like the most like everyone just went, oh,
it's going to be a sticker. And then then we
were like, oh, maybe it could be a button, like
an actual like round button that you put on.

Speaker 4 (40:45):
In something saying hall Pass.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
And then I remember going to the Metropolitan Museum of
Art a long time ago and getting those collar tags,
those metal little admission tags, fold over tags. I thought
that would be cool. That would be something different, and
you would have the ability to put that in different places,
not everyone would have to have it in the same
place of a sticker. And so we die cut a
bunch of different sizes and shapes, and we made some

(41:09):
round and Tansy made different graphics for that. We finally
landed on the shape and it's saying hall Pass. But
it was all going to be blue. And then Sarah came,
you mean, she's like, you know, hell, he's got this
dark skirt on. If we want to put it on
her skirt, it's not going to read too well. And
I was like, you know what, let's try and let's
try and do another super light green pan like one

(41:30):
of the pantones that's in our color book, and try
that and for a little contrast, And then it was
good because we were able to use both and have
both of those, and Ben thought that was great. He
had actually highlight that and see it. So that's an
example of us kind of talking all the time. David Slessinger,
the set decorator, and I are in constant lockstep the
dentist chair and Gemma's testing floor. What color are you

(41:53):
going to post through the chair because I want to
get the bib that they put on to be a
color that's similar or contrasting. What about the light that
goes on He has to work with the electricians to
get the light bulb right. We have to work and
make sure that the chrome on doctor Mauer's cart is
the same brush steel that it is going to be

(42:16):
on the bottom part of the chair. Like we're constantly
all talking in these very detailed ways to try and
make sure that it all looks you know, right.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
I am just now working on Cheeki Bardo, so doing
doing a lot of detail work on those scenes. And
I noticed the dentis throne that he sits on is
upholstered in the same color as the chair. Now, something
that Vinnie and I both noticed about the chair was
it has no arms, which seems particularly mean. Decided that

(42:50):
you can't grab onto anything as we're torturing you.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
It's very lumin right, it's very Yeah, it is. It's
you know, there's an efficiency there and there's really no
need for the arms. You don't grab onto anything. And
there was a vintage sharing. Yeah, he found that vintage
chair and he modified it a lot of David did. Yeah,
we took he took the arms off of it.

Speaker 2 (43:11):
Yeah, we noticed too that. All right, I gonna We're
gonna go on a deep dive here into food. There's
a lot of food in this show. We've heard prop
people don't like food. It's hard to work with. It's
always changing colors or going bad. What are your prop
master attitudes about food?

Speaker 3 (43:30):
Well, I don't know what prop masters you're talking to you,
but I love doing a food scene. I love doing
a food scene. My team and I are really good
at food scenes. We love doing deep dives into what
the food can mean, and then we love figuring out
how to create foods that are within our color palette.
We just love doing that. It's so hard and so

(43:52):
challenging and so nerdy of us, but we just really
love it. There's so much endowed in food and the
way that a carc relates to food and what it
can say about the scene that it's so important. And
I don't think if you're not leaning into how powerful
food can be, it might cheat what can be done.

(44:13):
In that scene Bert's retirement melon party, we introduced the
red of the watermelon, and that was, you know, to
represent blood and fire and this resistance that was happening.
And I was doing research and I saw the water
like a watermelon that was stood up and it was
cut open. It had the watermelon chunks kind of falling out,

(44:36):
cut up watermelon chunks falling out as a display, and
I thought, it looks like it's vomiting this this red stuff,
or is starting to get angry. And so putting in
these little metaphors, maybe people catch on them, maybe they don't,
but it's a subtle and subconscious way of enforcing the storyline,
enforcing what's happening with these characters.

Speaker 4 (44:57):
And so I do love food scene.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
So how long do you normally have lead time to
prepare for a food scene, because some of these are
so complex. Do you see it in a script? Six
weeks in advance, six months in advance. How long do
you have to prep for one?

Speaker 3 (45:13):
We usually have a good amount of time and we
usually do a lot of research on it.

Speaker 4 (45:16):
I would say a couple of months in advance.

