Ben Stiller apparently had to fight to get Adam Scott cast in the lead role for “Severance.”
Stiller told The Hollywood Reporter that it was paramount he convince streaming platform Apple TV+ to give Scott the chance to take on the character of Mark S. in the drama series. Stiller, who executive produces the show and directs several episodes, had previously directed Scott in his 2013 film “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.”
“So much of the show [‘Severance’] is based in ‘The Office’ and ‘Parks and Rec’ and ‘Office Space,’ and that genre,” Stiller said, citing Scott’s tenure on NBC sitcom “Parks and Rec,” another workplace comedy. “The humor in the script that [creator] Dan [Erickson] wrote was in that world but had this other layer to it. Casting was about figuring out who could handle that.”
Even Scott knew it was a risk for him to be cast as the lead.
“I couldn’t really blame [Apple] at the time,” Scott said of the streamer’s apparent apprehension to his casting. “I was thought of as more of a comedic person, and it’s a big swing.”
Scott added that Stiller really advocated for him: “I’ve never experienced anything like that before in show business. No one’s ever stuck their neck out for me like that.”
Stiller previously said during First We Feast’s “Hot Ones” that the creative direction of “Severance” changed during the development of the series.
“It always, for me, started in comedy because it’s sort of a workplace comedy, but it’s also very, very strange and maybe a little bit scary,” Stiller said. “And then as the show developed, it got a little weirder and stranger and maybe less comedic than I’d originally thought it was. But I feel like that’s always at the the kind of the root of it, is that workplace comedy, kind of like shows like ‘The Office’ or ‘Parks and Rec.’ Those were shows for me that were sort of in the DNA of what the show was.”
And while Scott also had several comedy roles (i.e. “Party Down” and “Step Brothers”) under his belt prior to “Severance,” the series is his first drama. Stiller even compared Scott’s acclaimed performance to that of Bryan Cranston in “Breaking Bad.”
“There are actors like Bryan Cranston who get to go to another place when people see them in a certain role,” Stiller told The New Yorker, referring to Cranston’s leap from “Malcolm in the Middle” to “Breaking Bad” and how Scott has followed with a genre turn. “That’s what I felt with this.”
