Cat Miller: Building the Immersive World of 'Severance' - The Art of Precision and Subconscious Unease

Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, screen rats, and welcome to another episode of Television Times.

Now, I'm here in the studio, surrounded by drilling on all fronts.

I don't know what it is, but my next door neighbor is smashing up their garden patio.

Two doors down, they're doing the roof, and in the alleyway, they're drilling something else.

So if you hear something in the background, there is nothing I can do.

I've soundproofed this as much as possible, but if you hear some drilling or banging, it is nothing to do with me.

Now, episode two, here we go with episode two of season four.

Now, my guest today, my guest today, this is great fun.

I love this chat.

This is a really good one.

I'm speaking to Cat Miller.

Now, you might not know her name, but you'll know the show she works on, and she is a pivotal piece of that puzzle of making that show what it is.

She is Cat Miller.

She's the property master on a show you might have heard of, the Apple Show.

Maybe you haven't met her.

It's Severance, the massive, massive show Severance.

Now, Cat, she is behind a lot of what you see on that show, and she is in the room with the designer and director Ben Stiller when they're coming up with this stuff and when they're creating the world in which Severance operates.

And it's a great chat.

It is heavy on Severance.

If you haven't seen it, you might want to pause this, go watch it, come back.

It's a fun one.

I didn't know how it would go because I don't know Cat, and I reached out on one of the social media platforms.

I think it was Blue Sky.

And yeah, I just decided to say hello.

My wife kind of makes props now for theater and stuff over here.

And I know she wants to get into that world.

So I thought, who better to talk to than the props person and the person in charge of like coming up with the things that you see in the big show.

I'm watching the show at home like everyone else.

And then I'm talking to the woman behind the things that I'm seeing on the telly.

It's amazing.

It's so cool.

Really cool.

It was a nice, easy chat and she was very, very lovely.

And she was really like, you know, open about talking about how lots of it has come together, how they film it.

It's a really interesting one.

And, you know, I was very, very grateful for her to be so open about that stuff.

That was great.

And you'll hear that chat right now.

So here we go.

This is me, talking to the wonderful Cat Miller.

Calling Cat Miller to the stage.

Thank you.

Roll up, roll up and welcome to another edition of Television Times with your host, Steve Otis Gunn, where I'll be talking to someone you do know or someone you don't.

It might be funny, but it might not be.

But it's always worth tuning in for.

So here we go with another episode of Television Times.

Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you too.

This is so fun.

I know.

It's great.

I've been trying to see if you were on any other podcasts.

I can't track you down on many.

No, I was on the BBC broadcast once for just a very small little clip about prop masters and the state of filmmaking and TV today and how we're kind of getting crunched with money and contraction and stuff.

So it was a very small little clip.

It was fun to do that.

That was my first experience with podcasting.

Yeah.

I mean, you have been on, I mean, I obviously come to prominence through Severance, but first of all, I mean, you've been on loads of stuff that I've just watched in general.

I've got a list of the things you've done that I've seen.

I love difficult people.

That was great fun.

That was fun.

I can't think of any props on it particularly, but I remember it being a great show and it was a lot of fun watching Billy Iger and Julie Kousner.

We had a lot, there was a lot of gags that just kind of would come up last minute.

We had a giant kind of like 10 foot blow up rat, for a strike rat that they had to pull around the street.

There was a bunch of food and cakes and we had fun on those.

There was a lot of gags.

Yeah.

The Affair.

Were you on The Affair the whole time?

I was not on it the whole time.

No, I did season one and two as a prop shopper.

Then came back, when they came back to New York for season four, I prop mastered that New York unit.

Yeah, I love that show.

Went on quite long.

Weird futuristic ending, but I remember watching that and thinking, I don't remember seeing anything that was shot from those sorts of two different angles with completely different viewpoints, and it was really, really interesting.

I thought it was brilliant the way they would differentiate the gaze between the female point of view, the male point of view, and just the little subtle differences.

I thought they were really great in doing that.

Yeah, it was really good.

Yeah, Dominic West doing his thing.

But yeah, I enjoyed that.

That ended very strangely.

If you weren't involved in that, it doesn't matter.

It did.

But Russian Doll was another show that you did, which I really, really enjoyed.

And I noticed two things.

Mr.

Harrigan's phone is an iPhone, which you worked on.

Great horror film.

And Russian Doll is an Apple watch.

I was thinking, I hope you've got some share in that.

