In season two of Severance, Helly R (Britt Lower) is reunited with her team at Lumon after her outie, Helena Eagan, spends a considerable amount of time impersonating her. As the nature of the history between Mark S (Adam Scott) and Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman) comes into focus, Helly makes a choice to do what she believes is right.
Awards Buzz spoke with Lower about how getting to know Helena has helped her understand Helly more:
“Much like the image in Milchick’s office of the iceberg, I think what we see on the surface with Helena, there’s a whole lot going on under the water and a lifetime of being conditioned by this high control group and growing up in really strange circumstances. There is a beating heart under all of that trauma. So I came to really appreciate her perspective and to know that she had this rebel known as Helly deep inside of her, and that really gave me an understanding of the pain that she must have endured up until that point in her life.”
She also discussed what burning questions she still has about Helly this far into the show:
“In season one, I really got to know Helly based on what she doesn’t know about herself. And so she’s on this really clear, action-driven mission to find out what the hell’s going on in this place, and to get to the bottom of who she is. And a lot of the show is unpacking that really human question of, who are you at your core? So much of what I got to know and love about Helly was based on how she behaved, right? Her actions, her forward-moving, direct, unapologetic inquiry and curiosity about the world was really the thing that I had the privilege of getting to discover on my feet while we were filming.”
Watch the video above to hear more about what she’d like to see next for Helly and the kind of roles she’d like to tackle.
The first two seasons of Severance are streaming on Apple TV.