Speaker 3 (45:18):
Like we knew the Ham it was the Ham dinner
was going to be a thing, you know, we started
and we started researching that because there's so many ways
like it's a ham, it's a it's a Christopher walking ham.
It's got to be iconic, and so we started, Well,
we'll have I work with a food stylist named Will

(45:39):
Leao and he's been doing this for a while and
he has a great kind of book of like ideas
and options and references, and he also loves to connect
the dots to and try and make connections.

Speaker 4 (45:53):
He will come come in.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
He'll come in after cooking many different types of ham
in many different ways, and we'll set them up and
we'll have Ben and team come in and they will
look at all the hands and we'll all discuss and
we'll try and keep it in the color palette and
what's going to be easy for the actors to slice
or what's gonna be graphic if we do a close
up on it.

Speaker 4 (46:13):
We'll all kind of narrow it down in either land
on one or.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
Two, and then we'll all eat a lot of food
is really good, and then we'll all go back to
our next meeting and then.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
A pile of loose corn on the side.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
Right. But we have time, and we do a lot
of research, and we do a lot of a lot
of R and D and a lot of testing.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
Okay, well, I want to talk specifically about the cure
marshmallows that were cruelly thrown into the fire during the
ort bow. Were those actually marshmallows?

Speaker 3 (46:43):
They were? They were in their team players?

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yes, how'd Yeah? That's right, man. Marshmallows are for closers.
Only tell us how you made them. I can't even
feature how do you even start to go about making
a marshmallow.

Speaker 3 (46:58):
We bought every marshmallow that we could find on the market,
you know, the traditional kind of round, rounded ones, and
in all different sizes. And then there's a couple of
bespoke bakeries in New York City that sell homemade marshmallows
that are that are square. So we bought a bunch
of those and we thought, just in our esthetic alone,

(47:19):
a square marshmallow makes more sense than a round it one.
We're all about harsh edges and squared off look.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Okay, so was that something you set out I want
a square marshmallow or did you see the bespoke square
marshmallows at the small bakeries and go ooh, this is
a cool option.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
I saw it.

Speaker 4 (47:35):
I saw it, and I thought that was a cool option.

Speaker 3 (47:37):
I don't ever want to say like I'm imposing this idea.

Speaker 4 (47:41):
I want to go out there. I want to scour
the world.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
I want to see what options are out there and
then let us all kind of come together. And I
knew as soon as I saw it, I was like, Okay,
that's better.

Speaker 4 (47:50):
Than these other ones.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
That's lumin that's spoke to you. This is this is sharp,
sharp edges and really looks like it probably hurt going
down your throat.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
Yeah. And so we found a company on you know,
online that produces square marshmallows with any kind of printed
logo that edible printed logo on it that you want,
and so we were like, yes, problem solved. So we
had Tansy makeup three different keere faces. One was a profile,
one was the one that you see, and I think

(48:20):
a one was a younger version of cure, maybe not
without the beard, And so we got a round of
those delivered to us. We all decided about the.

Speaker 4 (48:29):
One face, the kind of iconic face that we know
on the marshmallows.

Speaker 3 (48:32):
But then we all decided that they look kind of
sad because they weren't tall enough. They were just kind
of thin, super thin marshmallows, and they're like ah. So then
we called up Will our food stylists and said, have
you ever made marshmallows? And he's like, nope, but I'll
figure it out. I think his kitchen smelled like marshmallow,
you know, burn marshmallows for a very long time, but
he did. He was able to find a like, create

(48:53):
a formula to make the marshmallows as thick as they were.
We chopped them all up. Now we had the problem
of getting the face on to the marshmallows.

Speaker 4 (49:01):
So he printed out, Will print it out a bunch
of wafers.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
You know, there's these wafers that you can feed through
kind of like an ink jet printer, but it's only
four edible ink.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
Yeah, the picture on top of a cake.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
Dat exactly exactly, and so these wafers he like glued
them onto each individual marshmallow and deliver them. He's so
excited and I was like, oh, but the wafer isn't
going to burn the same way as the as the marshmallow.