Unfortunately, no.

We used to, long time ago, we'd get product placement from Apple and they'd let us keep it at the end.

This is way, way back.

Or like, buy it for half off.

But now, no, they want it all back.

Yeah.

They want it all back.

With Russian Doll, that was like, I'm always intrigued by these things.

Like when something is set, because they went back to what year did they go back to?

Is it the 60s at one point?

It was 60s, but mostly 80s or 70s, late 70s, yeah.

Yeah.

And then there was the Budapest stuff as well.

When you're doing stuff like that, do you, because I often look at that like I'm a bit of a stickler for music.

If they set something in like 1983 and they play a song from 1987, it winds me up.

You know what I mean?

I do.

So it's like when you're looking at like technology or just like what people are wearing, what watches, how deep do you go when you're like doing that property's job?

Obviously, you're very meticulous.

You must watch other shows and think, hang on, that watch wouldn't have been around anymore.

That's not quite the hat that goes with that.

Do you know what I mean?

Is it hard for you to watch things?

It's lovely to watch some things that are really good about it.

I think it's really important.

I think if you don't set the world right right away, and you pull the audience out of it by saying, that Etch A Sketch toy wasn't invented until X state, then suddenly the buy-in isn't there anymore.

I feel like a responsibility, like a big responsibility for doing the research, for getting it right.

The really deepest dive that we ever did was with Derrick C in France and I know this much is true.

We went through so many different timelines for that, and flashbacks and periods, and he wanted everything, and he wanted the research, and wanted to make sure that we had it.

I didn't really understand the reason for the depth of that, but even just making it authentic for the actors to give them a performance of this is the real thing from that real time.

Yeah, it's really important because if you don't, you're going to lose the audience, and we have such like a very fine moment to hook the audience and bring them in.

There's so much other distractions out there in the world to hook them.

So if they're getting caught up because that bottle of wine didn't come out until X of date.

Yeah.

You know, we're in trouble.

Yeah.

Well, you get those people.

I mean, I was talking to, you worked with him, I don't know if you actually met him, but on Uncut Gems, I talked to Tom Fleishman, the sound, the re-recordist on that.

And we were talking about sound in the same way.

Like if you notice it, if it's standing out in a way that is not just, you know, that actually takes you away from the plot, then it's failed.

Yeah.

It's like I used to work in theater.

And if you notice the sound, you notice the lights.

I'm sorry, it's over.

You know, you shouldn't be noticing that stuff.

You shouldn't be noticing it.

You should just be immersed in the world and like so absorbed that you can't get out of it, you know.

Yeah, I'm intrigued.

I don't know if they're doing this.

I don't know why I'm thinking of this, but my wife came up with this ages ago, and I think that's actually what they're doing, that it would be nice when they reboot James Bond, if they went back to the 60s and did it in the 60s and set it then and how beautiful that would look.

And I'm really hoping that that's what Sam Mendes is doing, if that's what they're doing.

I love it when they do that stuff.

Like Mad Men did it very well.

Exactly.

And Mad Men did it so well, like so well.

You just, you know, from the cigarette smoking to the drinks, to the air in the office, like you just, you had nostalgia for that because you were brought back into that timeline and then you're just like, okay, let's look at this story.

Let's be, you want to be in that world.

Yeah, I'm a big believer in that.

I feel like, I feel such a pressure and a responsibility to make it right.

Because, just because I, you know, we want to be telling the story.

Otherwise, why are we doing this?

Yeah.

We want to be telling the story.

We want the audience to want to land with the audience.

So as a property master, is that your job?

Is that what's called property master or property?

Property master, property master, property master, yeah.

I do look at props on the shows, just because I like to look in the background.

I like to watch background actors as well, see what they're doing, because that's always fun.

We rewatched Friends recently, and my god, is that a property show?

It is.

The stuff in those apartments is ridiculous.

Worse than Seinfeld with the cereal.

There's just so much stuff going on.

They did a good job of, like, you know, clogging every gap with something, you know.

And I guess not only stuff looks a bit more fake.

Yeah, it looked fake, but it also created, like, its own kind of vibe and its own, you know, it was the shiny version of the world that everyone wanted to move to New York, even though it wasn't filmed in New York, to New York and have their friends and the neighbors and across the hall and stuff.

But yeah, comedies are hard.

Comedies are hard to prop.

They're not easy to prop.

Everyone thinks, oh, it's a fun comedy, but there's so many gags.

