Zach Cherry has put in his time at the office. Before he earned his first Emmy nomination playing a diligent employee of the enigmatic Lumon Industries on the Apple TV+ thriller “Severance,” he worked for many years as an office manager at a nonprofit organization in Manhattan.
It was a job that Cherry appreciated for allowing him the flexibility to pursue opportunities in improv comedy and acting, and for its relatively relaxed atmosphere, though he did get reprimanded once for wearing shorts to the office. He explained that it was not his employers, specifically, who were mad at him.
“My company didn’t care,” Cherry said. “But we were subletting space from a larger company and it went through the grapevine to my boss that I wore shorts one day. I was told you actually can’t. So I found the limits of business casual.”
Cherry, 37, had a pleasantly laid back demeanor as he sat in the basement food court of the City Point mall in Downtown Brooklyn one recent August morning. His beard was bushy and he was dressed in comfortable, loosefitting clothes he acknowledged were “within a few standard deviations” of what he’d normally be wearing if he weren’t about to be photographed.
While he may not immediately appear to possess the visceral intensity of “Severance,” the discombobulating drama in which he plays Dylan G., an office worker who, like some others, has been split into two different people, Cherry has a resolute drive beneath his easygoing surface.
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