Speaker 4 (49:28):
Will I was like, no, we got to print on
these marshalls.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
So he had to make another round of marshmallows, and
we found online there was a small little handheld printer
made specifically for the top of cappuccinos to print a
design on top of cappuccinos. It only prints about an
inch and a half tall, and it prints edible ink,
so we're able to get edible ink in the blue
in mt R blue, which Will had to mix himself,

(49:53):
and then we put it into this little handheld printer
and we hand printed the cre logo the Cure face
onto every single one of these marshmallows. I didn't personally
do it. The team did it, and God bless our
team because they're amazing and they will go.

Speaker 4 (50:07):
They did almost two thousand marshmallows.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
Because every plate that we had had almost forty marshmallows
on it, and we didn't know how many times we
were going to be throwing them in the fire. We
didn't know how many times people were going to be
eating them, and so we did. I don't think it
was fully two thousand, it was almost two thousand. And
we did that individually. And then the first time we
got the plate of marshmallows, we got approval on it.

(50:31):
And then we went up to the ort Bow had
the campfire and Sarah Bach had the custom bladder with
the marshmallow. We were so excited. She was about to
dump them in the fire, is going to be epic
or ready to like with tongs to pick them out
of the fire so we could reset and do again.
And she flipped the plate over and they didn't fall
off the plate because they were so sticky to the plate.

(50:52):
So she started trying to like shake the plates, and
then the whole thing just glopped together as one big pyramid,
and we quickly scrambled and we put confectioner sugar over
all the edges so that it wouldn't be too sticky,
and we kept doing it and so we were able
to finally get the ratio of confectioner sugar to the
stack of marshmallows, and then we did it and then
and then we had a a we recreated that fire

(51:15):
after we were in Minnewasca to do like the really
tight close inserts of the marshmallows burning.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
So you were up at the bow site, did the
SnowCat and the hike in and you're backpacking in two
thousand marshmallows.

Speaker 3 (51:29):
We are who actually are? Yes? And a dead CEO
and a fourth appendix? Yes, wow, yeah, no, that was
That was one of the wildest prop experiences or movie
making experience for everyone on the crew we've ever did.
And there was a lot of when it was first

(51:50):
proposed and Ryan, our location supervising location manager, found all
these spaces up at Lake Minnewasca.

Speaker 4 (51:57):
There was first a sense of like, oh my god,
how are we going to do this?

Speaker 3 (52:01):
And then there was a sense of, let's figure out
how we're going to do this because this is pretty cool.
These spaces have never been shot in before, and these
spaces are are really right for what the orbo is
supposed to be, and let's figure it out. And so
the whole the whole crew, across the board, a whole cast,
all of the creative team, everyone was just so game
to strap on our boots and our snow pants and

(52:23):
our parkas and and s trapes through snow and hike
through a mountainside. So to get to Scissor Cave, it
was about a thirty minute hike.

Speaker 4 (52:31):
And this wasn't like a nice wide trail.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
This was like climbing over rocks, you know, around the
side of a mountain. Basically, every we had these sleds
that we would drag behind us, snow sleds that we
put we would strap all of our gear on, and
two of us would be hiking holding pulling the sleds
and then a sledge there was we had them marshmallows, yep,
there was, and then we would just throw things on

(52:57):
our shoulder and we would just really try and not
forget anything because it would be like an hour turnaround
to get out of the woods, back to the truck,
back to the cave.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
It was a really cool experience, uh, Miss Wong, Sarah right, yeah,
Sarah Bou yeah yeah. Miss Wong said she loved it
because she didn't have to go back for classes. If
she'd have been at the studio breaks in between scenes,
she'd have to go for classes. But she said there
was no way they were going to pack her out
of there. So she said she sat by the fire
and John Tturo told stories from his early career, and

(53:26):
I thought, oh, I wish somebody was recording that.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
It felt like we were all camping out. It felt
like we were all on this company retreat together because
we had we had this little village of tents that
was offset that people would go in to warm up.
Props are responsible for cast comfort, so we're always providing
tents with heaters or fans if it's hot outside, for

(53:53):
the cast to go into with their chairs, and we
were all kind of like sitting around and special effects
made this camp fire that was so cool, and there
was just something very beautiful and magical about it. I
think that you know, everyone was worried, like is the
cast going to be okay? We had the coolest cast
in the world. They are truly up for anything. They
know that they're working on something special, just like we

