- Dichen Lachman has theories about Gemma on “Severance” just like fans do.
- But Lachman told BI she’s wary about reacting to any of the theories she sees online.
- As for what’s ahead for Gemma in season three, Lachman says “the possibilities are really endless.”
Yes, Dichen Lachman sees your “Severance” theories. And no, she won’t be responding to any of them.
“Up until now, I’ve been scared to ‘like’ it in case they might think that that’s a confirmation that they’re correct or something,” Lachman told Business Insider.
Keeping tight-lipped is tough work, especially when your character plays one of the most pivotal roles in Apple TV+’s hit workplace thriller. As Mark’s (Adam Scott) wife Gemma, who is being held in captivity and experimented on at Lumon Industries, Lachman holds the key to the show’s core mysteries.
Season two, episode seven of “Severance” finally showed us what was happening to Gemma on Lumon’s mysterious testing floor while her husband’s innie was toiling away at his “mysterious and important” macrodata refinement work on the severed floor: Mark was refining 25 different severed consciousnesses for his wife. After he’s done, there will be no need for her to exist anymore.
The season two finale revolves around the rescue mission to free Gemma from Lumon, which seems successful in the end, with one major twist: After depositing Gemma outside Lumon’s doors, Innie Mark opts to say inside with his love interest, Helly, rather than become his outie and join his wife.
The ending was a surprise to Lachman, who said she didn’t even know that Gemma would ultimately escape Lumon at the start of filming “Severance” season two. Whereas the cast had scripts for all the episodes in season one in advance partially thanks to COVID shutdowns and other issues that stalled filming, much of season two “unfolded a bit more as we filmed,” Lachman said.
But Lachman said knowing only what her character would know at any given moment was a good thing for her performance.
“Severance” creator Dan Erickson, the keeper of all Lumon’s secrets, is “really good at just telling me what I need to know in order to be able to achieve what I need for the scene and the performance,” she said.
“He’s generous in telling you stuff that might not be on screen that’s in the future,” Lachman said of Erickson. “But then he also doesn’t tell you things you don’t really need to know, because they haven’t happened yet, so it’s not really serving the purpose of the scene.”
For example, Lachman doesn’t know exactly what would have happened to Gemma if Mark didn’t rescue her after completing the Cold Harbor file — because Gemma herself didn’t. Ditto what Emile the goat had to do with any of it.
She does, however, suggest that Gemma might not necessarily have been killed in a physical sense.
“In our show, death can mean different things. For example, when Ms. Casey walks out the door, she effectively dies. And Dr. Mauer calls out to Mark, ‘You’ll kill them all!’ as he’s trying to escape with Gemma,” Lachman said. “Whether or not they were going to actually kill her physical body or not, I don’t know if that was so important for me to understand, because the character doesn’t know.”
As for where Gemma goes from here in “Severance” season three — now that she’s presumably freed from Lumon but without her husband, Lachman is as in the dark as everyone else.
“The possibilities are really endless,” she said. “I’m sure it’s something I haven’t even possibly considered.”
One thing she has considered is whether we’ll see Ms. Casey, the Gemma innie we met first in season one, again. Lachman hopes so. “I love Ms. Casey,” she said. “She was a very sweet character and I feel so much sadness for her.”
She’s also happy that Ms. Casey made a brief appearance in the finale when Gemma shifted back into her as she was kissing Mark in the elevator.
“I’m glad she got a little moment there to feel like she belonged, even though it’s a peculiar situation for her,” Lachman said. “She got a little excitement and a sense of belonging in those last few moments.”
The first two seasons of “Severance” are now streaming on Apple TV+.
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