Severance stars Tramell Tillman and Zach Cherry reflect on the masks we all put on at work

Like many of us, Severance stars Tramell Tillman and Zach Cherry can relate to the idea of feeling like someone different at work. That's partly just the nature of acting — taking on a character while you're on set and hopefully leaving them behind when you get home.

"We talk a lot about what carries over and what bleeds through," Cherry says in a joint interview with Q's Tom Power alongside Tillman. "For me as an actor, that is kind of a question when you're creating a character. You got to bring something of yourself to most of your characters, but not everything."

Severance, which aired its Season 2 finale yesterday, is a sci-fi thriller that explores a nightmarish experiment to enforce work-life balance by splitting a person's consciousness into two. There's the you that goes into work (your "innie") and the you that lives outside of work (your "outie").

Before becoming full-time actors, both Tillman and Cherry worked as office managers in the non-profit world, so they know what it's like to have a nine-to-five desk job. They were able to draw on those experiences to develop their characters, the mysterious Mr. Milchick and the severed employee Dylan G.

"There's so many of us who spend a lot of time in the workplace and understand what it's like to be at a job that may not be as fulfilling," Tillman tells Power. "There's an identity there, too. I mean, the first line of the show is, 'Who are you?' And I think especially with Milchick, there's an identity that he is struggling with."

Cherry adds that in his own life he'd try to separate his personal and professional identities by putting on a "work mask" in the office.

"That idea of being someone slightly different at work, I can certainly relate to," he says. "When I was at my office job, I was also doing sketch comedy and improv comedy at night, but at work, no one really would have known that. I kind of didn't want to get into it. I didn't really want to bring that part of me into that place."

What's interesting about Cherry's character Dylan is that his innie and outie have distinct personalities as a result of living under completely different circumstances. Dylan's innie is confident and self-assured, whereas his outie is a husband and father who lacks purpose and direction in life.

"The innie is maybe the version of the outie who never had all that baggage build up, and the outie is a version of the innie that has had these life experiences that have maybe pushed him one way or the other," Cherry explains.

I think especially with Milchick, there's an identity that he is struggling with.- Tramell Tillman

To craft Milchick, who doesn't have an outie life, Tillman says it's not clear who the character is, only that he's committed to the organization and has shown himself willing to do whatever it takes to meet its goals. The actor says he modelled Milchick after a panther. 

"I feel like he's like this big cat," Tillman says. "He can pounce at any moment, but then there's this quality about him that he kind of bats people around, especially the innies. And he's always watching. He never strikes when it's not the right time. There's a plotting, there's a brooding that's there as well. And he's got that big smile, that big grin that can be very intoxicating and very mysterious as well. You don't know what that man's thinking."

As for which animal Cherry would be, he says probably a panda. "Or like one of those deep sea fish," he jokes. "They don't even have a name."

The full interview with Tramell Tillman and Zach Cherry is available on our YouTube channel and on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Tramell Tillman and Zach Cherry produced by Lise Hosein.