(54:16):
all do. And there was any no one complaint. If anything,
they complained that they were too hot because of these
coats as for coats they had on and they were
lined with all this like battery electric vests that be
underneath them, and they would complain about they're too hot,
But that's a complaint that everyone could handle.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
It turned out to be just so warm a spring
of late winter and spring it was so warm up there.
So yeah, those coats were serious. Dude. Well, hey, shifting
gears on food square marshmallows are weird. But Deechin Lackman
said the food pellets that she prepares down on the
testing floor during Cheeky Bardo were edible. Tell us everything

(54:55):
about creating those I've heard stories there was a food chemist.
What were they made of? Did you taste them? Who
was eating them? Everything? What? What are those dudes? They're
in the shit of a lumen water droplet too. I
like that.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
Well, this goes again back to Okay, so Jem on
the page, it's Jema prepares her meal and eats her meal.
But then it's like, okay, wait a minute, she's being
held captive. You know, everything about her environment is being
controlled by this company. What would they give her to
eat that would be the most efficient thing to eat

(55:33):
in the world. Like, those discussions were starting to happen,
and I started thinking, like in the Jetsons, in the
old Jetsons cartoons, they would like pull lever and they
would get a bowl with like a little pellet in it,
and that's all of their food that they are nutrition
they needed for a day. I took a big kind
of inspiration from two thousand and one Space Odyssey, when

(55:54):
they have their their their meal and space and it's
like sectioned off into these little sections because it's just
has be very effective and efficient. And so I started
thinking like, Okay, maybe there's just like three lines of
food on her plate, or maybe they're just circles of
food or blow bowls that she opens up. And we
started experimenting with a lot of this, and then I
saw online when I was researching something called like square meals,

(56:17):
and it was literally like all the nutrition you need
for a meal in a two by two square and
you just like boil it and eat it or microwave
it and need it. Oh wait a minute, we're onto
something here. This is everything that she needs. So then
I was like, Okay, obviously it can't be a square,
needs to be a teardrop because it's lumin. And then
how would she like prepare this and what would it

(56:40):
be And for Jessica, the balance Jessica Legane, who directed
that episode, the balance of what Lumin was going to
allow Gemma to do and have some authority self authority
over in her space versus being completely controlled was important.

(57:01):
It was an important kind of balance to work out.
And so Jessica started thinking, I think she needs to
be able to cook her own food and give her
us a little bit of a choice. I think lumen
would have given her a little sense of self in
being able to choose a meal.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
This is this lumin is not gonna be real food.
We're gonna give you some help.

Speaker 3 (57:20):
Right, yeah, exactly, it will let me come on, it's lumin.
And so that was great. I was like, Okay, we're
gonna give her. We're gonna stock this little fridge and
we're gonna have seven choices of meat, seven choices of stars,
seven choices a veggie, and a garnish on top. And
the garnish was very important to give us just a
little sense of appetite, like being appetizing and beauty. And

(57:40):
then we were like, Tansy, let's make a cookbook. And
so Tansy was like, it is great, and so the
idea of I don't it didn't give a lot of airtime.
But the cookbook is really cool. It's kind of like
a mix and match flip book. Every meat option is
on one is in kind of one section, and then
every starch, and then every veggie. So you could flip

(58:02):
and say I want the bison, and then flip and say, no,
I think I'll have the blue jasmine rice, and then
I'll flip and have the broccoli. It gives little cooking
instructions for each one, and it gives an instruction on
how to.

Speaker 4 (58:16):
Garnish it with certain garnishes.

Speaker 3 (58:18):
So she can pull the draw, she can pull the
four little packets that she needs and cook them and
garnish as if she she had some authority over it,
some self authority. And so the Tanzy was like she
took the cookbook and she just ran with it. And
so everything that was in those pellets was edible. Everything
that was in those pellets was We tried our best

(58:40):
to make it taste like what it was. We didn't
really put bison in the bison, but we did make
it taste like meat, you know. But we did put
the puriod p the in the p one. We really
were able to boil them. It didn't really cook them
or change the consistent peop where you were allowed you
were able to boil them. And then she wanted Jessica

(59:00):
wanted her to be able to tach in to be
able to eat those, and so they were really edible
and we all we all tried them. We all made
sure that we tried them first before the actors had
to eat them. And you know, it wasn't the most
tasty thing in the world, but it wasn't horrible.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
But they look incredible that they reminded me of. I
don't know, if you're familiar with Brazil. Yeah, in the restaurant, Yeah,
they have the food that's just scoops that you know,
they represent, and they've got a picture of what it's
supposed to be behind it, and then we're supposed to
taste like that. That's what That's what these reminded me of.

