Severance’s creator explains the self-help book at the heart of the show

It might be straightforward to dismiss Ricken’s self-help e-book, The You You Are, within the first season of Severance — it’s, the truth is, what occurs quite a bit because the copy Ricken (Michael Chernus) leaves on his brother-in-law Mark’s doorstep shuffles from one individual to the subsequent. With out even receiving a replica, Mark (Adam Scott) is able to scoff at Ricken’s makes an attempt to philosophize his means by way of the world.

However Severance creator Dan Erickson isn’t so positive. To him, the e-book represented greater than a foolish joke. And to that finish, he by no means wished the e-book to be only a humorous voiceover.

“It’s clearly a kind of heightened tackle a self-help e-book,” Erickson tells Polygon in a Zoom interview. “[But] I didn’t need it to be so foolish that it felt out of the world. And likewise with this data that it was going to grow to be a severe plot system afterward. So we wished to jot down one thing that, taken out of context, may believably encourage folks and had concepts beneath that bluster that perhaps had precise worth to them.”

To him, Ricken’s concepts symbolize an essential undercurrent of the present: making the mundane startlingly, stiltedly profound. When Chernus’ buttery voiceover reminds us that “Your so-called boss could personal the clock that taunts you from the wall, however, my buddies, the hour is yours,” it’s without delay corny and provocative. (Erickson’s favourite of Chernus’ supply is: “Machines are manufactured from metallic, however man is manufactured from pores and skin.”)

Picture: Apple TV Plus

That delicate steadiness for a self-help information set the tone for the way Chernus considered Ricken as a personality. The very first thing he shot in 2020 was the e-book cowl, which is all flashy, “Dianetics, or like Tony Robbins,” and “vaguely cult-y” with its shiny colours. (“Self-help perhaps isn’t even proper,” he says. “It’s kind of like aggressive assist.”)

However the voiceover got here later. Whereas the script known as for somebody to learn The You You Are aloud, it wasn’t all the time clear who that may be. When Chernus lastly received tasked with it, he labored onerous to dial in to the precise steadiness for Ricken’s tone, calling on his theater and Julliard background to intensify Ricken’s learn with a mid-Atlantic accent.

“I do know a kind, a creative sort, who believes that what they’re doing is crucial factor on the planet, and [has] this conviction that the stakes are so excessive,” Chernus says. “There’s one thing — in fact — pretentious and grandiose about that. However there’s additionally one thing unbelievable about somebody simply being so dialed in to their imaginative and prescient and their viewpoint concerning the world.”

In brief: He didn’t really feel a must make enjoyable of the man. As a substitute, he noticed Ricken’s grandeur as becoming in with the identical kind of formalism as Irving or Cobell. And like so many different puzzle items in Severance, The You You Are finds an viewers among the many innies, dazzled by his perception. (His favourite line from the e-book was “On the heart of trade is mud.”)

To Erickson, it’s a scrumptious irony that took place within the author’s room: “What if the person who outtie Mark disdained greater than anyone ended up being the daddy of the revolution on the within?” However in the end, what he and Chernus like most is that the e-book reached the folks it wanted to.

Picture: Apple TV Plus

“There’s a commentary on how context influences what’s good artwork, or good writing, or good media,” Chernus says, citing media he consumed as a school freshman making an attempt to learn auras or an grownup making an attempt to get by way of the pandemic. “I agree that it’s the kind of stuff that sounds profound, however really isn’t. However you possibly can’t totally dismiss it if it’s doing one thing for the innies. If it’s doing one thing for them, who’re we to say it’s objectively dangerous?”

Maybe essentially the most shocking individual it reached was Milchick (Tramell Tillman), the supervisor on the severed flooring whose devotion presents as a center administration enforcer. A stickler for the foundations, even Milchick doesn’t find yourself reporting the copy of The You You Are; as an alternative he sits and reads it.

When requested what that curiosity means for Milchick’s function in season 2, Erickson deflects, noting he’s seen folks interpret his studying as both real curiosity or a pleasant chuckle.

“I assume perhaps that paradox sums it up fairly effectively,” Erickson says. In any case, haven’t all of us acquired recommendation earlier than we had been in a position to actually hear it?