Move over, Dr. Ricken Lazlo Hale, PhD. There’s a new doctor in town, and he’s a man of many hats, many wigs, and one “stupid” Christmas sweater.
Severance Season 2, Episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo,” finally revealed the identity of the mysterious whistling doctor who grabbed a tray of tools from O&D earlier this season and took the elevator down to the testing floor. His name is Dr. Mauer, and he’s a complete nightmare. But crafting the complex character was an absolute dream for Severance superfan Robby Benson.
“Severance is my favorite show,” Benson, one of director Ben Stiller’s favorite actors, told Decider over Zoom ahead of his big Season 2 episode. “As a fan, I can tell you that as excited as I am to watch it, that’s how excited I was to work on it.”
Written by Dan Erickson and Mark Friedman, the ambitious episode is a stunning directorial debut from Jessica Lee Gagné that features three different timelines. In present-day, Devon (Jen Tullock) and Reghabi (Karen Aldridge) nervously monitor an unconscious Mark (Adam Scott) post-seizure. As Mark journeys in his mind, flashbacks show snippets of his pre-severed life and love story with Gemma (Dichen Lachman). And the final jaw-dropping story takes us down to Lumon’s basement, where Dr. Mauer is running relentless tests on a trapped, severed Gemma.
In the Wellington room, one of many severed spaces named after MDR files, Benson poses as a terrifying dentist who works on one of Gemma’s innies for hours until her mouth is sore. In Allentown, he plays husband to another Gemma innie and orders her to write thank-you notes for their gifts until her hands cramp. The point of the rooms and unpleasant scenarios is to test the severance barriers and see what, if anything, transcends them. But they also gave Benson the “fantastic” opportunity to play multiple personas.
Six decades into his wide-ranging career as an actor, writer, director, and singer, Benson has starred in everything from One on One and Ice Castles to Beauty and the Beast (he voiced Beast!) and more, but he regards Severance as a singular experience. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been doing this all my life,” the 69-year-old multi-hyphenate explained.
Below, Benson chats with Decider about late-night Reddit lurking and his favorite testing floor room to sharing scenes with Lachman, Dr. Mauer’s deep feelings for Gemma, and more. (Yes, there’s a new, albeit one-sided, player in the Mark/Ms. Casey/Helly love hexagon! Chaos reigns.)
DECIDER: I’m so excited to chat about your chilling role in Severance, which was especially chilling for me, because I have a doctor named Dr. Mauer, who I can never see again.
ROBBY BENSON: [Laughs] Oh that’s great.
Before we dive into Episode 207, can you share a bit about your casting process. How did you find yourself on this incredible series?
I was incredibly fortunate that I got a phone call from Rachel Tenner, who is the casting person, and they asked me if I would be interested in auditioning for this part. And at this at this point in my life and career, there aren’t a lot of things that make me go, “Oh yeah! Absolutely!” But honestly, Severance is one of my favorite shows. Actually, it is my favorite show. The work is just ridiculously good. And I’ve always wanted to work with Ben. The opportunity even to meet him and do a Zoom session like this, and an audition, all of that was exciting to me. So I said yes and I recorded myself. And because I’m a director, I directed myself. And I got lucky enough to get to the next step where I had a Zoom with Ben. I got the part. And in my six decades of work I’ve never experienced anything like this before. The people I was working with were extraordinary. Ben Stiller is one of the all-time great human beings. He’s the best director and producer I have ever worked with. He takes care of the story and the show. And the way he takes care of his crew and his actors is just phenomenal. He’s so gifted, and so talented, and he runs a set with with pure love. I’m telling you, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been doing this all my life. So that’s how I got to be talking to you right now. I just got incredibly lucky.
In Season 2, our first glimpse of Dr. Mauer is him rolling this cart down to O+D whistling “The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald.” Are you aware that faceless scene completely uprooted the fandom? Theories were flying. People were convinced it was John Noble. They were analyzing the song choice and tying it back to Lumon. Have you just been quietly enjoying the chaos you unleashed a few weeks ago?