And the gags all rely on the object and the reactions to objects and the, you know, malfunctions of objects.

So comedies are hard to prop.

Yeah, I can imagine.

Like anything set in a bar, like Always Sunny or something like that.

I'm always thinking that's a busy show, surely, the amount of things that are going on in the show like that.

But yeah, I mean, have you done much comedy?

Have you done, apart from difficult people?

Not much comedy, no, it's been real serious.

It's been real serious.

Yeah.

No, difficult people was a lot of fun and like gaggy.

And then, yeah, I've just had this string of very intense shows after that.

You've also been an armorer.

Is that how you say that word?

Armorer?

I have, yeah.

I feel like you're saying that wrong or you would say it differently.

No, armorer, that's right.

Yeah, I was chosen by my union in New York.

The crew, most of the crew is in a union called Local 52.

And in Local 52, the prop people are responsible for, you have to have a property card and a property card can cover armoring and obviously props, greens, special effects, set deck, set dressing.

So it covers a lot.

And I was propping away and I was chosen by the union and asked, would you consider being an armorer?

And so I trained for about nine months with the specialists, which is the vendor and the organization that we go to for prop guns.

And they trained me and I went out for like a couple of jobs.

And then I was right at the cusp of like doing that full time.

Yeah.

And the union said, hey, we need, there's this job coming into town.

We need a prop master to, you know, for a weekend, just a quick New York unit.

Can you handle it?

And I did that and I fell in love with it.

And then I just kind of I had like a fork in the road moment.

I was like, no, I'm going to pursue this kind of creative element of creating props and making props and doing props and kind of shifted away from the armoring.

But I do have a lot of feelings about armoring.

You know, it's such a responsibility.

New York does it right.

You know, we don't allow any live guns at all.

Everything has to be defeated and no object can go through our barrels.

So I think that we're doing it very responsibly.

But I do really enjoy creating things and creating props.

And I think I made the right choice.

Yeah, I think the world would agree.

I was just last week, I was in Budapest, actually.

And I got kids and we went to a toy shop.

And my son found a very realistic looking gun.

Like, I mean, heavy, like a heavy toy.

It was about 10 quid.

It was no money at all.

He was like, oh, can I get this?

Can I bring it home?

I was like, well, no.

Number one, it looks too real.

And we don't want to have guns.

Secondly, what the hell are they doing selling this thing?

And thirdly, it would stop the airport.

You know what I mean?

Because we only had him like this.

And you would be arrested.

You'd be arrested.

And I was thinking maybe because they have a bit more of a Russian-y sort of background being behind the icon in the olden days that maybe the kids just are used to playing with these really, I mean, it looked like you could definitely, you know, rob a store with it.

It was very realistic, terrifying in my opinion.

Yeah, we definitely have to, as we're transporting guns, because as prop people, we can transport the guns from the vault to set and we definitely like have to have the paperwork, you know, if you get stopped by the cops, you have to like, it has to be the trunk, you have to have the paperwork, because, you know, if it gets in the wrong hands, yeah, it's not good.

I've only seen them in theater over here and they have a gun cupboard, which the stage manager has a key to.

It's probably not as strict, but we don't really have, you know, we don't have guns.

So it would be kind of weird if someone was waving one around.

Yeah, you know, any time, you know, guns could be weird in the US.

That'd be good.

That'd be a good thing.

Did you have a creative way about you as a kid when you were growing up?

How did you know you wanted to get into this world at all?

I didn't know that I wanted to get into this world at all.

I was a trained dancer and professional dancer for about 15 years.

I was obsessed with it, passionate about it, would dance every single day as a kid, train, train, very seriously train.

I went to conservatory, graduated, got into a dance company, and it was my dad who is in the business.

He was a key grip and then my aunt is also in the business.

She's a prop master.

Their dad was a key grip in the business.

I'm like fourth generation in this business and my parents really, to their credit, didn't want me to feel obligated to have to go into this business and wanted me to pursue my dreams and continue pursuing.

They didn't even make it an option or make it a pressure to say, hey, come work in the film business.

So it was never really on the table.

I was a dancer, I was going from company to company, I was touring and then it was the summer of 2006, I think.

Now I'm dating myself.

My dad was like, hey, I'm working.

It was the summer of I Am Legend and American Gangster.

We're shooting both in New York and they were massive.

They were pulling people off the street to try and crew it up.

They didn't have enough crew people.

I had a three-month hiatus from the company I was touring with.

