Patricia Arquette Wasn’t Sure Anyone Would Watch ‘Severance’

Patricia Arquette never thought anyone would watch Severance. The Apple TV show, created by Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle, follows a mysterious organisation which offers its employees the chance to “sever” their work and home life, essentially splitting their consciousness. The dystopian mystery became one of Apple’s most talked-about shows when it premiered in February 2022, and since then, the nearly three-year wait for its return has agonised fans. Stiller even had to reply directly to musician SZA, who wrote on X that she needed a new season “right the f*** now.”

Arquette, 56, plays Harmony Cobal, the ice-cold, silver-haired manager of the severed staff, who also spies on her employee Mark (Adam Scott) in the outside world by posing as his friendly neighbour. Speaking to press this week at the 21st edition of the Marrakech International Film Festival, where Arquette is on the jury this year, the Oscar-winner describes the show’s success as a happy surprise.

“When we shot, it was during Covid, before there were shots or anything,” she says. “So we’re wearing plastic things, shields and masks, and you can’t joke with anyone, and we’re all separated. And then the tone of that [series] is this kind of weird, dystopian separation. So I was really like, ‘I don’t think anyone’s going to want to watch this thing right now.’”

To Arquette, the show’s success is owed to the resonance of its dystopian concept—the idea of splitting the self as a way to manage irreconcilable differences co-existing in one’s psyche. The actress attributes this to Erickson, who wrote the show while working at a door factory. “He was just wanting every day to get by,” she says. “He didn’t even want to remember it when he went home, the sort of proletarian grind every day that he was going through. It just felt soulless to him in some way, taking an order and checking in paperwork.”

Though tight-lipped about revealing any details of season two, which is due to premiere  January 17, Arquette jokes that Cobal is never far away from her. “It’s weird, because I don’t really carry characters with me, or I try very hard not to. But whenever people ask me about Cobal, or Severance, this little thing comes in me that just wants to lie to them. So whatever I say, I wouldn’t count on it.”

It’s Arquette’s first time on the jury at the Marrakech International Film Festival, which is chaired by Luca Guadagnino and includes actors Andrew Garfield and Jacob Elordi and directors Zoya Akhtar and Ali Abbasi. To assess the films in competition, a diverse collection of international cinema from Japan to Somalia, Arquette says her history of collaborators has kept her open to films that play with form.

“I like to not have a little box for a movie to fit inside,” she says. “I’m open to simple things that are moving, I’m open to really complicated things that are interesting. That’s part of what’s beautiful about film. When I worked with David Lynch at one point, he said, ‘Everyone thinks there’s a beginning and an end with film, that there’s a top and a bottom—no, there’s not.’ And I like that idea of just the filmmaker having a vision, and what is your vision?”