When the end credits roll on Severance Season 2, Episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo,” your four tempers will be absolutely popping.
You’ll be overcome with woe and dread, because the story that unfolds over an eventful 50-minute stretch is unbelievably tragic and terrifying. You’ll have renewed malice towards Lumon. And you’ll feel so joyous that you might even consider getting a frolic tattoo, because the standout installment of is one of TV’s most gorgeous, meticulously-crafted episodes â one made even more impressive when you learn it’s cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné’s directorial debut.
If you’d asked Gagné to direct in Season 1 of Apple TV+‘s hit workplace thriller, she likely wouldn’t have considered it. Heck, when director and EP Ben Stiller â who started working with Gagné on his 2018 miniseries Escape at Dannemora â first pitched the idea for Season 2, she confidently turned him down.
“Ben is the one who suggested it. I said no at first. I was too afraid, or actually, I wasn’t even conscious at that moment that I was afraid of it. It was this mental block of ‘We don’t do that. We’re not going there. We’re not putting ourselves at risk,’” Gagné told Decider over Zoom. “I basically came to a lot of self-realization. I’d been doing a lot of work with my subconscious at the time…and when I read the synopsis and realized this episode was dealing with a lot of themes of memories and the subconscious, I saw it as an opportunity.”
After reflecting on episode’s potential and its ties to her personal journey, Gagné decided, “This is actually meant for me. I’m supposed to do this episode.” She faced her fears and went on to direct one of Severance‘s most ambitious and revered episodes.
Written by Dan Erickson and Mark Friedman, “Chikhai Bardo” follows three different timelines that interact with and relate to one another in a beautifully cohesive fashion. In present-day, Devon (Jen Tullock) and Reghabi (Karen Aldridge) nervously monitor an unconscious Mark (Adam Scott) post-seizure. As he journeys in his mind, he flashes back to his pre-severed days with Gemma (Dichen Lachman), reliving the highs and lows of their love story.
When tasked with capturing the bright spots and darker moments of Mark and Gemma’s past â from their meet-cute at a Lumon blood drive and spring days spent basking in each other’s presence to her miscarriage and his emotional withdrawal â Gagné had an immediate vision. She had to shoot the flashbacks on film.
“That was the cinematographer part of me speaking at that moment. It was very interesting working with myself. That was a very initial, really strong initial impulse,” Gagné explained. “Ben and I talked about it and I’m like, ‘My gosh. The only way to create these memories in the most simple, direct, natural and subconscious manner is for them to be in film, because of what everyone associates with film. When you see it, you automatically go into nostalgia â a memory of the past. It has that visceral feeling for you. So if I was going to shoot this the best way it could be done, it would be with film.”
Episode 7’s third jaw-dropping timeline takes us down to Lumon’s mysterious testing floor, where we learn that Gemma is alive, severed, and being held against her will while a nurse (Sandra Bernhard) and Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson) perform terrifying tests on her.
While scenes at Mark and Gemma’s home were filmed at the house Gagné was renting in Nyack, New York, the blinding white testing floor was another detailed Severance set. Gagné, Stiller, and production designer Jeremy Hindle designed the expansive space, which took a year to build out.
“I’m a sucker for an expansive mood board when it’s a new project. I did collages in terms of this episode, because there was a lot of world-building in it. A lot of new sets and new things,” Gagné explained. “But for the first time this season, I think Ben and I â because we really speak the language of Severance now â we didn’t need to have that kind of visual support material. For Episode 7, because I was my own cinematographer, I just went with it intuitively and trusted that I knew where I was going.”
Down on the testing floor, Gemma spends her days entering different rooms named after MDR files. Each room activates her severance chip and calls forth a new consciousness, or innie, who exists solely in that room â but there’s another dark twist. From a dentist office to a turbulence-heavy flight simulation room, the severed spaces each put Gemma in uncomfortable situations to test if the severance barrier is holding and learn what, if anything, transcends it.
“A little part of me wanted to do so many more rooms,” Gagné admitted, confirming the team only shot in those that made the final edit. Her favorite filming experience? Allentown, a Christmas-themed room where Dr. Mauer plays Gemma’s husband and makes her write thank-you notes until her hand cramps.
“I always felt a really special tie to it there. Also, I just loved the character that was developed for Dichen in that room. We were trying to channel the annoying or angry teenager vibe in her, and it was so fun to see her in a different state,” Gagné recalled. “Something magical happened in that room. To me, it was this joy. And I feel like everyone while we were shooting it had a good time. It was definitely a tight, tight day, but we got to explore and try things. And it really gave way to a unique tone for the episode and helped that turning point that comes up after.”
Something that each episode of Severance confirms, especially “Chikhai Bardo,” is that Gagné isn’t afraid to shoot bold shots. In Season 1, we gushed over our shared favorite shot: Mark and Helly’s pink-lit Wong Kar-wai love scene, which she thankfully fought to include. In Season 2, our shared special standout is a tight, creatively lit transition shot of Gemma’s eyes right before she learns she had a miscarriage.
“That’s one of my favorite pieces of this whole episode. There was a really beautiful dialog between me and Mark Friedman in terms of these transitions. I got to work with him in the writing, too, because he knew that my strength was the craft of camera work. So we leaned in on each other and I was able to help him tie certain things together,” Gagné explained. “I was thinking about this specific transition in a way that it was like, ‘What does it feel like to go through your worst hell?’ It was the visual transition from this beautiful moment of joy to that traumatic and deepest, darkest feeling you can feel as a human. I really see it as this journey to an inferno, being pulled into this vortex.”
Gagné shared that the technique is one she tried on a past project and dreamed of repeating for years. “It’s something I brought over from another movie [Despite the Night] I had worked on with this really interesting French director called Philippe Grandrieux. His work has inspired many filmmakers we admire today, but not that many people know him. And I got to do a film with him and there was this one scene where I wanted to do a transition from blue hour to nighttime,” Gagné explained. “He didn’t use it in the edit, but I saw what it looked like live. The lighting changed, and it was the most magical thing I had ever seen. And I’m like, ‘I need to do this. This needs to be done again.’ And I got to do it for this shot. So I have a particular feeling towards that whole thing.”
For the special shot, which doesn’t include a cut, the team dimmed down daylight lighting to create the transitional effect. “As you dim down this tungsten lighting, we turn up this other tungsten source. And in that, slowly there’s this red, fire kind of thing that happens on the skin,” she explained. “To me, that was the inferno sensation. And then you dim it up and it comes back to normal tungsten. I was very technical. It’s crazy how when you can really understand technical things like that, like lighting, you can translate it to an emotion. I feel like that’s like the power of filmmaking, so that shot is pretty special for me.”
When Gagné looks back at her unexpectedly evocative and poetic directorial debut â which ends with Gemma crying after a failed escape attempt and Mark waking up heartbroken over her loss â she feels Season 2, Episode 7 “was full of a bunch little miracles” that came together to spark a new passion within her.
“It feels cheesy to say it, but I really believe this episode found me to help me on this journey and help me believe in myself,” she said. “I’m definitely open to directing again, and I think I’m moving on to that officially in my life. For me, the big thing was just getting over this fear that blindsided me, which is wild. I really just shut that part of myself off. The core essence of this show relates to me really, really deeply with how I’ve hidden things from myself and how we deny ourselves parts of ourselves. So yes, I will be continuing.”
New episodes of Severance Season 2 premiere Fridays on Apple TV+.
The post ‘Severance’s Jessica Lee Gagné Said No When Ben Stiller First Suggested She Direct. Then She Faced Her Fears And Directed One Of The Show’s Most Revered Episodes. appeared first on Decider.
