What Gwendoline Christie borrowed from ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Wednesday’ to create her ‘Severance’ goatherd
A show as cerebral as Severance, filled with so many complex and interlocking mysteries, can often seem like the product of a select few big brains — especially since creator Dan Erickson and director Ben Stiller are so prominent in the show’s publicity. However, television is a collaborative medium, and Severance embraces that process more than you might expect. Just ask Gwendoline Christie, who recently joined the show in Season 2 as Lorne, the enigmatic director of Lumon Industries’ Mammalians Nurturable division. Lorne had a significant impact on the plot, especially in the Season 2 finale — and Christie had a lot of input into her character.
Getting the role was like a dream come true for Christie, who says she watched Season 1 of Severance with intense jealousy.
“I loved its very powerful aesthetic sense, unlike anything I'd seen before,” Christie tells Gold Derby. “It was exceptional, and I felt depressed that I wasn't in it. More than that, I felt angry. I felt angry that I wasn't in this show, which was the best thing I'd seen on television that I wasn't a part of since Twin Peaks.”
But sometimes the universe comes through for us, and it wasn’t long before Christie received an unprompted email from Stiller asking her to join Severance. Her initial hope was that her character would have “something to do with the goats,” which had popped up mysteriously in Season 1. Stiller, Erickson, et al. not only granted that, but they also welcomed her input on all facets of the character.
“They said they wanted it to be very collaborative, they wanted to know my thoughts on creating this character that would be in Severance. I was overwhelmed by that,” Christie says.
Following her breakthrough role as Brienne of Tarth on Game of Thrones, Christie has continued to give commanding performances on other genre shows like Netflix’s The Sandman and Wednesday. Her work on the latter with Tim Burton gave Christie the experience and confidence to shape Lorne’s look and personality directly.
“That was Tim's vision and genius aesthetic, but he was very welcoming and supportive of my ideas, so he gave me the confidence to go forward into this project and bring what I thought would be right,” Christie says. “I looked at a range of references. Having watched the show three times in a row, I wanted something that would fit perfectly within this world, but would bring another distinct aspect to it.”
That meant switching up the actress’s iconic look: “I wanted to change my silhouette too, to become slightly more rangy. I wanted to be a bit more in the shoulders. So I worked on my physicality, and we also shifted my silhouette with the costume. [Severance costume designer] Sarah Edwards was outstanding and so collaborative. I put together a whole document of references of hair and makeup. I looked at things like film stills by [photographer] Cindy Sherman and the work of [German visual artist] Rebecca Horn, who's always been one of my favorites, and [experimental artist] Carolee Schneemann’s work with the visceral female experience.”
But as viewers know, Severance is as much about what’s going on inside the characters’ brains as it is about what they look like on the outside. So far, only Lorne’s “innie” has appeared in the show, but Christie still thought a lot about all aspects of the character and what might drive her to take those dramatic actions in the Season 2 finale.
“I think what becomes plain in Lorne's narrative is that she is a woman under duress,” Christie says. “She clearly is dedicated to her job and entirely committed. She feels a deep affinity with the goats and with her people, but not with people in general. Then she's pushed and she breaks and she transforms, almost in an animalistic way. She almost turns into the most destructive form of animal. She undergoes a deep and horrific psychic transformation in that moment.”
Christie continues, “I played a very fun game with Dan Erickson. I said to him, ‘Listen, I know that you can't necessarily tell me everything. But if I suggest this, could you tell me yes, no, or maybe? So we had a sliding scale of what he thought might work or might be appropriate. And I felt incredibly respectful of their storytelling process because it's clearly working. This is a mystery box show, so we don't get the answers. We have to work them out for ourselves. There’s something quite delicious about that, actually, because it allows us to be very creative.”
That kind of creative collaboration on Severance wasn’t just Christie’s experience. Dichen Lachman, whose character Gemma (aka Ms. Casey, aka all those other innies) is even more central to the show’s mysteries, says she also received a lot of freedom to make choices and try different things.
“One of the wonderful things that I've experienced working with Ben is, because he's an actor and he understands our side, he's so open and he wants to know how you feel and what you're thinking,” Lachman says. “He’s also so willing to try so many different things. Especially on a show like this where the tone is so unique, sometimes it's just these little subtleties that you have to find by exploring.”
While Gemma has experienced many different kinds of experiences and simulations on Lumon’s testing floor, we haven’t seen her interact with the goats yet. But supervising those animals is Lorne’s primary job duty, so Christie put in a lot of hours working with goats to prepare for the role.
“It’s something I learned from my work on Game of Thrones with horses: The more time in the saddle you have, the better the outcome with horses,” Christie says. “I learned a lot about slowing down my breathing and very much respecting the animals in their environment rather than imposing anything on them. So when I was on set for episode three and 50 goats were unleashed, it was just divine because their goats cannot be told what to do. Like the brilliant Adam Scott says, goats do not care that they're on television. Goats will do whatever they want while you are doing the scene. They will eat your clothes, they'll chew your shoelaces, they'll climb up on the desk, they'll start opening drawers, they'll start chewing your wig. They'll do whatever they want to do. It was actually ecstatic to be around so many animals that were clearly really enjoying themselves and enjoying the whole environment.”
Christie notes with a laugh, “One goat even climbed up on the camera and appeared to be operating it. So that’s why this show is so great: It’s actually directed by a goat.”
All episodes of Severance are streaming on Apple TV+.