“It always just feels like standing at the bottom of a mountain and looking up at it.”
One of the most affecting threads in season two of Apple TV+’s “Severance” is the unexpected connection between Innie Dylan (Zach Cherry) and his Outie’s wife, Gretchen — played with tender longing by two-time Emmy winner Merritt Wever. What begins as a series of tentative visitation-room exchanges deepens into one of the season’s most poignant explorations of identity, grounding the show’s high-concept world in something profoundly human.
For Wever, whose career spans memorable roles in “Nurse Jackie”, “Godless”, and “Unbelievable”, the part marks a return to guest-starring roots, but one that has resonated powerfully: she has earned an Emmy nomination for her performance among the show’s 27 nominations this year.
Created by Dan Erickson and largely directed by Ben Stiller, the sophomore season picks up in the immediate aftermath of season one’s cliffhanger, with Mark (Adam Scott), Helly (Britt Lower), Irving (John Turturro), and Dylan grappling with their newfound glimpses of the outside world. Against that backdrop, Gretchen’s encounters with Innie Dylan unfold with a bittersweet intensity within the confines of the visitation room, moments that, as Wever explains, were sharpened by Stiller’s instincts as a director.
“I always prefer not to do too much talking before the doing of something,” shares Wever. “I know that all actors are different, and even though we’re all trying to get to the same place, we have different ways of getting there, and some actors I’ve worked with who are wonderful need to almost battle it out in their heads first before getting free.”
Merritt Wever spoke with Awards Focus about how her outlook on guest-starring roles has evolved over her career, the subtle dynamics of her scenes with Zach Cherry, the artistry of makeup and hairstyling in charting Gretchen’s encounters with Innie Dylan, and the creative resonance she discovered within the series.
Awards Focus: What did it mean to you coming into “Severance” as a guest star and receiving an Emmy nomination for your role?
Merritt Wever: It always means a lot to be recognized by my peers. It was very meaningful to me. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better at just taking in good things when they come my way, because I’m old enough to know that you can’t always control when nice things happen and to just accept them and say thank you. So I accept it and I say thank you very much.
AF: It’s interesting looking at your career, because you started with a lot of guest star roles, like with “Law & Order”. What has changed for you coming into “Severance” as a guest star compared to earlier in your career when joining an established show as a guest star?
Wever: That’s so interesting. I can tell you the thing that hasn’t changed, and that I wish had changed is the anxiety level around going to work. Those first-day jitters are like the first day of school. I wish that had changed. I wish that time had given me an inoculation to imposter syndrome, but I feel like whenever you go to work in this profession, and maybe in any of the creative arts, you’re always starting at zero. You’re always building something anew. So, you can remind yourself of your process, but it’s not as though you can apply what you did last time to what you’re doing this time. So, you’re always starting with a blank page.
There were many things that were nice about working on “Severance”, but it reminded me of how nice it is to do real time on a multi-season television show. Being a guest star is wonderful and there’s a lot of ways that it’s a lovely thing as an actor both creatively and professionally to be able to come in and dip your toe in something really lovely and then leave, and everybody else is the person that’s putting it on their back for a year and a half to get it to the finish line. It’s not your baby, somehow, but it also reminded me of some of the beautiful magic that can happen when you work with the same group of people over time.
You develop, best case scenario, a creative shorthand with them, and they learn how you work, and you learn how they work, and the writers can observe you and see what you bring to a part, even if it’s subconsciously, and write towards it. It’s like this subterranean form of communication, being done without words between you and the writers, and they can see things in you that you’ve never thought to see in yourself, and vice versa in their writing.
It was a lovely thing to kind of experience up close, and getting to see that happen for Zach [Cherry]. Seeing them write for him and write for what he showed up and brought to season one, and writing to those strengths, but then, gently encouraging him to open other doors to what he can do. It was so gorgeous to see him rise to the occasion, but it also made me wistful for that experience. It started something jangling around in me that hadn’t been jangled in a few years, and I was like, do I want to sign on for like seven seasons of something?
AF: “Severance” has such a unique, assured tone in the first season. What was it like for you reading the scripts and the role of Gretchen, and seeing the progression of her relationship with both Dylan’s over the season?
Wever: As someone who had seen the first season and as a fan of the show, it was really nice to get the scripts because I was getting to read ahead of the world what was going to happen. I kept thinking I would lose access to scripts if I wasn’t in every episode, but they just kept accidentally sending me everything.
