Severance's Dichen Lachman on Gemma's Emotional Cold Harbor Experience: 'The Lights Came on Inside Her'

[The following contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of Severance, "Cold Harbor."]

In the words of Sandra Bernhard's Nurse Cecily, "It's the f---ing spouse."

After two years spent thinking his wife was dead, plus one TV season spent scheming to get her back, Mark Scout (Adam Scott) finally rescues Gemma (Dichen Lachman) from Lumon's Testing Floor in the Season 2 finale of Severance. But their great escape doesn't quite have a honeymoon ending — at least, not for the Scouts, as Mark's innie turns back at the last moment to be with Helly (Britt Lower). Gemma is left to yell for her husband from the other side of a locked door, confronted for the first time with the consequences of Mark's severance. His pain pushed him to create a part of himself who doesn't remember his grief, and now, that part of him wants his own life.

Pain, or the denial of pain, plays an unsurprisingly major role in "Cold Harbor." The second season finale of Severance, written by series creator Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller, opens the door to the most feared room on the Testing Floor for the first time. Forget your most convoluted theories; Cold Harbor is simply a room with an empty crib, a reminder of Gemma's devastating miscarriage and her subsequent struggle through IVF with Mark. In a test to make sure that the severance barrier can hold off such a powerful memory, taking Lumon one step closer to engineering a world where certain people can sever discomfort out of their lives, the company gives Gemma's 25th — and last — innie a basic task: She has to take apart that crib. Mark finds her there, blankly recreating the worst chapter of their lives, and gently coaxes her into the hallway, where he and Gemma share an emotional reunion.

Still, they can't get out of Lumon without their innies' help. After making it out of the Testing Floor, Mark and Gemma switch back to Mark S. and Ms. Casey mid kiss in the elevator and make a break for it through the halls of the Severed Floor. Mark convinces Ms. Casey to walk out the door, where she becomes Gemma again, but he can't bring himself to follow his outie's wife when Helly is calling his name, leaving Gemma powerless to get him back.

Ms. Casey said it best: "What's taking place?" TV Guide spoke with Dichen Lachman to get the scoop on the big Cold Harbor reveal, Gemma's reunion with Mark, her devastating introduction to her husband's innie, and Ms. Casey's reaction to that kiss.

ALSO READ: Severance's Tramell Tillman wanted Milchick's marching band scene to stand on its own

My favorite line of the episode, and maybe my favorite line of the season, is "What's taking place?" How did you find that line reading?
Dichen Lachman: That was fun. I think we tried a few different [phrases] — "What's happening?" "What's taking place?" What would she say in that moment? It was a fun little scene to shoot, not without its complications technically, with such a small space. But that was one of the lighter days, because obviously, there's a lot going on in this episode. It was a fun, light moment.

Was it complicated to shoot the outie-to-innie transition while kissing?
Lachman: It wasn't complicated so much as we just tried it different ways until we felt like it worked. I was quite happy for Ms. Casey in that moment, because she's just been dying to get back to the severed floor to see her friends. And I feel like she had a little soft spot for Mark, obviously, because it's Gemma, and I feel like she doesn't understand why, but she is drawn to Mark in some way, enough so that she trusts him to run off with him down these hallways when all the alarms are going off. But it was a really nice little moment for Ms. Casey to find herself in this situation, because she just really wanted to belong — belong to a community or to somebody.

Twice in the past few episodes you've played Ms. Casey while you're not dressed like Ms. Casey. I'm curious how that changes the experience of playing her.
Lachman: Yeah, I brought that up. I need to watch ["Chikhai Bardo"] again, I don't know if it made it, but she does feel different, and there were a few moments in the some of the takes where I wanted to acknowledge that she's, first of all, confused, because she's been running for her life, and maybe in her body she feels that, and then she's wearing these strange clothes. But ultimately, I think her motivation is, well, that's not as important as getting back to her friends on the severed floor, which is why it's so heartbreaking to have Mr. Milchick send her down. When she's in the elevator with Mark [in "Cold Harbor"], I think the fact that they come to in a kiss sort of trumped the whole outfit. The most important thing is that she's just like, "Oh my God. What's happening?" It overshadows anything else.

I know that Adam has spoken about how much time it took to put together the hallway run that he did at the beginning of the season. Were the running sequences that the two of you had together in the finale also complicated to shoot?
Lachman: No way as long as the [season premiere]. That first sequence was extraordinary. When I first saw the first eight minutes of Season 2, I was completely blown away. I haven't seen everything, but I've never seen anything like that. And it was just so innovative, and the amount of time they put in, it was extraordinary, but it totally paid off, because it's just breathtaking. Our running stuff did not take that long.

How did you figure out how to play Gemma's Cold Harbor innie, who takes apart the crib?
Lachman: That one was sort of ambiguous, in the sense that in the room, there's so little context, and that's the only thing that's in there. We took [the crib] apart for hours and put it together and took it apart. I don't know how much of that really ended up in [the episode]. I made the decision that she doesn't really know what it is, but there's something inside her which is familiar to her, and she sort of does what she's told in that moment. She feels a familiarity, but obviously it doesn't break the severance barrier. But that's why they put the crib there, I think, to see if one of her most painful outie memories or circumstances breaks through their technology.

What did the Cold Harbor room mean to you, and was that something that you talked to Ben or Dan about?
Lachman: To Gemma, I think it's just that she's been curious about what happens after that room. On the day when she sees her clothes that she was wearing when she left the house that night [when she supposedly died], she's kind of curious if this is the end of the road for her going through this process. But Mauer is so ambiguous when he speaks; she doesn't really know what's going to happen afterwards. So I think there's apprehension. I think she wants to have hope, but she's too scared to give herself any hope. There's a lot going on. Also, she gets to 100 percent just before she goes into that room, and I'm not sure what that's going to mean for her moving forward.

ALSO READ: Gwendoline Christie says Severance finale is 'much more charged' than her Game of Thrones action scenes

Gemma's reunion with Mark in the hallway is really romantic and so tender. Did you and Adam try filming that scene different ways?
Lachman: If my memory serves me correctly, I feel like it was pretty unanimous what that moment needed to be, and it became more about just making sure it was captured so that it was communicated on the film. Adam's such a wonderful scene partner, and even though there's a lot of technical things that we had to achieve in that moment — going from Cold Harbor Gemma into Gemma seeing Mark, jumping into that emotion all of a sudden, like the lights came on inside her — but once it got going, it just felt quite emotional for me, maybe because I've been living with the character and the story for so long. Ultimately, they captured it really beautifully.

There's so much blood in Mark and Gemma's relationship. They met while donating blood, and now Mark is covered in blood when they reunite. Do you have any thoughts on why blood is such a big recurring element of their story?
Lachman: It's such a human thing — like, everybody bleeds the same blood. I've never asked Dan if there's some thread there, in terms of what it means in terms of the world, and if it connects to Lumon in some way. But there is a lot of blood thematically in their relationship, which, now I think about it, it feels like it doesn't bode well.

And it's heartbreaking when Gemma is on the other side of the door screaming for Mark. What do you think she's feeling in that moment?
Lachman: Initially, she's confused, but I think she's starting to figure out that he's gone through the procedure, and she obviously can't get through to him, but she's just desperately calling for him and hoping that either she'll reach out to the innie or the outie on some level. But it is utterly heartbreaking, because [it's been] all this time, and then they finally are together and he's gone again. It's devastating.

The Season 2 finale of Severance is now streaming on Apple TV+.