When the second season of “Breakup”First, and the work puzzle box quickly became the most buzzing show on television, Adam Scott was in the Irish countryside that films an independent horror film. When he returned to the United States, everything had changed.
“It’s certainly different to walk in the street,” explains Scott, who plays the scout Mark with split brains on the Apple TV +series. “Every 10 steps, someone has to talk about the show. People cry about their cars. And in a bakery, there was a cookie with my face on it. ”
We are on the terrace of an Italian restaurant, drinking double espressos with Ben Stiller While the late afternoon sun cooks asphalt on the 10th avenue. I cannot say if one of them is aware that every few minutes, a passer -by almost breaks their neck to see them.
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“Whatever recognition I had over the years has been a regular rise, so I am used to a certain amount of stop by people,” said Scott. He became a star as a break in love with Amy Poehler for “Parks and Recreation”, directed the cult favorite “Party Down” and played memorable roles in “Big Little Lies” and “Step Brothers”. He sheets one leg on the other. “But it’s new.”
A month after the final of season 2 of season 2, the star and the director of the “fire semets” are sitting for what I can only suppose is one of the last stops of their impressive six -month world tour. It starts to look more like a victory tour. When I interviewed them in December before the first, Scott and Stiller focused on the rallying of those who watched season 1 to meet again for season 2.. Now the show is bigger than one of them could have imagined: what started as a niche science fiction hit with rewards and critical acclaim has become a cultural juggernaut. Terms like “Innie” and “Outtie” have permeated the vocabulary of the offices. His characters and their cabins took over the central station – and the Internet – for two days. And his theme song was interpreted for some 50,000 people in Coachella.
“For me, it’s when Madison Square Garden’s organ player plays him in Knicks matches,” said Stiller. “As I died and I went to paradise.”
Stiller read the pilot for the first time for the “starting semets” almost a decade ago. Written by the Hollywood tool Dan Erickson, the scenario followed the scout Mark struck with sorrow, which undergoes a procedure which completely “separates” his family life from his professional life, creating two consciences separated by an office elevator. While Mark and his colleagues from Lumon Industries discover cracks in the carefully designed veneer of biotechnological society, dark truths prove. “It reminded me of so much that I liked in terms of workplace comedies,” explains Stiller. “But there was this strange and strange thing.”
It was entirely original, and Stiller was pushed to give life to Lumon. He and Erickson both thought of Scott for the main role, therefore, in 2017, Stiller called him. It was a few days after the first presidential inauguration of Donald Trump and Scott was in Sundance, to the knees in the snow, when he answered the phone.
“Ben gave me the rapid slowdown – for lack of a better term, the elevator ground,” explains Scott. “I couldn’t shake it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for a year and a half until I read the script. ”
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Ploching the show was the most difficult part. “No one wanted it except Apple, which did not even exist as a streamer,” said Stiller. “It was a bit like:” Oh brilliant, the computer company! ” It didn’t even seem real. (Now, Stiller says with confidence that Apple is “the best place” for the “starting semets”, and not only because of the “meta-levels” of that of a massive global technological company. “Thank God, we did not end up, like, Showtime or something.”)
Although he never worked on television, Erickson had a fairly robust vision for the program, while Stiller directed his visual language with an architectural book and references of films of several pages. While Lumon was initially designed as a “banal 90s” office building, Stiller instilled in a retro-inspired retro-united from the 80s.
While the actors connected, the characters have also evolved. In the original scripts, Mark’s innie slipped into work with a charming snarkiness (or, as Stiller says, “this familiar thing” makes Scott). But once he started to dress the role, Scott knew that the character had to be presented as a “real believer” of the company.
“At the beginning, there was, with Innie Mark, a little suspicion of cynicism about Lumon from the start. A change we made was to make him more than one pet at the beginning and to let Helly be the source of this cynicism to slip, “explains Scott, referring to the romantic interest of Mark, played by Britt Lower.
At the start of season 1, Stiller even planned to get started in front of the camera. He played by playing in a way a doctor, but the character was completely rebuilt (and must not be confused with the roles played by Robby Benson and Sandra Bernhard in season 2). “We talked about it. There was a script that we thought of, but that didn’t seem well, “said Stiller. “It’s great that I’m not there. I am very happy not to have my face on the display panel. ”
The scriptwriters’ room for season 3 of “Severance” is underway in Los Angeles, with Stiller flying on the west coast every 10 days, and Scott who regularly heads. (The two are not executive producers in the series.) But despite the work actively on the “semet”, none of the men in front of me really knows how to talk about it.
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“People seem really curious to know the process,” says Stiller. “It is difficult to respond to this kind of thing.”
During the shooting of season 1, Scott bought a poster board and wrote two separate deadlines for Mark’s Innie and Outtie – “because I heard that this is what Michael Keaton did in` Multiplicity ” ” – and he kept two series of scripts with different annotations for each side of his character. “In season 2, it was just a big bunch of things,” he said.
“Everyone has their own system monitoring system,” says Stiller, adding that Erickson wrote biographies and stories of characters. “We all live with the show. In We too.
A subject on the “seed” that has been too discussed is the three -year gap between the seasons, the manufacturers of the program citing Hollywood work as the main reason for delay. But a report According to April 2023, blamed the “abandoned scripts”, the “showrunners who do not speak to each other” and a “toxic environment” behind the scenes.
“Things that happen behind the scenes should happen behind the scenes. I don’t want to tell people about what’s going on because, frankly, it’s private, ”explains Stiller.
“Everyone in the series is heard. There has never been a quirk in our show between anyone,” he said. However, “I don’t think there has never been a creative process that has no conflict, and it’s really important, because you question and constantly try to make sure that the choices you make are those that will resist in two years.”
An hour after our interview, I turn to a page of my notebook labeled “questions to which they probably do not answer”. I shoot fast at Stiller.
How many episodes have been written for season 3? (Long break.) “I don’t want to talk about where we are in our process.” How many seasons will you do in total? (Small smile.) “No comment.” Will John Turturro be back? (Big smile.) “No comment.”
Do you see the “dryer” as a franchise with spin-off programs? Stiller speaks slowly: “There are two specific ideas – that I will not tell you – that we have talked about spin -off ideas internally as possible.” Asked what stage of development in the impact ideas, or if they were discussed with Apple, everything said, with a shy smile, is: “They are emerging.”
As for the other extensions of the show, Stiller says that it would be “great to have a” dry “video game”. Scott agrees: “I think it lends itself to one.” And, at some point, they want to make goods like Lumon keyboards, as long as it seems “tailor -made and specific to the show”.
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Stiller and Scott both built people from the showbiz that people would kill, anchoring beloved movies and television shows that have crossed the noise and resisted the time test. So, my last question is a Doozy: is the “troubleshooting” the final project of your career?
“Since I read the script, I knew that this is what I have worked all this time,” said Scott. “For 25 years, I have been making my way through the sludge to go to a place where I could perhaps get a role like this. It’s like a highlight for me. “
Stiller agrees: “To live this experience at this stage of my career – after having done it for a long time – I never want to take it for acquired.”
We spent 30 minutes in our time allocated, and the dinner service is fast approaching. People are starting to run into the restaurant.
Maybe Stiller and Scott can slide the side output, the nuances and disappear in the city. If they move quickly, they can perhaps do more than 10 steps without being asked about Inie or outings or Gemma or Helly.
Suddenly, a booming voice calls from the inside of the restaurant: “I’m just a person in the Bronx, but you are the fucking bomb! Can I take a photo with you?”
Not so fast.
