SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “In Perpetuity,” Friday’s episode of “Severance” on Apple TV Plus.
“Forgive me for the harm I have caused this world. None may atone for my actions but me and only in me shall their stain live on. I am thankful to have been caught, my fall cut short by those with wizened hands. All I can be is sorry, and that is all I am.”
That’s the “compunction statement” that Lumon severed-floor manager Milchick (Tramell Tillman) forces severed Macro Data Refinement employee Helly R (Britt Lower) to read when she is brought into the mysterious break room as retribution for trying to sneak an S.O.S. message from her “Innie” self to her “Outtie” self on Friday’s episode of “Severance.”
While the action that brought her in there was pretty extreme — cutting her arm bloody with glass during a desperate attempt to drop a piece of paper that said “Never come back here” through a shattered door window and into the stairwell — Helly is certainly not the first Lumon employee to undergo this strange form of punishment. In last week’s premiere episodes, we saw Mark Scout (Adam Scott) be taken to the room, where Lumon exec Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) was waiting for him, and later on, Petey (Yul Vazquez) played audio for “Outtie” Mark of “Innie” Mark reading the disturbing “compunction statement” for Milchick, who was concerned he didn’t “mean it.”
“I jokingly say that the break room is a ‘safe space,’” Tillman told Variety, laughing. “It’s a safe space for you to be in and relax.”
In all seriousness, “Severance” actor Tillman says Milchick looks at what he has to do in the break room as “what it takes to get the job done” for Lumon Industries and the secret mission it has for its severed floor.
“This is where Milchick is serving a higher purpose,” he said. “He really believes that what he is doing is for the better-making of humanity. And if it means that we need to be in the break room for several hours, then so be it. I think what makes it also interesting to play is that it’s not so much about torture for Milchick, but it’s investigating. It’s understanding someone’s psychology. It’s seeing what makes them tick. It’s marking and making indications of their motives and their sincerity and their humanness. Now what he does with that remains to be seen. But it veers in that way that it’s less about, ‘You’ve been bad,’ but more so about, ‘OK, you did this thing. So let’s expound upon that. Where is this coming from?’ He just does it in a really creepy way.”
As higher ups, Milchick and Cobel are among the unsevered Lumon staffers working on the severed floor. And though we know what Cobel (a.k.a. Mrs. Selvig) is doing in her free time, it’s not yet clear what Milchick’s backstory is or where his loyalty stems from.
“I have my own narrative. I think that Milchick grew up in the Lumon world, just like Cobel,” Tillman said. “I believe that he found a mentor in Cobel and was able to blossom and grow and learn from her tutelage. And he believes in these principles so much. He is the Lumon man and I think he has so many aspirations that are so much greater than where he is at this moment. But he is a devotee to Lumon, so he will do anything.”
Episode 3 of “Severance,” titled “In Perpetuity,” really dives into the show’s mythology and the origins of Lumon and its late founder, Kier Eagan, by taking the MDR employees to the floor’s Perpetuity Wing — which is when Helly makes a break for it. But before her attempted escape, several displays, dioramas and artifacts paint a picture of Lumon’s past for the audience, something that Tillman was more than happy to get while in production on the workplace-thriller.
“I think it’s great to have all that history. I’m a big nerd when it comes to creating a character or stepping into a whole world. So I like to investigate as much as possible and look at the renderings and the photos and get a feel for the costumes,” Tillman said. “Like all of it, it informs so much for the process. But then eventually you kind of got to let it go and you can only play what’s happening right before you.”
Tillman gives credit to “Severance” creator Dan Erickson for writing the show’s first season in such a way that “there is so much happening in every moment” for him to get too much in his head about Lumon’s legacy on a minute-by-minute basis.
“As soon as Helly gets in, Day 1, everything just kind of collapses. It implodes. So there’s so much to do that, the history is there, but right now, you got to play to what’s happening. You got to keep MDR under control because they’re running around amok.”