John Turturro on the Moment It All Made Sense for Irving B.
“The guy that you think wouldn’t be reading the room is reading the whole building,” says the Severance star.
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What’s for dinner? Oh, a fucking mole.
Just when you thought Severance couldn’t get more diabolical on its Outdoor Retreat Team Building Occurrence, Irv (John Turturro) chose a little bit of water torture as the curtain call. Such is the conclusion of “Woe’s Hollow,” which confirmed a major theory that has tailed the show since its premiere: Lumon heiress Helena Eagan (Britt Lower) was indeed pretending to be her Innie, Helly, as a means of surveilling her fellow microdata refiners. Irv had a strong hunch that his colleague and friend wasn’t who she said she was. And, like a Traitor, Helena overplayed her hand at the evening’s campfire, cluing him into her identity and essentially helping him sign his own death warrant.
“What you said to me last night, it was cruel. Helly was never cruel,” Irv tells her when they come face-to-face in the woods. “So if you’re not her, then who are you? Who would have the power to send their Outie to the severed floor?” As Mark, Dylan, and Miss Huang look on in horror, Irv threatens to drown Helena in a waterfall, forcing Mr. Milchick to turn her back into Helly. With his ORTBO plans scuttled, Milchick retaliates by firing Irv, which seemingly kills his Innie. Nobody threatens collegial murder at the pond in Woe’s Hollow and gets away with it.
Turturro, who likens the episode to “a movie within a movie,” was impressed by the vision from director Ben Stiller. (“I call him Young Stanley,” as in Kubrick, he quips.) By his estimation, it took about a month and a half to complete filming thanks to the elements being as unpredictable as the show’s narrative twists. “We were soaking wet a lot of the time,” he explains. But it was worth it to vindicate his character. “The guy that you think wouldn’t be reading the room,” he puts it, “is reading the whole building.”
Set the scene a bit for me: How long were you filming in that “Woe’s Hollow” terrain?
Five or six weeks. We were there for a while because it took us a long time to get to each place. We were on ropes, pulling ourselves up to get to that little cave. Then, by the time we did everything, we lost the light. We had these big, giant coats that looked great but were very heavy. They had to be 20 pounds.
Was there anything between the “night gardener” incident and the “Helly was never cruel” declaration that tipped Irv over the edge, however subtle it may have been, into knowing with absolute certainty that he was dealing with Helena? Or were these cruel comments the watershed moment?
People can pick up on one thing and then wait to see if someone adds to it, betrays it more, or articulates it in a more specific way. Irv gives her the opportunity to tell him what she saw, and her response is very flat. Then he has the dream, and the dream clarifies it for him. I thought it came incrementally because he keeps trying to say, “Tell me, so I won’t feel this way.” When I’ve directed movies and plays, I sometimes cast someone from one little moment. Regardless of how good of an actor they are, they do something that’s unconscious, physically. And I go, “Oh, that person has the capacity to do this thing. They revealed themselves.” Movement reveals more than what people say. Movement brings happiness and also reveals the unconscious.
How did you and Britt Lower prepare for that torture scene, especially when it came to your movement and temperament with both Helena and Helly? What was essential for you to convey?
I did a little bit of the dunking with Britt before a stuntperson came in. Later, there was a tank, but the water was ice-cold and very dangerous. All the guys were in the water with their cameras and in wetsuits. You have to do things in rhythm. I said, “I want to do it in steps. I take a step. You go that way. I go with you, but I hold you at the same time. If you fall, I will hold you.” My major concern was to make sure she was safe and that I wouldn’t take her down. We could hit our heads because we were on these rocks. When we did the water, I said, “Pat me as soon as you have to come up.” She almost passed out because the water was just too cold. I always think they should do acting classes with temperature. Now you’re dying of heat, now you’re getting hypothermia.
I’d love to learn every single thing about how you calibrated the venom of, “Yes, do it, Sethhhhh.”
It’s a great line. I’m a person that comes out of the theater. His name is so dripping with theater. I tried it a few different ways, but that was the right reading they chose. When you have a good line, it’s like squeezing a lemon, man. You want to get everything out of it and you want to hit that operative word. I thought it was like throwing a spear at somebody. Lines can be like that. Sometimes people mumble a lot when they do movies. I’m not saying my group here, but people have gotten into this somewhat artificial naturalism. You don’t even hear what someone’s saying. You’re like, “What?” If I spoke to you that way, you would say to me, “What are you saying, John? I can’t understand you.” I want to do justice to the writer and to the writing.
