Much of Severance — the sci-fi workplace thriller on Apple TV Plus — takes place in a brightly lit office, with characters huddled over strange computers where they do work they’re told is both mysterious and important. In the show, that work looks a bit like an alternate reality take on Minesweeper, except the characters are attempting to find numbers that “feel scary,” even though they don’t know what that really means — and the cast is largely going through the same experience.
The computers on the show are functional, so when Mark and Helly are moving pixelated numbers around on a screen, that’s something the performers are doing on set. “When you see us, we really are refining numbers,” Adam Scott, who plays Mark and serves as a producer on the show, tells The Verge. “There is actually a way to do it.”
The computers are the brainchild of prop master Cath Miller and production designer Jeremy Hindle. The office-dwelling characters in Severance have undergone a procedure that separates their work selves from their life outside, effectively creating two people, one of whom exists only within the basement offices of Lumon Industries. As Hindle told me back in 2022, this…