‘Severance’ Director Ben Stiller Reveals Mark’s Innie-Outie Scene Was Rewritten Before Filming

[Warning: The below and video above contain MAJOR spoilers for Severance Season 2 Episode 10, “Cold Harbor.”]

Severance‘s Season 2 finale delivered one of its most jaw-dropping moments when outie Mark Scout (Adam Scott) had a conversation with his innie, Mark S., in the installment’s opening moments.

For those less familiar with Apple TV+‘s acclaimed drama, Severance follows Mark, a man who decides to undergo a procedure to be “severed,” which separates his work consciousness from his off-hours consciousness, otherwise known as his innie and outie. While working at Lumon Industries as his innie, Mark has no knowledge or recollection of his time spent outside of the office and vice versa for his outside persona.

However, those worlds began to collide as Mark began undergoing reintegration, a procedure to help merge both sides of his consciousness. While the process wasn’t completed while Season 2 was airing, the two sides of Mark’s life began to bleed into each other, making the confrontation of Mark’s innie versus his outie a rather memorable onscreen experience.

Apple TV+

Realizing that he’ll need innie Mark to help save his kidnapped wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman), after an explanation from his sister Devon (Jen Tullock) and his former boss Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette), outie Mark does his best to convey the situation to his innie via camcorder. This sparks a back-and-forth conversation that viewers have to see to believe as Scott delivers an awe-inspiring performance.

So how did it all come together? “I don’t know,” Scott admitted to TV Insider while on the red carpet at Apple TV+’s FYC event at the “Lumon” offices in Holmdel, New Jersey. “But I have to say it was by far the most insufferable actor I’ve ever worked with… Just such a pain in the a**, and I now know what all my fellow castmates have been putting up with for so long,” he joked, noting the experience of acting opposite himself.

“Yeah, that was again challenging, but really fun. And we just dove in. I mean, the scene itself… Beau Willimon, Dan Erickson, and Mark Friedman had been working on the scene for a long time because it’s the kind of scene that could go wrong, mostly because of performance. It could be really corny, it could take the wrong turns, and I think they did a beautiful job,” Scott commended his colleagues, adding, “It made my job so much easier.”

Episode director and series executive producer Ben Stiller seemed to echo Scott’s sentiments when we caught up with him on the red carpet. “I mean, the goal was to not get confused,” Still said of the execution onscreen, which saw Mark watching recorded messages from himself rather than capturing him filming them. “That was my goal in shooting it. I wanted to be able to follow it. It was confusing… I mean, I can’t even imagine as an actor what Adam was having to go through,” Stiller added, noting, “We were rewriting that scene up until the time we shot it too.”

Related

How 'Severance' Broke Gwendoline Christie's Post-'Game of Thrones' No-Combat Policy (Exclusive)

Stiller revealed, though, that the goal of the scene was to make sure the audience was also able to follow along with the tennis match of a conversation between innie and outie Mark. Noting that “pace” was important, Stiller said, “Ultimately, it was just [about] trying to tell the story in the clearest way and not have the audience really think about what the filmmaking was there [and] just being involved in what Adam was doing.”

The sequence takes place during the finale episode’s opening minutes, and Stiller said, “I was a little concerned. We saw how long the scene was when we got the first cut. It was like 18 or 19 minutes, and I was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is long.’ But then every time I would watch it, we would be drawn into what he was saying. Adam was just doing such a great job acting it.”

We’ll second that. What will happen next for Mark’s innie and outie? Only time will tell for certain, as innie Mark was last seen running through the halls of Lumon with Helly’s (Britt Lower) hand in his after saving Gemma and escorting her to the exit stairwell. Stay tuned for updates and let us know your theories in the comments section below.

Severance, Seasons 1-2, Streaming now, Apple TV+