Severance's Christopher Walken on That 'Dangerous' Dinner Scene

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Severance Season 2, Episode 6, "Attila."]

Hey, kids, what's for dinner? Cumin-glazed ham, a pile of loose corn, and a side of awkward conversation.

Much of the sixth episode of Severance's second season is spent at Lumon, but about halfway through, the hour takes a turn. With Irving's (John Turturro) innie effectively dead, the series catches up with his outie, who is neatly combing his mustache before going to see Christopher Walken's Burt — a familiar routine for his innie. This time, though, Irving is heading to outie Burt's house for dinner, which was teased in the previous episode. The night shifts the pair away from the gentle innocence of their innies' Season 1 dynamic, shoving Irving headfirst into what Walken called a "love triangle" between Irving, Burt, and Burt's husband, Fields, played by John Noble.

This is notably the first time we see at length how outie Irving behaves, as well as the first time Irving and Burt are really speaking outside of Lumon, save from a few brief, charged encounters, like when Irving pounded on Burt's door during the overtime contingency in the Season 1 finale, or when Burt followed Irving around in his car earlier in Season 2. The two can't remember anything they said or did with each other on the severed floor, though everyone, including Fields, is aware that there was a connection between them: The strange, tense evening kicks off with Fields telling Irving, "What's mine is yours" — referring, of course, to Burt. 

As Walken put it to TV Guide, "He brings his boyfriend over to meet his husband, which is probably not a good idea. It's a little bit dangerous." 

If outie Burt feels like a different guy than the innie we got to know in the first season, that change was intentional. "You see that he dresses differently, the kind of house that he lives in. His situation is different," Walken said. He compared the experience of creating this new side of his character to meeting another actor for the first time. "I've seen certain actors, I've seen them 20 times in movies, and I think I know them a little bit, and then I meet them in person and they're really quite a different person than I thought," he mused. "It's a surprise. I felt that that's sort of the way it is with Burt. You think you know him, but he's a little bit different." He felt the same about Burt and Irving getting to feel each other out as outies: "I thought of it as one actor meeting another actor."

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As the night, which Walken described as "contentious," progresses, enigmatic details about Burt's history are revealed: his past reputation as a "scoundrel," and his religious history that led him to be severed in the first place. "The church's stance is that innies are complete individuals with souls that can be judged separately from their outie," Fields explains to Irving. The innie, by that logic, can go to heaven ("Whilst the outie burns," Burt adds cheekily), which Fields saw as a way to ensure a reunion with his husband in the afterlife.

Fields' perspective on the rights of innies becomes even clearer as he drinks more (and after a curious comment he makes about Burt's "Lumon partner" from "20 years ago"), asking if Irving and Burt think they ever "made love" in the office. "I believe that innies deserve to experience love," he swears. "And I hope it was beautiful." It's a markedly different idea of the innie's role in the life of the outie than we've ever heard from any of the show's un-severed characters, intersecting with the push and pull between the outies and their innies that underscores the entire season.

"The relationship that [the innies] have with their outies mirrors a little bit the way that we relate to our parents," said series creator Dan Erickson. "You reach a certain age where you're like, 'Well, I want to know who I am, independent of anybody else. If there were no guardrails, what would I do?'" Where Helena's (Britt Lower) perception of her innie is an antagonistic one, Irving seems more open to exploring what the other version of himself saw in Burt. As Erickson put it, "It's easy to hate Lumon, it's hard to hate yourself, and understand that you — even if it's a different version of you — are the one who had this selfish impulse to create a new soul and put them here."

As for the mechanics of filming the scene, Walken remembered it as a complicated process. "People may not think about things like this, but scenes for actors around tables are tricky," he said. "Because the camera has to go around the table, making it seem like it's happening at the same time is a bit difficult — overlapping, you know, the way people talk at a dinner table, dialogue overlaps sometimes." Though he and Turturro have a long history as friends and collaborators, he and Noble didn't speak much about establishing the lived-in nature of Burt and Fields' bickering married couple. "Basically the director said, 'Hello, this is John [Noble], this is Chris, and you're married, and this is your house. Action!'"

However minimal the preparation, it doesn't reflect on screen, which is uncomfortable in a lived-in way. "It's like the Thanksgiving dinner with the whole family that nobody really wants to go to," Walken joked. "Somebody says something about politics and somebody else says, 'Shut up, you don't know what you're talking about,' and then a big fight starts, and everybody goes home mad."

Irving, though, doesn't exactly go home mad. The two say goodnight at the door, and both imply they'd like to see each other again… maybe even without Fields joining them. And as for what to make of that final, cryptic look Burt gives a departing Irving? "I don't know what that is," Walken said. "To be continued!"

New episodes of Severance Season 2 premiere Fridays on Apple TV+.