Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson pull back the curtain on those Severance delays

With almost three years between seasons, Severance has become one of the prime examples of the sluggish television production pace in the streaming era. Of course, there were external issues that extended the wait, primarily the dual writers and actors strikes of 2023. Nevertheless, the delay on one of Apple TV+’s most critically acclaimed new series raised eyebrows and sparked rumors about discord behind the scenes. Now that the second season is finally in sight, executive producer Ben Stiller and series writer and creator Dan Erickson are finally offering some insight. 

Erickson suggested the long wait was because it’s a “very intricate show” and admitted that “the writing was the most painstaking part of the process.” In a new interview with Vanity Fair, he said that “sometimes we would come up with something that worked perfectly well on paper, and then it wouldn’t be until we got there and we’re shooting it that we realize: This isn’t quite it. We were never willing to let that turn it into something that wasn’t perfect.”

Stiller, who also serves as a director on the series, laid out the timeline: After taking “a while” to write, “we started to shoot in October of 2022, and we got shut down by the strike in May [2023]. At that point, we had completed about 7 of our 10 episodes, and then we had to regroup after the strike,” he explained. “It takes us a while to prep 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 added that the show shoots “pretty methodically, and we probably don’t turn around as many pages of script per day as a lot of other shows.” Further, the writers had come up with “entire locations that we were planning to go to. We had already built or partially built them when we realized, ‘Oh, that’s not going to work,'” Erickson revealed. “Those aren’t always fun calls to have with the studio, where you’re. like, ‘Hey, you know that thing you put a lot of resources into? Well, we’re not going to do it now, or we’re going to do something that’s totally different.’ But again, at the end of the day, it’s worth it.”

Interestingly, what Erickson is describing would seem to corroborate those stories that major rewrites led to ballooning budgets on the show (rumored in the $20 million an episode range). Severance sources, including Stiller himself, always denied that there had been any major changes in budget or schedule. A production source told The A.V. Club in 2023 that Erickson, co-showrunner Mark Friedman, and House Of Cards creator Beau Willimon (who was brought on for the second season) were all working together without issue, contrary to the rumors at the time. But it does sound like it took a good amount of time to figure out how to continue the tale after such a propulsive start with the first season. Hopefully, as Erickson says, it’ll be worth the wait. In the meantime, you can read up on what he and Stiller are teasing over at VF.