Speaker 4 (59:30):
That's actually brilliant.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
That's actually a brilliant connection.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
Yeah, fantastic though, just love those. So when you prep
a melon bar or an egg cart and you get
it ready for a scene, how long does that take
to get one of those ready? And how many carts
are you creating for a scene?

Speaker 3 (59:48):
It takes a little while. We're definitely the full day
before our food stylists is creating the melons that are
cut up. We're scooping and chopping melons all day long.
The day before, we've already tested it all, so we've
already gone through the kind of trial and error of
how each melon container is going to stand on the

(01:00:08):
tray and what's going to fall over when you start
rolling the tray. So we've already tested it all, so
it's just a matter about recreating what's been tested, and
so we do it for like kind of a full
day before the Burt retirement. One was took longer because
there was just such so much more melon that we had.
We had so many watermelons that we cut up for
that one. But we always have two carts ready in props.

(01:00:31):
We say one is none, and if you have one
of one thing, you have nothing, because if you've taken,
you've you've gone through a few takes and suddenly the
thing breaks, you are you're screwed, Like the whole rest
of that scene is not doable. So we always have
two and we always have a lot of the fruit
kind of in the background, and we always try and
have a piece of fruit or a size of whatever

(01:00:54):
food is being featured in the scene that's easy and
edible for the actors. Eats We don't make everything so
chunky that they can't get it in their mouth. We
try and create as much ease for them.

Speaker 4 (01:01:07):
We like them, We want to make it easy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
So what happens to leftover is do they get on
the craft services card or do they have to get
they get trashed.

Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
It depends. Not many people wanted Gemma's pellets of food, no,
but any any leftover food that we have that has
been you know, properly refrigerated and not left out and
off camera. We try and let people either take home
or or put out. Anything that's been in the scene

(01:01:33):
and has been out for hours under the hot lights,
we usually try and compost it. We have a great
sustainability team on Severance and we try and work with
them to compost as much as we can.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
Entertainment Weekly called it the most unsettling scene in all
of season two. Irv's melon Head rolling in on that cart.
I talked a lot about it in the podcast. I
found some great discussion of what went into that. I
think think you were involved in that. What I was reading,
how long did that whole process take and when do

(01:02:05):
you remember? And then it was pinco right thinking of
of your sculptor who was sculpting in when did he
roll one in? And you went, oh, yeah, that's it,
you're getting there.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
That was entirely written into that. That was something written
into the script. That was all Dan thinking of how
he's gonna one up the last melon party.

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
Uh, and and that came straight from Dan's brain.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
And you know, I immediately started googling like watermelon sculpture competition,
Like just immediately googling it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:37):
A lot of the watermelon.

Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
That people do for competitions is kind of smaller than
the scale that we wanted. They We wanted something very
large and graphic that was going to kind of roll
past and be larger than a real head. I went
to Panco immediately, So Panko's our master sculptor. He's behind
so much of He's behind everything that sculpted on the show.

(01:02:59):
And I went to Bank was like the watermelon had
he was like yeah, And.

Speaker 4 (01:03:03):
So we went to Manhattan frit Exchange.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
We got an entire palette of watermelons and we just
had Pancos start start sculpting. And I came back next
day and he was like, oh he was he was
not happy. He's like, no, it's not it's not going well.
I was like, Okay, you'll figure it out. You can
do anything. And he came back. I came back the
next day. The content, the water content is so high

(01:03:28):
in watermelon, it's really hard to get very fine detail.
We didn't want to just carve like a two D
something into the actual rind of the melon.

Speaker 4 (01:03:39):
We wanted to see the red.

Speaker 3 (01:03:40):
We wanted Irving's head to be that red, fleshy stuff
that was very clear.

Speaker 4 (01:03:45):
In Bert's retirement party.