My dad was like, hey, you want to come and work in the warehouse for a week, set dressing warehouse.

I was like, okay.

I had no idea what I was doing.

Lovely, wonderful people that were very patient with me in training me.

In one week, I made more than I had made in four months of dancing.

I was like, oh, this is kind of nice.

I'm loading boxes and loading trucks and like, oh, this is kind of nice.

I was able, my grandfather, who was a grip in the business too, said to me, hey, if you're going to keep dancing, just consider this movie stuff like the best part-time job you've ever had.

I would do some prop or set deck work for about two or three months, and then I would go dance for six months.

It was kind of enabling the dance habit.

Then I did that for a few years, but then I started really liking, especially when my aunt hired me to be on her prop teams for on-set crews.

I started like, wow, this is a lot like a dance company.

It's very in the moment.

We're creating things together.

There's a community, a family.

It's a little dysfunctional, but it's cool.

I responded to that really well and was able to pick it up very quickly.

I started getting more and more interested in the actual, what is this, and what is this propping, and what are objects?

Oh, I would make stories through dance, but now I can channel that into making stories with things and help tell the story.

The shift of dance to propping started changing a little bit, and I started doing propping more.

I was getting old for a dancer.

I was like, my knees are hurting, my back is hurting.

I'm like 21 or something.

Right, exactly.

Yeah.

I just started shifting, and at some point I was like, I think I'm going to pull back, and I would only do a couple of dance projects, and I could be really choosy about what those dance projects were.

Then eventually in 2016 is when they asked me if I wanted to be an armorer, I started training for that, and then when I switched over to prop mastering, it was just out of the gates.

I left dance at that point or retired from it, and just have been propping ever since, and finding the parallels to be so fascinating between dancing and propping, or theater and propping, or I did a bunch of operas.

In the film world, there's so many parallels.

So is it the meticulousness or the discipline?

What is it?

Well, the discipline helps because as a dancer you're trained, the choreographer is God and the teacher is God, and whatever they say, you figure out how to do it.

That was able to translate in a more healthy way, I think, to a director asking for something, and my first reaction wasn't no.

My first reaction was like, oh, how do we make this happen?

Which isn't always the case.

There's some people in the industry that their first reaction is, no, we can't do that.

No, we can't do that.

So by saying, let me see if I can figure it out, I feel like that translated really well.

And then the attention to detail.

The know what shade of green is it, and why is that shade of green, and how does that inform the character, and what about the glasses, and the visual of it, the visual storytelling of it, too.

I think all those things translated really well.

And how you're working on Severance, which is the most meticulous universe that you're creating an absolute world.

And this is before I even knew I was talking to you.

I was watching one of the episodes of the new season, and I was just like, excuse my French, the fucking detail, the absolute world that you're in, just the shade of gray, the way that poster is hung on a wall with nothing else, just the way that injection goes in that person's hand to open that room, all of it, one after the other just kept hitting me as a kind of, because the first season I was like, what's with all the hallways?

Like, where is this place?

You and everyone else.

It's like, where are they?

Where are they going?

What is happening?

And it reminds me of like, if you've ever seen that James Bond, another James Bond, Moonraker, where the branding of, I don't know what the baddie's name is, but he owns everything.

It's a bit of an Elon Musk school.

But the stamp of that is on everything.

And with Lumon, it's like that.

It's like that stamp is on everything, even small.

It's just everything has it, like erasers.

And they've even got the logo on it.

Everything, it's like there's this factory somewhere making all this stuff that has the stamp of Lumon on it.

And just, it's incredible.

And I want to get to Severance, but we'll jump ahead a bit.

But just that world.

I mean, funny enough, talk about props.

I'm going to tell you something funny.

Let's make it a bit more funny.

I did stage management at college, did a degree in it.

And I was really good at getting props.

But I was a prop getter.

I always found a way to get something.

A director would say, we need a wrought iron gate.

One like the council has.

I would get on the phone and the council would deliver me one that afternoon.

And I was just great at getting props.

And at one point, I remember, like, we were putting this French farce on, and we need all of these door handles, you know?

And then about four hours later, somebody knocked on the door and went, Steve, have you been stealing all the door handles from around the college?

And I was like, yes, yes, I have.

And I was always doing shit like that.

But I love getting props.

I loved, I'd put anything on stage, even if the windows were falling out of the building.

I loved being involved in that world.

And that's obviously a theater thing, which is you're not really making anything.

