New York City-based choreographer Andrew Turtletaub got the call that his skills were needed on the “Severance” set. Immediately. A marching-band sequence for the Season 2 finale was underway, led by Ty Brown, the director of the Brooklyn United Music and Arts Program. Brown put together 50-plus musicians from the tristate area and worked with them on the routine, but the scenes needed a choreographer to pull everything together for the cameras.
So Turtletaub raced to set, read the script — which producers didn’t send to him because of the Apple TV+ series’ Lumon levels of secrecy — and knew exactly what the number called for. “I read the two scenes, and I was like, ‘Oh, done,’” said the choreographer, who primarily works on stage productions. “The script told me everything I needed to do and how to create it.”
The action comes about halfway into the episode (which was directed by exec producer Ben Stiller) and is meant to be a celebration of Adam Scott’s character, Mark S., who just finished “refining” the data for a major project. But the nefarious Lumon Industries doesn’t throw staid office parties.
After Tramell Tillman’s Mr. Milchick announces the company’s own “Choreography and Merriment” department, in marches a band in rigid formation, blasting the “Kier Anthem,” an ode to Lumon’s founder first heard in Season 1 (and written by Emmy winner Theodore Shapiro). They take over the room, pushing an increasingly dumbfounded Mark S. and Helly R. (Britt Lower) to the center.
“It’s [the band] showing up and this massive force coming out of the hallways,” Turtletaub said. “It was supposed to shock Mark and Helly and create this tension and build and build and build. They were like, ‘What is happening? Where did this marching band even come from? What room were they hiding in?’”
This part of the celebration ends with the band stopping abruptly and flipping above their heads a series of white squares that, as captured in an overhead shot, form the message “100%” and a drawing of Mark S. “That was choreographed within an inch of its life, because there couldn’t be any gaps [between the musicians],” Turtletaub said. “We had to move one person at a time to fill the empty spaces. You see them in perfect rows, but [for this] they’re actually really, really close together.” (The message and portrait were added to the white squares via CGI.)
Mr. Milchick then announces another paean to Lumon luminaries, “The Ballad of Ambrose and Gunnel” (which helped earn Shapiro an Outstanding Music Composition nomination for the episode’s score). While the first number evokes a military parade in its precision and formality, the second was designed to capture the jubilant energy of marching bands from HBCUs, including Sonic Boom of the South from Tillman’s own alma mater, Jackson State University.
Initially, he was reluctant to do another dance scene, concerned that it would feel like a gimmick after his performance in Season 1’s “Defiant Jazz.” But he hashed it out with Turtletaub and agreed to give the steps a try. “We started to play. And then it hit him that this is not anything like what was happening in Season 1,” the choreographer said. “He was going to the band and then backing away. When he started doing it, it was very small, and then he got more excited and more into it. My assistants and I just kept saying, ‘Bigger! Bigger! Bigger!’ And then all of a sudden he did it, and I was like, ‘Never do that smaller again!’ It was such a collaboration.”
Although the second number is as bizarre as a fever dream, it is the closest Lumon employees get to letting loose. “The ballad is really supposed to be: Now we’re gonna have fun,” Turtletaub said. “Tramell takes his jacket off and he gets down with the get down. He dances in a full circle around [Scott and Lower]. That one is just pure joy. We’re doing body rolls! Tramell is dancing in this very heavily choreographed circle so the camera can weave through and get every shot. I’m so blessed that Ben got all of it.”
This story first ran in the Down to the Wire Drama issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
