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'The Interview': Ben Stiller on 'Severance,' Selling Out and Being Jewish Today
Sat, 11 Jan 2025
The actor-director discusses the long-awaited return of the hit series, the comedies that made him a star and growing up with his famous parents.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Full Episode
From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. The long-awaited Emmy Award-winning series Severance returns for its second season next week. I've seen a bunch of the new episodes, which have some real surprises in them. And I can say that I'm very eager to see other fans' reaction to how the show has moved forward with its story.
By way of a reminder, that story is about a rebellious group of employees at the mysterious and probably malevolent Lumen Industries. Those employees are office drones whose consciousness has been artificially separated between their work selves, also known as their innies, and their outies, their selves away from the office.
That sense of a divided self is one to which Ben Stiller, who co-directed and co-executive produces the series, can probably relate. It's actually one of the things that's most intriguing to me about him. He's a hugely successful comedic actor from mainstream hits like Meet the Parents and Night at the Museum, who's gradually stepped away from acting in favor of his first love, directing.
As a director, he's a much more subversive and distinctive stylist than his biggest acting roles might suggest. Take, for example, more serious projects like his crime drama series Escape at Dannemora, as well as Severance, of course, and also his off-the-wall comedy satires like Cable Guy and Zoolander, the latter of which he also starred in.
So I don't think I'm overreaching in suggesting that there is some innie-outie, Severance-style tension, if you will, running through Stiller's own story. As I found out while speaking with him at his Manhattan office, that's something he was trying to make sense of, too. Here's my conversation with Ben Stiller.
You know, I was thinking about severance and sort of where it fits in the arc of your career. Are there specific things that working on comedy gave you the tools for when it comes to working on something like severance, which I would describe as maybe comedy-adjacent?
It's funny because I just, you know, I don't categorize it specifically. And I think I find that stuff very funny. I mean, I think whenever anything is very specific, it's always funny. And I feel like the show sort of has its basis in the workplace comedy, like The Office or Office Space or Parks and Rec. But where it goes off, I think this season we probably went to some, like, stranger places.
But I felt like that was also just part of what the show is. The show has to continue on its journey and can't just stay doing the same thing. But I love that stuff.
You think of the second season as still in the vein of a workplace comedy? Yeah.
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