Ben [Stiller] had given me a sense before I signed on of where Gretchen was going to go. So, it wasn’t as though I was waiting to get the scripts and see what they were going to ask of me. I had actually told Ben when we spoke at first that I had recently done time on a job that I didn’t regret doing, but I was doing it because I respected the people involved, and I respected the story they were telling, and I wanted to be a part of that. But when it came to the thing that I was actually doing when I went in to go to work, I didn’t realize until I got there how lonely it would feel to not be participating in the thing that actually drew me to the project.
So, I said, can you give me an idea of what you’re asking me to do, because I know what it’s like to come onto something really great, but when you’re getting up in the morning to go to work, you’re kind of doing this thing over here. So, he gave me a sense of what her journey was going to be, and I was able to read the first three or four scripts in the season. Gretchen only features in one of those, but I was able to really get a sense of, I mean, you mentioned tone, and that was something too that I could worry less about how I was going to come in and fit into that world.
AF: What is it like to be directed by Ben and for him to be an actor who is also a director? How did that help you with your performance?
Wever: I was just thinking about that this morning. One of the things that happened, I remember being on the phone with him, and having that same conversation, and explaining to him that I’d recently had an experience, and it didn’t feel good. And I remember he said, “Oh, I’m sorry that happened to you.” I remember being taken aback and remembering, oh, well, he’s an actor. He knows what it’s like. He’s lived in so many different arenas or lanes in this profession and in this creative space that he understands what I’m talking about when I say that.
I remember other actors talking about how they learned to trust Ben as a director because when he’s ready to move on, it means that he has the thing that he wants, which again reminded me of how nice it is to build a creative working relationship and language with the same people over multiple seasons of work.
I remember our first day of work together was in episode three, the two scenes in the visitation room with Innie Dylan, and I remember him at one point coming in and just telling me to pick up the pace, and I knew I had to trust him. I knew that he was right, just because I’ve been doing this long enough to know it for myself.
Sometimes this big thing is happening in the scene, and you just can’t imagine not pausing and taking every moment in. So, in a scene where it’s so disorienting and there’s so much to take in as a character, you can really fall prey to things starting to sink. I knew as an actor that sometimes the answer, even though it feels so counterintuitive, is just to pick up the pace.
AF: There is so much happening in those scenes in the space between Innie Dylan and Gretchen. What was it like to explore that delicate first meeting with Zach Cherry, and did you have a chance to rehearse the pacing with him before starting to shoot?
Wever: When I first came on, I think I had some pre-production days, and one of them entailed us just sitting down with Ben and reading the scene together twice. That was about it. I think that if there had been something like a new direction or if we had really gone in the wrong direction, Ben maybe would’ve tried to get us to course correct, but it felt like it was working, and it was there, and therefore we didn’t have to talk too much about it.
For me, the more I get in my head about something, the less free I get. So I was relieved, especially when it comes to television, where the pace is so quick. There’s not a week in between where you get to resettle into something organic. I was glad that that’s how it worked out with me and Zach. We didn’t have to do a lot of analyzing, because the nature of our characters, especially in the Innie scenes, means that we’re two people who, in some ways, have never spoken to each other. So, it’s okay to not be on the same page, and it’s okay to be bringing totally different selves into the room because that’s exactly what’s happening in the scenes.
In a lot of ways, my experience of shooting the show as an actor and then playing the scenes as a character was often paralleled in different ways.
AF: I also really appreciated the details of Gretchen in terms of hairstyling and the clothing that she was wearing because it felt like there was a progression of comfort over the season. Can you talk a bit about working with those departments and finding Gretchen in those different meetings?
Wever: This show has some of the best craftspeople across the board, and it’s a real honor to work with them, and it’s kind of exciting, too. Sarah Edwards is our Costume Designer, and working with her on the progression of Gretchen’s look through the episodes was really wonderful. Same with hair and makeup, and maybe adding that little bit more when she goes to see him the second time, because I think Gretchen already knows that it feels good, and she’s wondering what if she wants him to find her attractive? So, she wears her hair down. She might want to look a little prettier.
I remember for her last episode, we were trying to choose between a dress that was a solid color and one with little flowers. I remember Sarah was so thoughtful that we could have discussions like, let’s give him something that kind of smells like the outside world that he got to see that one time. Let’s give him something that subconsciously gives him more to lose. The bigger natural world is literally slipping out of his grasp in this scene.
It’s wonderful to work with people who also get excited about little details that can bring texture and color and dimension to a scene, and in a show that is so thoughtful and so deliberate and considerate with everything they add.
A lot of the times, that’s just not the nature of the beast. It’s slap dash fast, and, I don’t know, throw spaghetti at the wall. And there’s something wonderful about that too. But it was really nice to also get to work on something like this and to also realize that the audience that watches it receives it with the same amount of care and consideration as the people who are making it.
That’s very rare.