Well, you're making some stuff.

Yeah.

You know, a lot of it is getting stuff or having the sort of less props.

But that's my, I just want to say something funny.

I should call you to be my prop shopper for the stuff I can get.

Well, I used to get, I used to be a musician as well.

So you had these things called borrows forms from college.

Say you needed a piano on stage for an actor musician to play.

You would go to Denmark Street in London and you would ask the shop to lend it to you.

And for mention in the program.

But of course, I kept the borrows form.

And then I would just go and get myself a bass guitar or something for a week so I could play with a band or whatever.

It was just phenomenal fun.

But yeah, anyway, it was the late 90s.

It was a different time.

It was a different world.

It was.

I watched this film, the Confess Fletch movie, a remake or reimagining, I guess, of those Chevy Chase 80s films.

They had these kind of soundtracks.

Exactly.

And I loved it.

I thought it was great gas.

John Hamm messing about.

You must have had some retro fun in there, right?

There was a lot of fun in that one.

There was a lot of fun in that one.

Everybody wishes it did a little better than it did.

I thought it was a great project to work on.

And it was also the first project that I worked on with the designer Alex C.

Drilando, who is one of my faves and is an amazing production designer.

And he made the world really rich.

I loved working on it because we had the sailboat, we had the big clam bake, we went to the premier clam bake plates in Boston, and we had them set up their clam bake.

And it was all real, it was all very, very authentic and real.

And then the boat, shooting on the boat, it was just a lot of fun.

We were in Boston, it was the summertime, it was the first time I had shot in Boston, and I fell in love with the city.

And Jon Hamm was great.

He was like, there's a fine line that he could just tread of being really serious and not taking it too seriously, but being really serious about it too, which I think that character needed.

And so, yeah, it was just, it was fun.

It was a fun movie to shoot.

Did you make the license plate or his ID, his driver's license?

His driver's license, yeah, we did.

Do you know it's on sale?

No.

It's online.

Yeah, man.

A lot of your things are on sale.

I think someone gets hold of the props and sells them for charity.

Well, it's certainly not me.

Do you get to keep anything?

You know, I'm very, I'm like kind of, you know, straight lays.

I don't keep the props.

I keep the failed fabrication attempts.

That's cool.

And I love that.

I have like, you know, like our R&D or maquettes of something that we are creating.

Like I'll keep the in process things, but Apple could have a field day soon me if I kept anything.

You know, my crew is amazing.

And they said that there was like a Lumen mug on Etsy that they say was on the show, that was going for like $75 for like a ceramic mug.

And I wonder where all these things are, you know, how what happens to them once I put them in inventory, where they go in the world.

I'm sure there's lots of knockoffs.

It's a bit like when you go to Berlin and they're selling a bit of the Berlin Wall still.

It's like, come on, guys.

I've got a little favor to ask you.

Could you please follow us on social media?

And if you've got time, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get them.

It all helps drive traffic back to the podcast.

But for now, let's get back to the current episode of Television Times.

I know that you researched all the computers to come up with the MDR monitors, right?

That's all you.

I did, yeah.

Trackball and the touch screen, that's all you?

Yes.

I mean, God, you've invented something.

It's like you've invented R2D too.

You've invented something there that is just the aesthetic of it.

But like, you know, when you're watching anything sort of sci-fi and someone comes up with a new screen or a new thing that a computer screen can do or they're doing the sort of minority port writing on the glass thing, whenever there's a new version of it, I'm always fascinated that no one's come up with that before.

Obviously, you can tell us how you come up with it, but like there's the, what do you call it?

Oh, I did write it down because I never get this right.

Retro future aesthetic.

So that's kind of interesting to me, like there is something 60s and 70s about severance.

Especially, I picked that up on the haircuts alone.

Adam Scott's haircut, I thought.

That's a 70s haircut for sure.

I was just wondering if you could speak a little bit about like how you came up with that.

I mean, what did they tell you to do?

Did somebody go, hey, we want to compute, it's a bit 70s, a bit weird, go for it or was it actually like written down for you and needs to do this, this, this, and this?

Well, when I came onto the show, I interviewed with Jeremy Hindle, the designer and Ben Stiller in December of 2019.

They sent me the script and I read it.

It was, Mark takes the elevator and walks into an office with cubicles.

That was it.

It was an office drama, it was a comedy, dramedy.

And it was originally written as just like, it was like an office.