Speaker 3 (01:03:47):
He just kept trying. I kept coming back. We did
that for like a week. He just kept getting He
just kept shaking his head. It's not going to work.
I need to I need to make this out of foam.
I was like, no, you can't. You can't make it
out of foam. It's got to be watermelon. He was like,
just let me give me one more day. Just let
me do. Let me do my thing. I came back
the next day and I was like, you figured it out.

Speaker 4 (01:04:05):
You figured you figured it out. This looks amazing. And
he's like, that one's foam.

Speaker 3 (01:04:10):
I made that one out of phone. It looked so good,
it looks so authentic. I honestly thought he had figured
it out. I was like, okay, you can make it
out of phone. This one works. We can do this
out of Pham. And it was his idea to have
the rind of the watermelon act like his little beanie
cap for Irving's face, have his hair be kind of

(01:04:31):
the white of the rhine when you just take the
color off, and then the little curly cue vine that's
on that's on a watermelon. It was his idea. It
was like, oh, that could be the hat topper on
the bereat.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
The black melon. They put such a focus on the
black melon from Malaysia. And was that something that Pinko
suggested or was that something the writers came up with.
Where'd that black melon come from?

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
That was definitely Dan. That was Dan who wanted to
put something very exotic, chick trying to impress them with
this beauty watermelon. It was not the season for black
beauty watermelon. Oh maybe had a little black market thing
going on where somebody.

Speaker 4 (01:05:12):
Sources us some black water beauty watermelon. I don't know
where they source it from.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
And we did try, we did try to carve those,
but it was good that we got a couple of
them because we were able Picco was able to match
the color of the rind that that's a pretty authentic
match to the rind color. And you know, the black
beauty watermelon russell not as big as as what we wanted.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
It was an amazing scene. Freak me out and is.

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):
Like wow, I will say that. I will say Panco
had to make a second one with the wedge of
the ear cut out for when they've started eating. And
he did make real ears out of watermelon that Dylan
was eating. He made about sixteen of those for the scene.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
Yeah, so that way he could pull that out and
it looked like and he was actually eating amelon. I
want to shift here and get into more food. But
going to Zufu's Chinese restaurant was that really fried rice?
Mark was scarfing down. And when you're working with and
this is Eng's Chinese that you're in, which is an
actual working Chinese.

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
Restaurant, amazing, it's an amazing place. Yeah, it looks that's
such a great look.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
Well, how much of the food prep? Then? Do you
just hand over to them and go, you guys are
going to make the food or do you worry about
how it's going to look on camera? Do you have
to get involved with it that way.

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
Both of those things. So yes, it was fried rice
and lomein that was on those plates that Mark was
scarfing down. We did work with the team at Ang's
Hoho were awesome family owned restaurant and they helped us
fill the buffet that was in the scene, so they
filled a bunch of the buffet trayes for us. But
we did have to preview the food. We had to

(01:06:46):
make sure that it's in our you know, it's graphic,
that it looks good, that we could put it in
the trees and kind of have it be palatable. We
had to like make sure everything was in within our
color palette for that location. But the food that Mark
was eating, we had Will our food stylists come in
and we always want to be able to have will
plate things and be able to run a new we

(01:07:08):
can run in new plates and he's always.

Speaker 4 (01:07:10):
Ready, like keeping it warm on the side.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
So a little bit of both.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
Kind of figured you were probably making use of them
since that's what they do. So I should have as
said earlier when we were talking of eggbar, but you
quite famously have two practicing vegans in the main cast
that cherry and Britt Lauer, who do not eat eggs.
What were they eating when they were scarfing down those
deviled eggs at the Coveted egg bar.

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
Well, this is another place where our food styles comes in.
And when you said earlier about kind of food chemist,
Will is the one who's like the little mad scientists
in the kitchen, figuring out different ways to replicate things
that aren't meat, or replicate things that look like food
pellets and make sure that they're not going to glop
up or fall apart. And so he's very versed in

(01:07:58):
vegan substitutes look like real foods, and so he made
the scotch egg entirely vegan. He made the deviled eggs
entirely vegan. He has like a secret formula that he
uses for the look of egg whites. He used some
vegan meat for inside the Scotch egg, and we had yes,
so we would have rows of regular eggs and then
we would have rows of the vegan eggs that Dylan

(01:08:20):
and Helly we're gonna eat.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
So is that the same thing for the segmented egg
breakfast scene that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:26):
Helly ate in episode two nine? She at that time
she said she'd be willing to eat an egg, So
that was not a vegan egg, that's correct.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Talking about Mark Scout taking a lot of pills to
get reintegrated. Are those something you're producing? Are those just
sugar pills? What's going on with the pills?

