Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson Explain Why SEVERANCE Season 2 Took So Long and Assure Fans “It’s Worth It”

Fans have been waiting for the return of the brilliant, mind-bending sci-fi drama for two and a half years. Separation. Season 2 of the 7-time Emmy nominated Apple TV+ series has been in the works for a long time now and its creator Dan Erickson and executive producer/director Ben Stiller I sat down to explain the delay.

Stiller explained to Vanity Fair: “It took a while to write the second season. Then we started shooting in October 2022 and were interrupted by the strike in May [2023]. At that point we had completed about 7 of our 10 episodes and then had to regroup after the strike.

“It takes a while to prepare for the show. And so we didn’t start shooting until January [2024]. Then we shot from January to May to finish the last three episodes.”

Erickson chimed in to explain Separation is “a very intricate show” with many of its characters living double lives, thanks to the show’s fictional technology that allows corporate employees to surgically split memories of their work and personal lives.

“Each character has two lives – essentially two personalities – and we’re expanding on that. For me, the writing was the most painstaking part of the process because there were so many avenues we could go down.

“And sometimes we would come up with something that worked perfectly on paper, and only when we got there and were shooting it did we realize: that’s not really the case. We were never willing to let that turn it into anything less than perfect.

Their commitment to perfection resulted in more than just rewrites, with parts of production already underway when they decided to go back to the drawing board.

Erickson noted that there were “whole places we were planning to go. We had already built them, or partially built them, when we realized, “Oh, this isn’t going to work.”

“It’s not always fun to have calls with the studio, where you’re like, ‘Hey, you know that thing where you put a lot of resources into? Well, we’re not going to do that now, or we’re going to do something completely different.’ But again, in the end, it’s worth it.

In the 10-episode second season, Mark (Adam Scott) and his friends discover the terrible consequences of messing with the severance barrier, leading them further down the rabbit hole.

In addition to Scott, the series stars Britt Lower, Tramell Tillmann, Zach Cherry, Jen Tullock, Michael Chernus, Dichen Lachmann, Giovanni Turturro, Christopher Walken, Patricia Arquette and a new regular series Sarah Bock.

I think a rewatch of the first season is certainly in order. Separation returns to Apple TV+ on January 17.