“Just let her dance. We want to see her dance!”
Tramell Tillman quotes the crew members of Severance, the critically acclaimed sci-fi thriller series on Apple TV+, during filming of episode seven, Defiant Jazz. Heading into the final stages of its first season, Severance has already secured cult status with the story of the mysterious corporation Lumon Industries, the strange dogma of its leader Kier Eagan, and the brain surgery that divides certain employees into their “Innie” and “Innie” Outie’ selves branching out the memories of their personal and professional lives. Tillman plays Lumon’s middle manager Mr. Milchick, a foreboding character who oversees the Macrodata Refinement (MDR) team and its four detached members: Mark (Adam Scott), Helly (Britt Lower), Irving (John Turturro) and Dylan (Zach Cherry). ).
Milchick is a chameleon and quintessentially loyal to Lumon, a “really enthusiastic corporate guy” as envisioned by Severance creator Dan Erickson. In one scene, Milchick smilingly offers the team a “waffle party” if they achieve their goals; in another, he tortures his employees in Lumon’s ironically named break room, forcing them to repeat a “statement of regret” more than 1,000 times — an apology to the company for not acting strictly according to its mission. Tillman “definitely picked up on the idea that there’s something really scary behind the smile, and if you’re not careful, it comes out,” says Erickson. In “Defiant Jazz,” the actor channels this unsettling mix of charm and menace during a music dance experience (MDE) designed to endear him to the MDR department, which “totally backfires,” Tillman says, while fluttering, slides and makes the bird.
“The set is usually very quiet, but every once in a while I hear a little laughter – stifled laughter,” Tillman recalls of the two days it took to shoot the MDE. “This particular sequence brought so much joy to people. It’s cute, it’s fun, and it’s still very scary because it makes me look scary.”
Episode seven provided an opportunity to examine how the barrier between the innie and outie selves of employees “begins to dangerously break down,” says Erickson. Dylan is consumed by the knowledge that his outie has a son, which he learns after Milchik wakes his innie outside of the office — a gross breach of Lumon protocol and a shocking misstep by a man who is otherwise “impeccable,” “fresh,” and “obsessed,” says Tramell. Irving is confused and slightly suspicious about the implications of the MDR fraternizing with Burt (Christopher Walken), the head of the Mystifiers Optics and design department. In his pocket, Mark finds the key card of Lumon security chief Mr. Graner (Michael Cumpsty), whom Mark’s outie version was involved in murdering the night before. And Helly, still reeling from her suicide attempt and the baby goats she and Mark found while wandering the Lumon compound, is stuck as to what other anomalies might be hiding in the labyrinthine white passageways. Into this confusion, Milchick ambles, back straight as ever, pushing a cart with a turntable and offering an unexpected benefit: a five-minute music-dance experience.
Photo: AppleTV+
“We always wanted more stylistic juxtapositions: something that seems really, really beautiful and beautiful next to something that’s terrifying and frightening,” says Erickson. (His other group-binding “touch tank” idea, similar to the Halloween haunted house gags, involved bowls of spaghetti masquerading as brains, but was shelved after “there was so much confusion as to what the heck I was talking about .”) Figuring out how to get the dance number from page to set brought together several members of the crew, including executive producer Mark Friedman, who Erickson credits with coining the term “defying jazz” and playing a key role in the development of the sequence has played; Cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné, who previously worked with director and EP Ben Stiller on the miniseries Escape at Dannemora; and choreographer Tara Rodriguez, who helped Tillman and the other cast members find their dance moves.
The process took weeks. Helen Leigh’s script left “a lot of wiggle room,” says Erickson, and everyone’s creativity prevailed. For Tillman, that meant solo dance parties in his apartment “with the blinds drawn” to Earth, Wind & Fire; Stevie Wonder; and Aretha Franklin to perfect Milchick’s moves. While he and Rodriguez were working on the choreography of the clip from Joe McPhee’s 1971 song “Shakey Jake,” which was excerpted by music supervisor George Drakoulias, Gagné and Stiller worked on the design of the ceiling’s rainbow-colored lighting, capitalizing on a happy accident with the Dimmer board, which created the strobe effect.
“The gaffer thought it looked cool, so he said I’d just show her,” says Gagné. “And I thought: This is the most amazing thing! We keep it!”
Other challenges emerged. It took almost a month to program the lighting, which Tillman – nicknamed “Milkshake” on set after a PA misread “Milchick” – describes as Severance’s own Studio 54. Tillman and Rodriguez decided that he would not know the dance moves the MDR crew would perform during the sequence, adding the added challenge of Tillman reacting to them organically during filming. (The actor’s only self-imposed rule for Milchick: “It’s in the Lumon manual, no twerking.”) On the first day of filming of the MDE, holding ice cream to keep Tillman from sweating through a cream-colored cashmere sweater that said “warmth includes like no other”, the cast and crew didn’t even get to dance.
“We get to the point where I turn around, drop the needle on the record and turn on the light. And I think that was the end of that day,” says Tillman. But by day two, with the cast and crew hyped up, “we’re just having fun.”
The morning was devoted to the dance number, which Tillman estimated lasted about 10 takes. “Many years in theater definitely prepared me to be able to dance and to be open because I needed to get information from them and that information was in their dance,” he says. The MDR room, Gagné’s favorite backdrop at the Lumon for its contrasting tones and geometric lines, comes to life in shades of purple, blue and pink as Tillman meanders across the floor and performs a ’60s mod dance with Helly, who as a soldier march with Mark and come down with Irv. (Among the takes that didn’t make it into the final cut were “The Bump,” starring Mark, and “A Little Snake,” starring John Turturro,” says Tillman.)
“We used steadicam for the dance part, which for me was music video vibes,” says Gagné. Key to the sequence, both Erickson and Tillman say, is that Milchick is genuinely excited to come down – Tillman conveys this by alternating mean muggings and big smiles – and the steadicam ensures silky fluidity as he moves from person to person emotional. But by the time Milchick lands behind the non-dancing Dylan’s desk, the mood has changed. The lighting lingers on a screen of ominous copper, a compromise between Gagné (who wanted orange) and Stiller (who wanted red). The sax in “Shakey Jake” howls and screams. As Milchick lurks behind Dylan’s desk, flanking him from side to side with increasingly aggressive dance moves (“One of my favorite shots of the whole show,” says Erickson), the MDE morphs into something else.
The afternoon of that second day of shooting was dedicated to Dylan’s outburst of unexpected but understandable violence against Milchick. The joy of the MDE and the visual smoothness are deliberately achieved with the Steadicam evaporates, and Gagné switches to handheld to serve the “savagery of the unpredictable, unpredictable situation,” she says. A stunt double for Tillman walked in just as Dylan pushed Milchick into the MDE truck, while Tillman’s startlingly angry performance of the line “The music-dance experience is officially canceled” happened “at the moment,” Tillman adds . Dylan’s attack “was an act of treason” from Milchick’s point of view, the actor says. “Man, I come in here trying to please. We will have a great time. I’ll help you forget what happened the night before. And you come up and take a piece of my arm? [Laughs.] For example, what are you doing?”
The bite, which leaves a bloody stain on Milchick’s sweater, certainly feels like a point of no return – the crucial breach between the supervisor and the group he’s tasked with controlling. The MDE ends with every page in a contrasting image, with deadpan humor in Milchick’s haughty departure but a sober united front for Mark, Irving and Helly as they rally around Dylan. “It’s one of the first, if not the first, time that you’ve seen them all touch,” says Erickson. “As I watched them, I thought, oh, they’ve just become a team.”