The highlight of “Severance” Episode 7 has to be the Music/Dance Experience earned by Helly R. (Britt Lower) and enjoyed by all. TheWrap asked the best and worst dancer from that Macro Data Refinement mini-party, Tramell Tillman and Adam Scott, respectively, all about that memorable scene. (You know, before it turned into a fight scene.)
First, we made Scott select which musical genre he’d pick from Lumon Industries’ lengthy — and descriptive — list. Yes, we made him sit and patiently listen while we read off the whole damn thing, which is probably longer than you remember.
“It has to be ‘Effusive Ska,’” Scott told TheWrap.
Here’s the full menu:
Bawdy Funk
Bouncy Swing
Bouyant Reggae
Defiant Jazz
Effusive Ska
Exalted Choral
Exciting Rap
Hootin’ Tootin Country
Lofty Orchestral
Maximized Rhythms
Playful Punk
Reckless Disco
Spooky Ambient
Tearful Emo
Thoughtful Grunge
Wholesome Big Band
Wistful Pipes
Helly R. chose “Defiant Jazz,” which doubled as the title of Episode 7.
So Adam’s answer there was clearly much shorter than the question. Fortunately, Scott had more to say about the Music/Dance Experience scene overall — and his character’s awkward, dorky movement.
“I kind of made the decision that Innie Mark probably hadn’t danced before,” he told us. “This dance party is something that’s sort of fabled that you’ve heard about, but he had yet to actually experience. So, much like him being able to speak English and know a certain amount of sort of stock things. The idea of dancing is familiar to him, but actually doing it was something he hadn’t put into practice. But he could sort of practically start moving to the music and figure out what to do. And I think it probably ended up looking like someone who hadn’t really danced much before.”
Not that Mark stood a chance looking anything but dorky with Milchick (Tramell Tillman) dancing circles around the Macro Data Refiners.
“Oh man, he’s incredible,” Scott said. “Tramell’s incredible.”
Tramell, who is incredible, separately told TheWrap it took “two 12-hour days” to shoot the Music/Dance Experience scene.
“There were so many different angles,” he recalled. (Shoutout to director Ben Stiller and cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné here.)
And there were just as many challenges, Tillman told us.
“You know, you’re dancing, so it’s trickier because you have to make sure you move and dance with the camera and dance with your scene partner — and the music’s not easy to dance to,” he said.
Also tricky for the man brilliantly playing Lumon middle manager Mr. Milchick?
“I had this very beautiful cream cashmere sweater. But it was unbelievably hot,” Tillman said. “God bless the P.A.s on our set. They were on standby with ice packs and would just like stuff the ice packs in my neck and underneath the sweater. But we had to be careful because you didn’t want to get the sweater wet, and you didn’t want to make the makeup run.”
New “Severance” episodes roll out Fridays on Apple TV+.