SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 6 of “Severance,” streaming now on Apple TV+.
Britt Lower’s Helly R. has been through the ringer in the second season of “Severance.”
After having her body hijacked by outie Helena, she finally returns to the severed floor as herself – only to be met with an icy reception from her fellow macrodata refiners.
In Season 2, Episode 6, titled “Attila,” Helly finally gets some answers: Mark confesses that he was intimate with Helena (who he believed to be Helly) during the ORTBO in Episode 4.
Helly is, naturally, distraught when she learns the truth — but she doesn’t let it keep her down for long. “What sucks is that she got to have that and I didn’t. That she used me to trick my friends,” she tells Mark.
He meekly offers to describe their relations, but Helly’s got a better idea: “I don’t want her memory. I want my own.” She leads Mark to an office full of desks tented with plastic wrap – the corporate equivalent of a cozy pillow fort — and they make their own intimate memory together.
Lower spoke with Variety about the pivotal episode, from the powerful moment that Helly reclaims her body to the complex dichotomy between her innie and outie characters.
Do you feel a sense of relief now that you’re finally able to talk about spoilers like the big Helly/Helena reveal?
What’s really cool is that we couldn’t have anticipated how the timing of the episodes coming out would affect people. The week in between gives the audience this time to kind of expand the world in their heads. There’s the world that we created, and then there’s all of these other worlds that the fans are creating in their minds. And for a show that’s about consciousness, I think that’s really fitting. I commend everyone for their theories. They’re brilliant!
You’ve spoken before about the ways that Helena, much like Helly, is trapped. Do you think Helena is jealous of Helly?
Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. My friend once described jealousy as “unbearable admiration.” And I think there’s that in Helena’s experience of seeing a part of herself. I mean, can you imagine? It’s her, but it’s not her. Helly R. has access to a way of moving through the world that is so alive, so awake, and it’s forward-moving. There’s no hesitation from Helly R., whereas Helena has to hold herself with so much composure. She has to wear all of these masks.
I think a lot about the way that women are treated in within this company. They’re made to dress a certain way and to move through the company in a certain way. Helly R. isn’t even aware of that. She doesn’t dress herself in the morning. It’s as if she’s walking through the office wearing a basketball uniform. “What are these heels?”
We finally see her take those heels off for the first time in this episode. Why?
After Helly finds out about what happened on the ORTBO with Mark and Helena, she’s walking through the hallways, and takes her shoes off. That was a moment that [director Uta Briesewitz] and I found together. She just needs to get her feet on the ground.
Mark’s confession is obviously devastating to Helly, but she refuses to be defeated. It’s a powerful moment when she finally reclaims her own body by becoming intimate with Mark on her own terms. How did you approach those scenes?
I think the word you used is accurate. It is a reclamation. It is a brave act to be vulnerable enough to say, “I want this” to Mark. Helly is very rarely rattled by anything, but her heart opening to connection is the scariest thing – not just to Mark, but to her chosen family of Dylan and Irving. She goes from Season 1, saying to Mark, “I cannot, with a razor to my throat, be less interested in being your family,” to, by the end of Season 1, they’re this unit – especially when it’s right after the Music Dance Experience. I think you really see them come together protecting Dylan after he’s bit Mr. Milchick.
It wasn’t written in, but Milchick goes towards Dylan. John and Adam and I just instinctually gathered around Zach to protect him. I’m using the characters and our names interchangeably, but you get it! That’s the moment of like, “This is our family, and we’re going to protect each other at all costs.” Now there’s something at stake, losing their connection to one another.
I think Season 2, for all of the innies, is a journey now that they’ve cracked open the question of, “Who am I in relationship to my work?” Now it’s, “Who am I in relationship to the people I love? How do I show up for those people? How does that define me when we have contrasting desires?”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
