‘Severance’'s Britt Lower Talks About Tonight's Game-Changing Offsite, an Intense Moment With John Turturro, and How Helly R. and Helena are Like Pa...

Major spoilers for the fourth episode of Severance Season Two, “Woe’s Hollow,” below.

Identity is a tricky thing on Severance, but doubly so if you’re Helly R (Britt Lower). When we left Hely at the end of the hit Apple TV+ series’ first season, she’d discovered that her “outie” (an outside-of-work personality whose memories are separated from Helly’s own in-office experience at Lumon Industries) is Helena Eagan, the daughter of current Lumon CEO Jame Eagan. At the start of Season Two, each of the members of the Macrodata Refinement foursome—Helly, along with Mark (Adam Scott), Irving (John Turturro), and Dylan (Zach Cherry)—are busy dealing with ramifications of what they’ve discovered about their lives outside of work. But suspicions linger on the team as to Helly’s true identity.

This week’s episode breaks open the big mystery around Helly. As the four members of MDR head out on an ORTBO—that’s Outdoor Retreat and Team Building Occurance—to an Eagan holy site called Hoe’s Hollow, the revelations come fast and furious. Underneath the majestic waterfall and snow-covered grounds of the Eagan holy site, Irving begins to drown Helly in an attempt to get Lumon overseer Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) to “turn her back.” Irv’s approach is intense to be certain, but his suspicions are correct. Across the last few weeks, there’s been a fox in the henhouse: Helena, masquerading as Helly.

“Woe’s Hollow” is an immediate standout episode for Severance. It jettisons the sterile environment of the Lumon offices for the frozen tundra—not unlike how a radical change of scenery in “Pine Barrens” marked a departure for “The Sopranos”—and provides another acting showcase for Lower, the less-and-less-secret weapon in Severance’s cast. In the wake of the reveals in the Hollow, Lower sat down with GQ for an expansive chat about what she knew and when she knew it, filming that intense scene with Turturro, her intentions with Mark, and much more.

Britt Lower: From the get-go, from the start. Yeah—from the first conversations about season two with [series writer] Dan Erickson and [series director] Ben Stiller. It was a pretty exciting puzzle to put together.

My first instinct is to go to the part of my job that is sculpting the inner life of each of these parts of this same person. So, starting from Season One, I was much more in the headspace and inner life of Helly R, and Helena was seen much more in presentational environments. She's being taped, or she's being watched. Coming into Season Two, the interesting thing for me was I’d spent most of Season One as Helly R, going around and asking questions about this strange environment that she's in, watching the Lumon employees move and speak to one another in the way that they do. Then, in Season Two, I am getting to actually play one of those Lumon employees and step into the mannerisms and the corporate-speak that Helena grew up in.

This is a person, Helena, who has been conditioned into the position she's in. She's trapped within the same company [as the rest of the characters]. I think for Helena, it was this chance to blend into an environment that she doesn't get to be a part of, and to connect in a way that maybe she's never connected before. My job was just to be really present to those surprises for her.

It’s a collaboration, because some of the biographical details of Helena's life are set in the family structure. We also extrapolate what her home life is like based on the very stilted, strange interactions with her father, with the employees that caretake for him and move through the company, again, in this very bizarre way. So, starting from there and answering for myself the questions that felt important for her motivations within that family.

With this show, what's so incredible is the way our fans have fleshed out the rest of the world for themselves. That mysterious moment of coming up with a strange lie—I'd like to leave it up to the viewer to decide.

It is so complex, right? Because they are two different consciousnesses. They have two very different perspectives and sets of experiences, and yet they share the same body; they share the same subconscious, and in their body, they have stored memories that are unbeknownst to one another. So some of those things bleed through to the other side.

It is one of the very, very few times we see Helena alone in the whole series. I do think there is an element of seeing into her experience.

I'm going back to your previous question. If there's something we can all relate to, [it’s] that there are versions of us in different environments. We all go—not we all, but most people, go home for the holidays and take on, possibly, a more teenage-like version of themselves when they're around their family. I think that's sort of where I came at Helena being able to tap into parts of Helly R. She's blending in a little bit because that is deep within her. There is a rebel that's been suppressed through the conditioning of this family and this very high-control corporate world that she lives inside of.