It wasn't until Jeremy and Ben kind of started really digging in and thinking about what this company would be.

And if we have a blank slate to create something that these innies who have never experienced the outside world, what would you want to create for them?

And so once they started like kind of digging into that, and I was brought into that process pretty early on.

We had a nice long prep and I was welcomed pretty early on into those discussions, those creative discussions of, well, let's harken back to the time in the 60s where walking into an office was like a point of pride and like I have an office and the design in the office, there's a point of pride to that.

And then if we're doing that, then let's create the most kind of calming yet controlling, calming yet controlling aesthetic that we can find.

And they believe that Lumon wouldn't give them too much.

They would just give them enough, but not too much.

Being able to try and control what their any becomes, that they're kind of rounded human, that consciousness that is their inside world.

And so basically, I was, to answer your question, in it kind of from early on, and we all, the thing about Severance is, and I haven't really experienced this in too many other shows, is we all sit at a table, it would be like Ben and Jeremy, the designer, and Jessica Lee Gagne, the cinematographer, and Dan, the writer, and I would be in the room too, and Sarah Edwards, the amazing costume designer.

We would all just start talking about this corporation and understanding the rules of the world really early on.

And so once we figured out, oh, going up and down the elevator, there's a code breaker, so you can't have any words on your wardrobe that you're wearing.

But then you can't have any words or numbers on the watch that you're wearing.

And then you can't have any words on the lanyard that you're wearing, so we can't actually put Mark's name on his lanyard.

That's why the lanyards became just color blocks.

And so once we started going down those rabbit holes, we all kind of fed on each other.

The computers, basically Ben said, I wanted to be kind of an older computer, but I don't know what kind of shape it should be.

And I was like, okay, we'll just get some older computers and let's have a line up of it.

And so I went up to the Rhode Island Computer Museum.

I met Dan, the guy who runs it up there is amazing, and he's a friend now.

That's cool.

And he opened up this back room, this warehouse of old, forgotten computer systems from the beginning of computer times to about the 90s.

And I just started pulling, well, that's a cool shape, well, that's a cool shape.

I filled my minivan and I was like, okay, I'm going to stop now because I don't have any more room in the minivan.

I lined them all up for Ben and Ben is very smart.

And he saw the data dasher, which was the kind of reference and what we modeled the MDR computer screens off of.

And he liked the fact that it could swivel.

He liked the fact that it had a low profile because he already knew in his head the dividers were going to be a really great device for the actors and performance-wise, the dividers that go up and down on the, and so we would be able to see their faces.

A lot of the old computers were really tall, the Atari ones, and they used to be really big and tall and boxy.

And this one had a unique shape, and so he was really drawn to this one, so let's go with this.

And so we have a concept illustrator, Eric Felberg, who we work with, who will actually draw it up.

And we wanted to put a CRT in there.

A CRT tube screen was very important.

And so, you know, they're not the easiest source anymore, so we pulled them out of other monitors and fit it in, and we had to bump out the back a little bit and change the shape.

So we made those monitors from scratch.

And with the keyboards, too, it was loosely based on the Dashboard keyboard, but instead of a mouse pad, we definitely wanted the trackball.

We wanted it all to be in one unit so it could slide around to camera.

And is it right that it's not a QWERTY keyboard?

It's different.

It's even more awkward.

It's awkward.

It's definitely a fully functioning keyboard.

We did, we kind of soldered a keyboard underneath it, but the orientation of some of the letters are different.

It's to make it a little bit more boxy and graphic when you look from above.

And then the arrow keys work, but there's no escape key and that was on purpose.

There's no control key and that was on purpose.

Oh, okay.

Gotcha.

Just to like add to the metaphor, trying to always dig and there's either a bifurcation of everything or we call it, oh, this mug is severed because it's white on top and black on the bottom.

This is going to be studied, isn't it?

I mean, severance is going to be studied.

I don't know.

All these things go in subliminally, of course.

Like I was reading about the food, food is a reward, or it's only like a few little nuts here and there, and a few bits, there's never a complete meal.

And the roof is very low, right?

Yes.

And that was Jeremy really wanting to create, just like you said, a subliminal subconscious sense of claustrophobia, slightly off, a little uncanny valley, like something just something off as another form of control that the company would put on their workers.

And the vending machines, of course, which feature heavily in the final episode.

I will say one thing about the vending machine, which is a really fun piece.

So in season one, there's a little thing that says, you may have two tokens a day for the vending machine.

