‘Severance’ Recap season 2 Episode 8: Mrs. Cobel’s background story explained

Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for season 2, episode 8 of “Severance”, which is now streaming on Apple TV+.

Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), the former manager of the severed floor, has worn as if she is more important for Lumon than what she has been given the honor since the beginning of “dismissal” – and in episode 8 of season 2 she justifies it.

In this episode, entitled ‘Sweet Vitriol’, Harmony appears on the screen for the first time since she left at the end of episode 2, so that Mark (Adam Scott) wondered what she knows about him, Gemma/MS. Casey (Dichen Lachman) and the general mission of Lumon. When she pops up again, she returns to the impoverished, small birthplace where she grew up to ask for help from her childhood friend Hampton (James Le Gros) by coming back to the house where her mother died, because she is in bad terms with her aunt Sissy Cobel (played by Jane Alexander).

Among the many discoveries that “dismissal” viewers make in this episode about Harmony Cobel and her past-Intake that she worked as a child in a Lumon-Runned Ether factory and left the dangerous job when she was accepted in a special Lumon Fellowship program-Is that Harmony created the first plans and schematics.

Towards the end of the episode, Harmony has left the house again and probably drives back to Mark after learning Devon (Jen Tullock) that he has been successfully integrated.

Here, Variety Speaks with Arquette about the diving in the past of Harmony with delivery director Ben Stiller – Plus, why she says so “Mark”.

In this episode we discover that Harmony Cobel played a huge role in the history of Lumon’s dismissal procedure by coming up with the idea for the chip as a young student in the Fellowship program of the company. How much did you know about Harmony’s background from the start of season 1, and what am you surprised when you learned it in this?

I knew that Harmony had gone to a school and that she had worked in this ether factory and that her mother had become an ether addict and that Lumon had poisoned the city in an environmentally friendly way through their industrialization of everything. We had always spoken about this as a story story aspect. There were several points on time when we talked about the possibility that Cobel had something to do with a certain aspect of the chip, for sure, because although she did not get recognition, it was in her right of the right of someone who had more to do with things structurally than this organization would recognize. The way in which this religious system works – like many things, such as the army or whatever – it is all for the glory of the organization. It is all for the glory of Kier. It’s not about you, not about the individual. It is about the organization what the organization needs. Here is this person who will never get the recognition of the people she wants the most: her aunt and lumon herself.

How would you describe the current feelings of Harmony about Lumon? And what she is planning to do from here after responding to Devon’s phone calls, and Learning Mark is again integrated from his dismissal procedure?

I think Harmony has a deep conflict about this company. Her mother was a rebel and her mother was angry with Lumon. And a part of that I think it is also within harmony. Harmony should never have had that kind of mother love. The organization separated children from their parents, so she didn’t get that kind of maternal bond. And when you have a drug addict, you will never get it because they are disconnected in such a way. The place itself, it is very enlightening about the inner landscape of Harmony. This was the norm – this kind of cold, this kind of strangeness. These were the proletarian of that time. These were the early incubators. This place was the incubating space for Lumon. And ether is the medicine of forgotten. It feeds the chip in itself.

I think many people see Harmony as a bad guy – now she’s going her own bad guy, her aunt and this cold place where her mother died. And she didn’t get a closing, she couldn’t say goodbye. This cold room when her mother only died. And then you have to say goodbye to people, and you will never end with them. They are unable, and it was just not meant to be. So I think she mourns when she is in that room. But it was really nice to be able to see the SET designer and the proportion department, and everyone who has made these spaces that we have been talking about since the first season.

How did you construct the scene where Harmony lies on her mother’s bed and keeps her mother’s ethermas on her face and find comfort, while at the same time gaming pain?

She had done some ether a few times when she was a child with the character of James, Hampton. But her mother was such an addict, and it had taken her away so much in this dream state, her mother actually stolen from her. So we only talked about the awkwardness of the device and how we would shoot that, and so on. And then also with historical things such as, over time and in cultures, women spoke about Kening – the sound of mourning, which has animal elements of loss. Going back to our essential animals themselves, the sadness and the pain that is accompanied by loss. Ben and I almost talked about whale sounds and how he wanted to use it. So we spoke about it and there was some freedom in it, and we did a few different ways and different times.

It is really just back to that place where I had cared for many people who died, and then also had to let people in my life go that had to be released. That can always be painful, and I think she also cries a lot about herself. She really has nobody to really talk about how she thinks about something. And that is a part of the reason why she really liked Mrs. Selvig, because they pretend to feel like it was like to make friends and people with whom you chat.

“Severance” maker than Erickson told Variety That the pop-up event of the Grand Central Surprise Canon is for the storyline of the show but at the same time, he says that he does not know what you and the other actors said in the glass cube where the scenes took place. Were you all just doing well while you went, and can you tell me? What you actually said to Adam Scott In character?

We were made up when we went on, but there were times when I felt that really interesting things happened from my character and in his character. I let him write this thing on a post, and then he wrote “Human”, which was a very cool moment. I have to ask Adam exactly what the prompt was that I gave him. It absolutely felt like we were often in it. It was really fun to do that. It felt very free. It felt immediately and it felt nice to play with these colleague actors.

Fans have an obsession with the way Harmony pronounces Mark’s name in the series. Was that scripted, or did you develop how she would deliver the line herself and why did you land on it?

I thought that when they told me how Harmony grew up in this place, and even only the tradition of temperatures and all the different things was an old globity. So I knew I wanted this sound, because I knew that Harmony had not been raised as much by her mother as these figures of higher authority. And, I thought, authority has this certain tone. If you think of a drilling sergeant, there is a certain type of meter and a certain type of tone and a certain type of authority. And then you think of all these different people in higher management, the way in which higher management sounds. I think she had formed a sound based on her idea of ​​what that is.

And I don’t know, I played a little bit “Maude” before we started, and there was a certain way in which Bea Arthur speaks, that there is also a small, little pinch of the hat to “Maude” too. And there is some joy that I think Cobel should be brought to his name. It means a lot to her.

This interview has been edited and condensed.