Ben Stiller reacts to Severance’s planned ending

Do you have an idea in your head of how this show will end?

I do. I have a scene in my mind that has mostly remained unchanged since I first pitched the show to Ben (Stiller) and told him and he was like, “Oh, this is pretty good.” Much has changed about the plan. I’m not going to pretend that it was this structurally perfect thing from day one. We’ve interrogated it and updated it as we’ve gone, but its structure and its endpoint, it’s kind of remained our north star from the beginning.

How specific is your vision for the ending? Do you know where each character ends up, do you have a broad idea of ​​what’s going to happen, or are the final moments only in your mind? Because TV is such an interesting medium because it’s so fluid and obviously there are stories about it Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad, that character showed up in a big, unexpected way, and the entire series is completely different because of that. Obviously you leave yourself room to change things quickly, but how specific is your vision of how this ends?

Yes, you can certainly under-plan a show like this, but you can also over-plan it. If you stick too rigidly to your original understanding of the matter, you can really hinder your progress. namely, My original version of the script was completely differentand before I brought it to Ben, there was a much clearer version. It was more like something like “Brazil” or almost like a Monty Python thing where it was dark, but then there was this almost magical realism. If I had been obsessively married, we would never have gotten the offer we got.

So you have to kind of learn that lesson and use it to move forward and remember that there might be a better version of this that you don’t know yet and you have to be open to that. And you have to allow yourself to fall in love with certain characters or other elements of the story that you weren’t expecting, and be able to think on your feet and weave it into the narrative and be like, “Okay, I didn’t expect to like this guy, but now we can’t do the show.” Without him, what is his role in the rest of this thing?”

So with all that said – and this is the last question I’ll ask you about the finale – how many seasons do you think makes sense for “Severance” as a whole?

We have a number in mind. I think that’s all I can say.

Well, fair enough.

We have a very good number in mind – we are not positive. It’s like, “Maybe we’ll do more, but it’ll probably be this number.”

Gotcha. Okay. So tell me about working with Keanu Reeves on the “Lumon is Listening” video for the Season 2 premiere. I’m sure it was Keanu. He wasn’t credited in that first episode, but he sure looked a lot like himself.

(Cunningly) Well, I certainly have no idea what you could be talking about. I don’t actually know this actor.

Show.

Is this the guy from the Lake House?

(He laughs) And it is in fact.

I love the Lake House.

Well, this line of questioning is clearly going nowhere. (He laughs)