One Severance Actor Convinced The Show’s Creators To Cast Christopher Walken

“Severance” is an enormous hit for its streaming home, Apple TV+, and that’s absolutely thanks to not just the show’s quality — creator Dan Erickson and executive producer Ben Stiller are doing phenomenal work — but its powerhouse cast. Adam Scott leads the proceedings as Mark S., but he’s flanked by Britt Lower (as Helly R.), Zach Cherry (as Dylan G.), and John Turturro (as Irving B.) most of the time. That’s without even mentioning industry heavyweights like Patricia Arquette and Christopher Walken, who appear as Harmony Cobel and Burt G., respectively. Now, we know exactly how Walken got involved with “Severance”: Turturro requested his presence.

In an interview alongside Lower and Cherry for ScreenRant in 2022 — when the show’s first season was airing — interviewer Joe Deckelmeier asked Turturro why he wanted to get involved with the show. “I thought there was something organic about it, and I think people do separate themselves from work,” Turturro said of the show’s high-wire concept, where the characters are split into two parts: their “innies,” who go to work at the sinister Lumon Industries, and their “outies,” who lead their “real” lives.

“The characters were all different and nuanced,” Turturro continued. “I liked the whole idea of the character that they had offered me and I thought it would be interesting to see someone who’s really formal and disciplined and rigid. Then all of a sudden, he gets rocked and this wave of emotion comes in. Then when I spoke with Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson, we discussed it, they said, ‘Well, who would you like to work with on that? Do you have any ideas?’ And I said Chris Walken because I’ve known Chris a long time and I don’t have to really act like we’re friends.”

After Irving and Burt meet by chance at the severed floor’s wellness center, the two are drawn together and strike up a very unexpected office romance — only for their tryst to end in tragedy towards the close of season 1 of “Severance.” In that season’s finale, “The We We Are,” Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irving activate a procedure known as the “overtime contingency” which allows their “innies” to go out into the real world. When Irving goes to find Burt, he realizes “outtie” Burt is in a relationship with somebody else. (At this point in the show, Burt’s “innie” is retired, so Irving can’t see the man he loves at work anymore.) 

Both Christopher Walken and John Turturro sell this relationship beautifully, and it all feels earnest and real — and in that same ScreenRant interview, Turturro made it clear that his real-life bond with Walken made that possible. “Well, I just think sometimes you meet people and you connect and you’re similar souls or something, and that’s very hard to act,” Turturro said when asked about the connection between Burt and Irving. He continued: 

“I watch a lot of things, when people are supposed to be in love or this or that, and you just go, ‘I’m not feeling that.’ If you have someone who gets your sense of humor and you share certain things, it’s easy to build up from that, and then see what happens between you. It’s not like there are decisions that are made. When you work with someone like Chris Walken, I know I’ve directed him a bunch of times too, he’s sort of like a jazz player. He comes at it from all different angles. And that’s kind of the joy of working with someone like that. And then you see there’s always a surprise. That’s all I can say.”

After seeing Burt in a relationship with another man at the end of season 1, the second season of “Severance” reunites the lovers, but there’s a major catch. (Actually, there are multiple catches if I’m being honest.) In the season’s 5th episode “Trojan’s Horse,” Irving’s “outtie” suspects he’s being followed; not only is he correct, but the man following him is Burt, who remembers Irving from the time his “innie” went berserk outside of Burt’s door. After (correctly) guessing the two might have been in a relationship on the severed floor, Burt invites Irving to his house for dinner. When Irving attends, he meets Burt’s husband Fields, played by John Noble.

Fields ends up drinking a bit too much wine in the episode that features this very weird dinner party, “Attila” (named for the nickname the two men use for each other, taking it from “honey,” or “hun”) and says a few things about Burt — including that his husband was a “scoundrel” in his youth and that they’re both relatively interested in how severance connects to Christianity. As far as the backstory of the nickname “Attila” goes, though, it reveals something that may end up being very important. Fields says they came up with the joke 20 years previously while talking to Burt’s coworker at Lumon, or, as he puts it, his “Lumon partner.” Here’s the problem: The severance procedure has only existed for 12 years, which raises a lot of questions about how involved Burt was at Lumon … and how much he might know about the severance process. 

Clearly, Christopher Walken’s time on the show isn’t done quite yet, so we should all be grateful to John Turturro, who got him involved in the first place.

You can follow Burt and Irving’s seemingly doomed love story on “Severance,” which is streaming on Apple TV+ now.