Even ‘Severance’ Star Sarah Bock Doesn’t Totally Understand Miss Huang

This post contains spoilers for Severance’s second season.

Almost everyone at the Lumon corporation has questions about the mysterious new hire, Miss Huang. The intimidating teenager played by Sarah Bock in the workplace thriller Severance is newly promoted floor manager Seth Milchick’s (Tramell Tillman) theremin-playing deputy. “Why are you a child?” she’s asked. “Because of when I was born,” she replies.

The enigmatic employee—who looks about 14, dresses like a Catholic schoolgirl, and sometimes sports pigtails, and whose previous job was as a crossing guard—helps supervise the contentious microdata refiners (or MDR) Mark S (Adam Scott), Helly R (Britt Lower), Dylan G (Zach Cherry), and Irving B (John Turturro). She suddenly appeared in the labyrinthian office after Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) was fired for not preventing the “uprising” in which most of the work-focused “innies” got a glimpse at their “outie” personal lives, despite their severed status. “They’re not, like, forcing you to be here, are they?” Dylan worries. All viewers know is that the unusual staffer is the company’s “Wintertide Fellow.”

It turns out Bock is also in the dark. “I don’t really know the entire story of why she’s even there or her family history or anything about that,” she says of her character. “Most of it was just stuff I was kind of coming up with in my own imagination.”

That was partly due to circumstance. Severance season two’s fragmented production process, which was complicated by the 2023 Hollywood strikes, didn’t always afford her time to speak with executive producer Dan Erickson, and sometimes her questions didn’t have answers. But her approach to the role was also by design. “I felt that having that mystery as an actor was sometimes helpful in amplifying the mystery surrounding the character,” Bock tells Vanity Fair.

There are, however, a few details Bock feels able to share. She thinks the fellowship is a Lumon indoctrination tool, and that Miss Huang’s presence serves to further infantilize the innies. At the same time, “she is in some effect older than they are, and possesses more knowledge about certain things,” says Bock. Miss Huang may know, for instance, that outie Helena is posing as innie Helly to spy on the rebellious MDR. But Bock doesn’t think that her character knows about Miss Casey’s (Dichen Lachman) brutal detainment, the reason for Lumon’s goats, or what completion of the Cold Harbor file will mean.

Bock was 15 when she auditioned for the biggest role of her career—one that’s inspired a wild range of fan theories. She began acting in local North Carolina children’s theater at age five, and made her professional debut in a regional theater production of Annie at 12, in which she played the shy orphan Kate. Her childhood was filled with piano, guitar, dance, and tennis lessons. “I was lucky that I found what I loved doing so early,” she says. “I did bounce around lessons a bit though. I took piano until I was about 10, and then I realized that I didn’t like being told what to play and would rather just do it for fun. I remember at my last piano recital every other kid was playing Bach and Beethoven, and I played “Dancing Queen.” In middle school, she became the voice of Baby Shark, and in 2022, she was a day player on the indie film Bruiser. When her manager suggested she audition for Severance, her parents—Bock’s dad is a realtor and baseball card dealer, and her mother works in school library administration—were big fans. But she and her older sister hadn’t seen the show.

“We read a bunch of different young women,” executive producer Ben Stiller says via email. “Sarah had this calmness and felt very centered. She’s not afraid to hold a look or a moment…. Her eyes are so expressive, you can read a lot into them. I think she also trusts that an audience will come to her, as opposed to reaching out to them. It’s a thing that takes a lot of actors many years to develop.”

Now 18, Bock can relate to Miss Huang being the only young woman at her workplace. But the two of them don’t have much else in common. “She’s pretty reserved in what she’s thinking and feeling, and I’d like to think that I’m a bit more openhearted,” she says. Still, Bock recognizes the teen’s defiant streak. “When she’s being a bit rebellious towards Milchick and questioning him, I feel like my parents would probably say that’s a little bit of me sometimes.”

Bock partly modeled the stony-faced assistant on Arquette’s icy, ousted Cobel, but hasn’t told the Oscar-winning actress that. “I didn’t meet her until the wrap party. And at that point, I was just so starstruck by her [that] we just danced together a little bit. I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to her about the show or our characters.”

In Bock’s last episode, we finally learn that Miss Huang’s first name is Eustace. She gets in a jab against the mercurial Milchick, sabotaging her boss’s performance review by complaining that he uses too many big words and installs paper clips incorrectly. But Milchick delivers the final blow. At Eustace’s fellowship graduation ceremony, the floor manager informs her that she’s being shipped off to the Gunnel Egan Empathy Center early, “to steward global reforms.” To “mark this betterment,” he has her smash her favorite ring toss game with a commemorative Jame Eagan bust.

Bock, who clearly reveres Tillman (“I think he’s just the most magnetic actor”), says that the pair had many conversations about their characters’ dynamic in that scene. “You could view it as him getting rid of her out of animus. Maybe he fears she will endanger his position. On the other hand, we also discussed the possibility of him having her leave early out of care and protection. He’s seen the oppressive ways in which the company has been treating him, and maybe he is sending her away to spare her of some of that pain.”

For her part, Bock wants to remind viewers that Miss Huang is a child. “She is being sent away from her home and her family with pretty much zero warning. I think that breaks down the walls she’s put up, and in that moment, she is just a scared and helpless kid who doesn’t know what is coming.”

What’s next for Bock is completing her freshman year at Northwestern—which she was influenced to attend by Lower, an alum herself. She’s become something of a campus celebrity since being featured in the school newspaper, and is often stopped by her fellow students—including frat boys asking for pictures, possibly as part of their rush process. But she could be lured away by the right part.

“I’m kind of going with the flow right now,” she says. “I made the decision that rather than sitting around and waiting for another role to come around…I would use that time to get an education. I’m still auditioning…and if the right thing were to come around, I would figure it out. I could take off the quarter, or take a year off and then come back. I’m not set on any direct path right now.” Of course, Bock is used to a bit of mystery.