I don't know if there was ever a shot where you counted, but we only put seven tokens inside the jar.

So that was one little bit that I always enjoyed, was who fought for their second token of the day, because one person wouldn't get it.

Oh, man, it's wild.

The whole thing is wild.

But I heard you, I think you might have just done a post about it, but I did actually think, as I was watching it, it was Milchek's motorcycle helmet.

It's just, I mean, I'm a motorcyclist.

And when I saw him put that on, firstly, I didn't know it was him.

I don't think it was very clear straight away.

Or was it?

I can't remember.

But when he took it off, it was just like, it's the perfect motorcycle helmet, the way it reflects the lights and what was in the room.

And just, is that a normal helmet?

Did you make that or did you find it?

It's a normal helmet that we painted.

And then I found a special visor for it.

The green visor was something that was not with the helmet originally.

If someone was to ask, is it set exactly now?

Is it now or is it in the future?

It's definitely not in the future.

We call it an alternate reality or an alternate timeline, slightly alternate timeline.

But there was a lot done to specifically not denote time or place.

I mean, there's no reference that they are in, that the town of Cure is in a real state or where that is geographically.

Because of Season 2 being quite a few outdoors, well, at least two outdoors episodes I can think of, specifically outdoor episodes.

That must have been different and a bit challenging in a different way.

Like when-

Cobell, Cobell goes to Salt's Nest.

Cobell when she goes to the town.

Yeah.

Yeah.

To the family home and it's all very decorated in a kind of, in my mind, a sort of 90s, almost like Everyone Loves Raymond patterns of wallpaper and stuff.

You know what I mean?

Yes.

What it really looked like.

Well, we went on location for that.

We went up to Newfoundland.

We found that house, that location that really did not have electricity or running water or anything like that.

We put a lot of our own stuff in, but it did have definitely had that feel of that kind of time gone by feel to it.

Yeah.

I enjoyed that episode.

It's like when you're watching a TV show and not the main cast are the cast.

Usually, I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to enjoy this one.

With her, I was like, how's this going to go?

I'm a big fan of her as an actor anyway.

She's amazing.

Outstanding.

Also, of course, she was in Ben's other thing, Donna Mara.

Incredible.

Yeah.

Incredible show.

I watched that episode and it really drew me in.

And I saw some people on like it's a bit different.

And I was like, yes, but stick with it.

Don't give up on it because it actually really, really delivered.

And it added things to it that you wouldn't normally get.

I'm trying to sort of not say too much.

But yeah, I love the sort of coldness of it.

And again, you weren't sure how far away that was from the town or it was all very up in the air.

And I thought she was in Greenland or something.

It was so cold.

It was cold.

It was really cold.

We did really shoot that.

I think it was like in March into April.

It was very cold.

It was windy.

We were up there for about three weeks, I think.

Shooting that episode almost entirely, the whole episode almost entirely up there.

We really enjoyed that.

That was like a small troupe of us went up to Canada and was joined by a Canadian crew up there who was amazing.

They were so good.

And it was just kind of like our own kind of little retreat up there.

It was great.

And the people were so nice and everyone was into it.

It was tough.

The circumstances were tough.

It was cold.

We were outside.

Cobell's White Rabbit in the car kept breaking down, getting stuck in the mud.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

But it was great.

It was really fun.

Yeah.

Even that car was claustrophobic, the whole thing.

Yeah.

I'm interested to know how that's all going to go, the storyline wise.

I mean, obviously you've been renewed, but are you writing and filming now or is it not?

Not yet.

So they're in the writing process.

So yeah.

So it was announced very publicly by Tim Cook, of all people, that we were going to be renewed for season three.

Dan has a writing room that he's writing.

There has been no updates from the team or Apple as to when we start production, but there has been promises that we will not have the fans wait as long for the next season, as they waited between season one and two.

Yeah.

It was a long.

I had to watch a full on 16 minute annoying recap on YouTube by some annoying person.

Okay, guys, we're not going to rewatch the whole thing because I sort of remember.

But like I say, was it two years?

Was it longer than that?

It was maybe a little longer than that.

Yeah.

Well, good shows.

You make people wait.

It's fine.

It's fine.

If the Sopranos came back and he was alive, we'd watch it now.

It doesn't really matter.

That's true.

Yeah.

I mean, it's filmed in New York.

It's filmed in New York.

Yeah.

So without giving the game away, I mean, those corridors, I mean, it must be like the set of 1917 with the trenches.