Well, it’s funny. So, I’m not a great sleeper. And I was following this chain on Reddit and it was fascinating to see what everyone thought. And it started with someone saying something like, and “Who is the mysterious old man?” [Laughs] And I was like, “OK! This is cool.” And so I just kept going down, and down, and down. And all of these wonderful theories were popping up. It was just it’s fantastic. I mean, the following is fantastic. The people care so much, so it’s very cool to be a part of that.
Dr. Mauer is such an interesting character because it’s implied that he’s not severed, but you still got the opportunity to play so many different versions of him: the doctor, the terrifying dentist, the flight attendant, the cursed Christmas husband. How exciting was it to find so many different shades of the character — with new wardrobes and hair — in a single episode?
It was fantastic. Wardrobe is Sarah Edwards. She’s phenomenal. And the people in makeup, Judy Chan and Mandy Bisesti, and hair is Jon Carter, they made me different — I think I had four different wigs, and I had mustaches and beards. And my face was shaved for a lot of it. So I had a lot of help, because you just start to become these different people as all of this is taking place around you. Jess Gagné, the director, was wonderful. And I got a chance to discuss things with them. I had some ideas, and they listened. And I feel that Dr. Mauer is in all of these characters. For me, one thing that’s exceptional about this show — it’s so brilliant — is how much it’s based on love and relationships. I don’t know if you’ll see this, but I always believed that Dr. Mauer had never been in love before. He’d never felt that. And he was absolutely in love with Gemma. He believed it.
Oh, I definitely felt it. I was going to ask you to speak to those feelings we see peek out, as you said, really in every room in some way or another.
He’d never felt loved before. He was backwards. He was a scientist. He did all these things. And in my mind, he was in love with her. So that helped, especially working with Dichen, because she’s extraordinary. Just extraordinary. Her work is amazing. Everyone’s work. Adam. Everyone.
Dichen is so phenomenal in this episode, and prior to this she did such a remarkable job of making people care about Gemma and Ms. Casey with such limited screen time. What was it like working so closely with her and developing a relationship as actors despite your character conflict?
Dichen became an incredible friend to me and my wife, Karla DeVito.
Love her.
Yeah, Karla’s incredible. There’s a song on YouTube, it’s Robby Bensoneo called “I Want You For Myself.” It was my Valentine’s Day song for her.
Oh, I’m absolutely listening to that when we’re done.
But Dichen became such an incredible friend of ours. And in between shots while we were sitting around and waiting for the next scene, we would discuss things and Dichen welcomed Karla into every conversation. She’s a remarkable human being. She’s an incredible actor, an incredible actor. But she’s also such a good, good human being.
As we learn more about Lumon’s nefarious operations, I’m fascinated with how people like Dr. Mauer started working there and why they have so much faith in Kier. We learn in this episode in addition to the testing floor, Mauer worked at this Butzemann Fertility Center, which I looked up and it literally means bogeyman in German. I screamed. Is there a deeper backstory you were given that helped you understand why he’s so dedicated to Lumon and willing to do this work? Or are you still in the dark?
Honestly, I have to be honest. I’m kind of in the dark.
Do you like that mystery or do you wish you knew more?
Well, I came up with my own stuff to help me as an actor, to be there in that moment and to stay there. And I believe that he’s as loyal as loyal can be. And he is such a dedicated scientist. I have this t-shirt that my son got me. It says, “Science: It works, whether you believe in it or not.” I was going to wear that today, and then I realized you wouldn’t see it in the frame. [Laughs] But I believe he’s so involved with the science and that’s what drives him. And he loves all of these people, he cares for them in a scientific way. But personally I think he, for the first time in his life ever, is in love with Gemma. And he doesn’t know how to behave.
When you were crafting the character was there any specific direction you got from Dan, or something you really wanted convey in your performance?
