Jessica Lee Gagné was on a flight when she realised she was playing it safe. The 37-year-old Severance cinematographer wasn't going to return for season 2—executive producer Ben Stiller (whom she previously worked with on Escape at Dannemora) and Co. even asked if she would direct an episode this time around. Gagné said no; she loved working on the show but was ready for something new. Still, there it was in front of her: the synopses of all 10 episodes in Severance season 2.
Her eyes landed on episode 7. In it, we truly meet Dichen Lachman's Gemma for the first time. Her shadow hung over the entire series to that point: Audiences were led to believe she died in a car crash, which led her husband, Mark (Adam Scott) to sever himself. Then, we met her inside Lumon as Ms Casey—a robotic wellness counsellor who didn't have any of Gemma's memories. Episode 7 tells us that she's been in captivity the entire time, going through bizarre, inhumane tests day after day. Plus, in an increasingly gutting series of flashbacks throughout the episode, we finally bear witness to Mark and Gemma's love story.
With its debut on Apple TV+ today, we know that the episode, titled "Chikhai Bardo," is a television masterpiece. But on that plane, Gagné simply knew that she needed to direct it.
"I had gone through a very crazy personal experience that was the beginning of me realising many things in my life," Gagné told me. "One of them was that I had been playing safe for many things in my life. I read episode 7 and it really aligned with themes and things that I was very much in. I was like, Okay, I think I'm meant to do that episode.... Directing is all about being vulnerable. It's all about putting yourself out there. I needed to learn to be vulnerable and to accept that I might fail."
Now, I've dropped an ungodly amount of thoughts in my recap this week, but I'll just say this here: The amount of time I spent between watching episode 7 and asking if Gagné would speak with me was embarrassingly short. And this: It's the best episode of TV I've seen in a long, long time.
We caught up this Monday before the episode's premiere. And before you flood me with hate mail asking why I didn't ask about the doctor or the intricacies of each and every room, just know that Gagné wants you to do some of that work on your own. "It's important to leave space for everyone's personal interpretation," she said. "Because I think people will see different parts of themselves within it."
Below, Gagné takes us inside the making of "Chikhai Bardo." This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
"That was a big fear that we all had. Dichen was very conscious of it. Also Mark Friedman, who wrote the episode. She's up against Helly—and we need people to love this person.... She could have just been a prisoner. There was a lot of looking at each scene, speaking with Dichen, and saying, 'Okay, what's really going on here?' Because everything is manipulated in her environment—and she's actually who she really is most of the time—so she has to play a game and not abandon hope.
"Why would she be hopeful? That was one of Ben's big concerns. We leaned into what prisoners go through and this grieving process. It has different stages and it's a circular thing. If you're a lifer in prison, you're going to go through phases of hope, anger, and depression. You move through them in stages and repeat the cycle. We were trying to get in a moment for her where she would have been hopeful—or had a spark that she could have been on the edge of Am I going to try something?"
"Severance is told through Mark's perspective. That's my interpretation of it, anyway. That's the feeling you get when you watch Severance—it's like Mark's world, but it's Mark's world post-severance. This human has decided not to feel a certain part of the range of his emotions. He's locked them into a box. By doing that, he limits the spectrum of colors and things that he wants to experience. But in this episode, we're diving into Gemma's perspective and experience, which we were missing. And then we're diving into their lives before Lumon took over them.
"How do you get people to understand why Mark decided to sever? It's really nuanced. It's not simple in the sense that we leave them in a perfect relationship. It would've been easier for him to grieve something that was perfect. The fact that they leave each other on a note where things are unresolved gives more guilt and more weight in his journey."
"At some point, you have to start getting into it. Having the control room—which is that green room where the watchers are basically looking at [MDR]—was a huge challenge, because that was a commitment. Okay, we're going to start talking about what's happening here and how this all works. You can't deliver all of that at the end, because it's so complex and involves more than one character now. You need to give yourself the time and space to get there."
"[Someone close to me] went through a similar journey as Gemma. Even one of the scenes with her closing the door in the bathroom is something I lived—that I saw her do when she was breaking down, because she went through IVF multiple times. I wanted to make sure a woman was going to tell this story, because it's the first time in Severance where we're fully in a female [perspective]—the episode is Gemma's episode. I wanted to accompany her through that story, and I felt like I was suited to tell it.
"Also, the themes of being a woman who has thrived in her career and gotten to a certain place, and then she's in a relationship with [someone who hasn't].... Even though the men will want to feel proud and be happy for their partner, that's just a reality that a lot of women face. That manifests in different ways for different partners.
"And now, [Gemma's] next focus is wanting this child. There's a moment where it's unclear at first. Yeah, they're excited about this—and this is not really said, but it did come through my mind at one point. Well, in that kitchen scene and in that scene in the office at the end, they accepted [that they won't have kids], maybe. Have they, in that office, fully accepted it? And Mark is actually in a lighter place because maybe he never wanted that child?"
"I'm the cinematographer of the show, so I was like, how am I gonna shoot these flashbacks without it looking cheesy or cheap? Oh my God. We have to shoot on film. Okay. I'm not someone who pushes [to shoot on film] usually, but it made so much sense because it evokes nostalgia. It's the most beautiful way to show skin. And everyone almost feels a little bit fake in Severance. But then it's like: Let's make this feel like the most home-video-esque thing. It's transitioning with crazy things, but at the same time, when we land in this world, it's so simple and it's an album of life. It's a kaleidoscope of images of beauty and love and seasons."
"There's the shot that goes from MDR to the control room downstairs [via electrical cables]. There's no CGI in it. It's all real. We actually shot through cables. It was the most laborious thing I have ever done as a [director of photography]. It was the biggest side project of this show, and so many people participated on it. You should see the rig for it: The camera goes through the internal part of the desk. There's a pulley moving in it.
"In that scene from season 1, Irving puts down his divider. So if you keep going through the scene, that's what happens as the camera goes down. We actually have the pulley moving to match the action of what happens in time in that episode. But we had to build this huge rig with spinning cables and a camera with a special lens that was going through them."