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
Those are pills that they are like placebo pills that
we get from a prop house that only fabricates prop
pills and presses them per order for us and puts
them in like a tamper resistant container, and she to us,
you know, we take any time there's pills on set,
we take it very seriously, and we make sure the
chain of custody is well documented and that nothing's getting

(01:09:09):
swapped out or replaced for the actor's safety, for everyone's
safety on there. Sure, yeah, and so yeah, those are
those are placebo pills. Those are basically sugar pills, and
we and they die of certain colors that we request
colors for. And then I think he also had some
capsules in there and we just those are gelatin capsules
that we don't fill with anything.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
How involved is the creative team on that just basically
colors or are they looking at shapes and sizes and
do they want them to look like other types of
pills or.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
We are indeed that a lot. I mean we can
say that about any prop on the show, and we
are indeed it a lot. Yeah. I got every kind
of shape and size and color that we could possibly
have because no one knew what it should look like
and should it be one pill, should it be a
handful of pills, should it be pills that he takes
every day? And so then I got a bunch of
different pill containers too, and we like the one that

(01:09:57):
slide slid out because it was a little it was
a little incognitiate, you know, it wasn't like does flip
up daily pill.

Speaker 4 (01:10:03):
Dividers that you can take.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
And so basically we eliminated smaller pills first, like we
wanted everyone wanted the look of like that's gonna be
a big handful of a horse pill to swallow, So
we eliminate all the smaller ones. There was a little
bit of play of red pill, blue pill that we
wanted to kind of just subconsciously reference as well. And
then there was some of the capsules that were divided.

(01:10:27):
You know, we're always trying to find severed, you know,
any kind of severed metaphors. So I did put some
capsules in there that were I think black and blue
and had two different colors in them, and we kind
of just kept narrowing it down and on the day
deciding how many should go in each little slotted segment.
I think it was really effective to be able to
see what he was put Mark was putting himself through

(01:10:48):
drinking that elixir and the pills, and you know, just
really what he was willing, the lengths he was willing
to go through to try and find Gemma. Okay, we
purposely made him big.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
Now I've heard you talk about the bottles of goo,
but just real quick, the bottle of the goo is
Peina Colada.

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
Peinu Colada protein shake you can buy off the shelf.
And then there was chunks of coconut to make it
look gross.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
Which for me reminded me of tapeworms. I just thought
that's what I was thinking.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
And then we put some apple sauce in it to
thicken it up, so it was really kind of gloppy
and gloopy. We almost made it not taste good to
you know, help out of but we were like, well,
let's let's give him something. Let's give them something.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
I think it was gross enough just on consistency. All right,
let's move away from food. I'm starting to get hungry. Actually,
oh man, was it that fun and amazing? But we're
not done. We've got another segment even longer than this
one for next week. Don't miss part two of the
Severed interview with Property Master Catherine Miller next time on Severed,

(01:11:50):
the Ultimate Severance Podcast. Then after our epic two part interview,
we'll be back to breaking down. Cheek I bardo. We've
got one more commercial break right here. Then we'll run
the clothes. If you're heading for the elevator right now,
Refiner remembered to please stagger your exits and here come
more commercials. Hey, this is Ben Stiller. Thanks for listening

(01:12:12):
to Severed, The Ultimate Severance Podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
You've been listening to Severed, The Ultimate Severance Podcast. Severed
is written, produced, and hosted by Alan Stair.

Speaker 5 (01:12:25):
Severed is not endorsed by Red Hour Productions, Endeavor Content,
or Apple TV Plus. This podcast is intended for entertainment
and informational purposes only.

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
Severance, the Severance logo, and all video and audio of
Severance and Severance characters are registered trademarks of Red Hour
Endeavor content, Apple TV Plus, or their respective copyright holders.

Speaker 5 (01:12:47):
Please make sure to leave a five star rating and
review for severed at Apple Podcasts

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