That taking on this other version of yourself that maybe you've out-grown or you're at odds with, but it's still there—it's a frequency and a rhythm that you can tap into. Even in the scene where she's kind of laughing at the mythology of the scriptures at the ORTBO, I think that, probably, when she was a kid, she wanted so badly to laugh at these pretty ridiculous texts of her family, but she didn't have the ability. So here she is, through the lens of Helly R, getting to live out that [rebellion].

Having the connection she does with all of the innies, but particularly with Mark, her perspective has been shifted dramatically after doing a kind of organic version of reintegration, right? Both Helly R and Helena have now effectively stepped into one another's shoes; Helly R, at the end of Season One, poses as Helena on stage and gets to see a glimpse of her world, what it looks like, and what it's like to be in a room with her father. Helena has stepped into the perspective of Helly R and has gotten to feel and see what it's like to connect with the MDR innies and to see what it's like to live a bit more of a free existence.

It's very delicate. I'm not sure what I think matters as much as how people receive it, and I think it might hit people in different ways. Yeah, it's very tough.

Yeah, I would guess this is a place her family has visited before. It's this kind of state park or this thing of lore. I'm guessing she's been there before.

I'm sorry — I keep leaving back to your previous question, but I do think there's something genuine in what Helena experiences with being an innie, and I think that rattles her for the rest of the season, and that's all I'll say.

Sarah Edwards is a genius. She, Ben, and all the directors work really closely when they're choosing color palettes and sometimes referencing something we've worn from season one in order to have something rhyme a bit visually. Everything is pretty intentional.

That's a really good question. I think there isn't very much validation or a sense of nurturing inside of Helena's life. She's pretty isolated and I think it's meaningful. I think it's meaningful to hear and to be present in the way that they are with one another. I don't think she's ever experienced anything like that before.

The two of them are on a path. The two individuals, regardless of the innies or the outies, have been on a path of kindred spirit from season one. There's something physiologically that they have, this innate connection, and this is the first time they're in a private environment enough to be able to connect in a different way.

John is such a seasoned professional. He's a real role model of mine, and we've built a lot of friendship and trust together over the last few years. I felt really lucky to be doing the scene with him. We worked really closely with the stunt team and with Ben to make sure that what we were doing physically was safe because it was a dangerous environment. It was freezing water—there was actual ice and just the conditions of being outside, rocky ice and those types of things. So we worked closely to make sure that we were doing this kind of dance together with the choreography so that we could go where we needed to go emotionally. I couldn't have asked for a better scene partner. John is just so great. It's a harrowing scene to do, but I felt really safe with him.

I like to work closely with the stunt doubles so that, ideally, the choreography is in tandem with one another. I felt it was important to put my actual head in the cold water for the effect that that had on me physically. The shock of that intensity, of cold freezing water, had an effect that I felt was important for the character to experience. We did it as much as we could before we needed to obviously shift, dry me off, and then get back in. Our stunt team is incredible. We work really closely, and I feel we're building the character together because they have a certain skillset that I don't always. Even though I'm game to try [laughs], I'm not as tough as my stunt double. She's amazing.

It's unreal. Also, because it was just my head, not my whole body, that was a real, literal head trip [laughs].

The brain is getting a cold plunge. [laughs]

Helly R is so many Patti Smith songs for me. I listened to Patti Smith when I was finding the character in Season One and would tune back in when I was revisiting. It's not the same artist, but the soundtrack to Orlando just felt very much of the world that Helena was living in and just kind of classical music in general. That goes against my metaphor of it being the same artists in different albums, but that's the first thing that came to my mind.

I want to give you one more analog with music [laughs].

A way to think about Helena playing Helly R, too, was when you hear a cover of a song and you're like, "It's the same song, but...". Or a live version of the same song you've heard on the radio a lot, and there's just something slightly off about it or slightly different, and you're like, "That's the same musician, but it's live,” and you're like, “Wait. They breathe in a different way,” or “There's a pause there,” or “The drums are more intense” or — there's just these variables that shift it almost completely sometimes. Maybe that's another [way to look at it]. You're so used to the version you've been hearing on the radio and then all of a sudden it's live.