Ben Stiller, Adam Scott and Other Severance Crew Share the Unexpected But ‘Really Fun’ Ways They Bonded Off Screen (Exclusive)

Though Severance tackles dark subject matter, the Apple TV+ thriller’s cast and crew still find ways to bring the joy together.

“I think we had 186 days of shooting this season. So, we all had a lot of moments together,” Ben Stiller, one of the show’s directors and executive producers, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “When we went to shoot episode four on location in the mountains, that was fun. We had a wrap party for that episode at a roller rink. That was awesome and really fun.”

Stiller, 59, continues, “And yeah, I remember we all watched the eclipse together. The solar eclipse. I have pictures of us all going outside of the stage in the Bronx there to look at that.”

Remembering how the Severance team had been “shooting the finale when the eclipse happened,” Adam Scott (who plays protagonist Mark Scout) then jokingly added about his downtime: “I had my first three grandchildren while shooting season two. We all stayed in a lodge together up in the mountains.” 

As fellow cast member Zack Cherry (Dylan George) notes how the gang does “have a lot of fun” as they “entertain each other,” Britt Lower (Helly Riggs) that the crew will “pontificate a lot.”

“We play a lot of childlike games that have rules that change rapidly,” she continues. “It’s a very sterile environment and I think we find a lot of levity from just goofing around together.”

“We play make-believe on our breaks from professionally playing make-believe,” adds Cherry, 37.

From the perspective of Christoper Walken, who plays (Burt Goodman), he feels that “a lot of sitting around and waiting” on set between is “one of the nice things” about working on a set.

“John [Turturro] and I just had a lot of fun sitting there talking,” Walken, 81, recalls. “We talked about everything. We talked about maybe writing a book about all the things we talked about.”  

Though Tramell Tillman (Seth Milchick) says there is “a seriousness” and “focus, because the  content is so heavy,” he reveals they still “try to keep it jovial when we can.”

“We like to have a good time,” he adds. “We will have a little dance break on the side to keep things jovial.”

Season 2 of the hit series picks up where things left off, with Mark and his fellow Lumon innies (as well as their outies) dealing with the aftermath of the shocking events that transpired in the freshman season finale, airing in 2022.

Getting back into character after a long hiatus (partially due to the actors and writers strikes of 2023) wasn’t much of a challenge for Scott, who notes that the cast “had spent so much time over the break between seasons, both talking about the show because we were doing press and stuff, but also talking amongst ourselves about the show and where it should go in season two.”

“By the time we started shooting, I felt pretty ready and prepped, and good to go,” Scott, 51, continues. “Season 1, we were working in a bubble, and we were all following Ben in this journey of finding the tone, and finding the characters and the parameters of the world and all of that. All that basic work for the framework was done, and that was a matter of diving back in and expanding that world and expanding the characters.”

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The debut season earned praise from fans and critics alike, leading the hit series to earn a Peabody Award. Naturally, with such acclaim comes pressure to create another home run with the second installment — but that’s not something director-producer Stiller, 59, was worried about.

“We were just trying to continue telling the story. And for the people who were invested in the first season who really loved it, every day we were just thinking, how can we try to make this as interesting and exciting, and hopefully mysterious and emotional, and all the things that you would hope it could be,” Stiller explains. “You can’t really top something, because what does that mean? You just try to continue telling the story and hopefully, people enjoy it, and you just do your best.” 

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Severance returns to Apple TV+ on Jan. 17. In the meantime, season 1 can currently be streamed in full on the service.