Do you view what Irv did as the ultimate sacrifice for his friends?
We’ll see what happens as the show goes on. But, yeah, he’s taken the responsibility. He knows if someone’s there and it’s a mole, Mark and Dylan are going to be vulnerable to that. He’s reading the whole room. It was consistent with what Dan had sketched out for me.
When you got the script for “Woe’s Hollow,” and the opening detail was Irv standing by himself in the middle of a frozen lake, what was your initial reaction to this departure from Severance’s established visual world?
I was happy we were outside, no matter what. I thought it was a really beautifully written episode. There’s a lot of things I’m not at liberty to discuss, but before I did the show, Dan Erickson wrote me a whole backstory — where I came from and why I did what I did. Whether you’re playing your Innie or your Outie, there are things that bleed through, because your nature and the habitual way you approach something is still there. I did a lot of research based on that, which helped me create a whole other world.
Can you tell me a little more about the research you did?
You don’t really have Irving’s nature, where he comes from, and what he did before. He’s a guy who’s been regimented in some way. And it depends where you’re at in your life when you do the episode. You have more energy when you’re younger, but you don’t have as much to draw on. If you’ve been going through hard things, it can be cathartic to do something where you let some of that out in a constructive way. You never know when someone’s really tender, very upset, or sleepless.
It was also interesting being the odd man out sometimes. No one likes that feeling. Even if you’re just doing that in the script, it still feels strange. I think the relationship between me and Britt Lower in the show is really good, because we have a really nice friendship, so you can go further with someone. I was very protective of her, because I had to feel like we could do what we needed to do, but I wanted to make sure no one got hurt. When you’re relaxed with each other, you can do more extreme things. I know how to do that because I’ve gotten hurt. Plenty of people have hurt me over the years.
Irv’s Outie has been devotedly investigating Lumon and is tracking as much information as he can about what’s going on at the company. What have you inferred about his motivations for wanting to be a severed employee?
Something happened to someone who maybe he was close to. Maybe he saw there were people disappearing. He’s trying to find out what’s going on there and where these people are going. He sees the hallway with his paintings. There are these people who have a whole life, and sometimes they even have a dual life in their regular life before they were severed. They could be in a position where maybe no one knows about their personal life or their sexuality. Generationally, people have hidden that many times.
I’m always interested in the sexuality and fluidity of people. These things have always been part of human nature, the human animal. And when you get roles, many times they’re neutered because only the young, model type gets to have that experience, and that’s not always the most interesting version of it. So that attracted me to doing the show. Of course, doing that with Christopher Walken is a treat because we already have a friendship. We don’t have to invent it. There’s a feeling there between us, so we can put it in imaginary circumstances.
Are you of the belief that Irving and Burt knew each other on the outside at a point in their lives, and, if so, did that belief affect how you approached your scenes with Christopher?
I don’t know about that. It’s not indicated. I think there are people who connect with you in certain situations, especially when you share common interests and hit it off. There’s something that just occurs, you meet someone and go, “Wow.” When you’re in that situation on the severed floor and everyone’s so separated, they’re starved. The audience can fill it in. That’s one of the biggest assets of the show: People can project their version of what’s going on. I’m not on social media, but people have sent me things. I’m like, “Really? You really think we’re clones?” It just makes you think, Yeah, you could go that way.
You’ve previously said that you didn’t love filming within the constraints of the MDR office because of the lights, and, specifically, felt like you “had a full meal” after the season-two production ended. What’s your gut telling you about returning for a third season?
The office gave me a lot of headaches because I had a cataract in one eye and never wanted to work under fluorescent lights. I can’t stand them. It’s not an environment where you’re stimulated; whereas when I’m home or out on the street or in the mountains, you get a lot of energy from them. You should get a full meal out of almost everything you do. There’s a full meal, but then sometimes there’s the dessert. And then sometimes there’s another meal. In the Roman days, they would purge themselves and eat again. I don’t know what season three will be, but I didn’t say, “See you, folks.” It was a full experience. I usually do stuff one year at a time. That’s where I’m at this stage of my life. You want to be full because you don’t know what’s going to happen afterward. Nobody knows. I take things incrementally.
Last one: What are you having for dinner tonight?
I think it’s chicken tonight. I recently went to the farmers’ market and people were surrounding me, saying, “You freaked us out in the last episode.” And I was like, “Great, I’m sorry, but I need to buy my mushrooms.”
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