I’ll put it to you this way. Dan is a genius. We didn’t spend a lot of time together, but there was a moment before a certain take — I won’t discuss it, because it’s telling too much. It’s in a later episode. But he came over to me and gave me a line change, and he looked me in the eyes and I was so connected with him and he said something to me, and he believed it. There was this unbelievable passion in his eyes, and it gave me such a purpose. As an actor, you’re so vulnerable. You’re trying your best. You fail, you fail, you succeed a little bit, you fail, you succeed a little. And this feeling that he gave me — and Ben does the same thing — it just puts you right there in the moment, ready to pour your heart out. It’s a very special quality they have. It really saves an actor.
Looking back, did you have a favorite testing floor room or Dr. Mauer persona?
Well, my favorite was the airplane.
Robby, me too! [Laughs] I was so fascinated by it. That was such dedication on his part.
Even though it’s a matter of seconds, he wants to take care of her. He’s trying to put her in situations where she doesn’t feel comfortable to see how she behaves. But there’s such incredible turbulence in the airplane. So he’s trying to do his best to calm her while he’s flying around the airplane. That’s really my favorite.
I also want to ask about Allentown, the Christmas room, which Jessica said was her favorite to shoot. Earlier in the episode we hear Mark say that Gemma hates writing thank-you notes, so of course, here she is being forced to write thank-you notes until her hand cramps. We kind of see Dr. Mauer’s comedic side with the de-grouter comment, and he seems perfectly content watching this unique form of torture until Gemma says, “It’s always Christmas.” You see his mask slip for a second, and then he forces her to tell him she loves him. How did you and Dichen approach that especially tense room?
We all talked about it. Me, Jess, and Dichen discussed it. And I just felt that Dr. Mauer’s fantasy is to be her husband, and to be in love. So for him to sit there and to be a part of all of this is extremely satisfying to him, until she finally breaks him for a moment. She’s not happy that it’s Christmas. She’s not happy that she has to do all these things. So he tries to get it back and get her back by telling her that he loves her.
It goes back to your comments about him being in love for the first time and unsure how to act. We see that again in the scene where she says she wants to go home, which upsets him, so he lies and says Mark remarried and had a daughter, and he insinuates Gemma has moved on, too. Assuming Dr. Mauer survives the head injury he sustained from that chair, what can you tease about his future on the show?
That’s something I really don’t know. Again, I’m in the dark about that, but I do know that no matter what, he wants to save Gemma.
This was my favorite episode of the season, and people have been waiting to find out what was happening on this testing floor with Gemma since 2022. As a fan of the show, when you first read the 207 script and saw the testing floor set, what were your thoughts?
As a fan of the show, I can tell you that as excited as I am to watch it, that’s how excited I was to work on it. When I walked on the set and and saw all the hallways and the rooms, I was amazed, because of the detail — the detail of the art department, the production design, the prop department. I mean, these people are the best at their jobs. And to walk in, to be a part of that, and to suddenly see all the hallways, what a feeling that is.
You watch it on TV and you think, “Oh, it must be some design or green screen, or it must be done in post.” And you walk on the set and here are these rooms. You open the door to a scene where we’re working with Dichen in her room, and there are people there who are carpeting. They don’t want a footprint. After every rehearsal, every discussion, no matter what, they’re carpeting. They’re pushing the thing on the floor to make sure the carpet is perfect.
It even got to me. I was about to walk in for a rehearsal and I saw little pieces of paper on the floor, like just specks. And I went down and started picking them up, because I was a part of their passion as well. Every single person was doing their job beyond anything I’ve ever seen. So yeah, I went from being overwhelmed as a fan walking on the set, to being very much a part of everything as an actor.
Before we wrap, do you have any fun watch party plans for Episode 207?
Yes, absolutely. My son and his wife live with us, and they just had a newborn baby. So we’re going to have a watch party with the baby. The baby’s going to see Severance.
Oh my gosh, I love that. I also can’t think of a worse episode of Severance for a baby to see. [Laughs]
Right. Exactly. I’ll be holding the baby.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
New episodes of Severance Season 2 premiere Fridays on Apple TV+.
The post ‘Severance’s Robby Benson Unpacks Dr. Mauer’s Motives In Season 2’s Standout Episode 7: “He Is Absolutely In Love With Gemma” appeared first on Decider.