I mean, how big is that place?

Or is this an optical illusion on our part?

No, we have a lot of hallways.

We do have a lot of hallways.

We shoot in five stages.

Four of those stages have sets but have hallways around it.

So anytime that there's a set, we'd also build hallways in a maze around it.

The MDR stage is our biggest one, and that does have all the hallways that they run through to get to MDR.

You know, I wish I remember, but Jeremy, our designer, had all the hallways measured at one point.

It was like miles of hallways that we have built over time.

But we also do reuse some of the hallways.

We'll put a plug in and make it look like it's a different hallway.

Yeah, I figured, yeah.

We'll add a couple of twists and turns.

But there's always hallway madness going on.

There's a whole crew dedicated to maintaining the hallways.

And they're so pristine.

Any little scuff that somebody walking by, their knife on their belt, scuffs the side, it's so outsizedly apparent when there's any kind of scuff.

So there's always a team of scenics and set dressers and construction, just always maintaining and restoring the hallways that we're shooting in.

But there's a lot of hallways.

There's a lot of hallways.

You always wonder how he knows where he's going.

Obviously, season one did very well, but with the gap, I mean, was there nerves about season two?

Like people maybe not watching it or?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Definitely.

I think, yeah, the answer is yeah.

We didn't know.

We wanted to make sure that we put out the best product possible.

And I think that's why it maybe took some time, longer than a normal season of TV to film.

But I do think that there was a lot of like going back and making sure all the storylines like aligned and that there wasn't anything, you know, if they came up with an ending, that everything in the first three episodes aligned.

And if they didn't, how do we fix that or how do we amend the ending?

And I think there was a lot of scrutiny about getting it right.

I don't think anyone suspected it would blow up the way it did and have this place in like the culture right now and hit a zeitgeist the way it did.

Oh, yeah.

It's huge.

And it's created a world, a universe, and everyone wants to know what happens next.

And everyone's intrigued.

There was a couple of episodes and I was like, I'm never going to know what this is.

I'm so glad there was some reveals because I couldn't have done a whole other season without knowing something.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

They don't want to be lost, like the show lost.

Like we definitely don't want to be the show lost.

Ben is great.

He's very vocal about saying, we know how it's going to end.

Don't worry.

We know how it's going to end.

It's just the journey getting there.

That's good because a lot of shows do seem like they're just making it up as they go along.

They got an idea, but nobody knows how the fucking thing ends and then it all ends up.

They're all dead and it was all a dream.

It's all a dream.

Yeah.

Come on.

We don't want that.

No.

We think the viewers are smarter than that.

They are.

That's what's cool about, I don't know, that's what's cool about TV right now, is there's so much underestimating of audiences' intelligence and what they want to see, and studios taking these safe risks on standard IP that they know some algorithm will let them know they'll have X amount of return on their dollar.

But there's some shows right now that are really bucking that algorithm, or bucking that studio risk tolerance, and coming up with some really original stories, and audiences are responding to them.

And hopefully, that'll move the need a little bit within the studios.

Are there TV shows that inspire you, then, that are on right now?

You know, I was inspired previously by Game of Thrones and the world building in that.

I mean, that's just amazing.

Had A Lessons was really good, not necessarily for props, but just in terms of story and what it's saying in the world.

I mean, do you, if you're, say you're about to work on season three of Severance and you know maybe there's some new props you have to come up with, would you actively not watch things that might influence you?

Yeah, I probably would actively not watch them and actively like not read the Reddit about it or something like that.

Yeah, I would do our own research just so that we're not mimicking.

But I would watch like 2001, which is something, you know, I would watch references that we've like playtime in the movie Playtime that we take a lot of reference off of.

Yes, I've just downloaded that to watch because I heard that that is a massive influence for Ben, right?

Yeah, definitely.

1967 French movie.

Yeah.

And, you know, 2001.

So in episode 207, where we learned about a different section of the severed floor, I won't reveal too much.

A lot of what I designed for that was definitely inspired by 2001 Space Odyssey and Kubrick's, you know, kind of just austere, but very detailed aesthetic on that.

So, yeah, we do have, we do definitely have a deck of references that we go from, and Jeremy, the designer, is really good about creating a lookbook and, like, you know, the brutalist style of the architecture and the set design that he has and how we can work within that.

And, you know, like, Ben has a really great eye.

Like, he understands immediately if he sees it and it's right, it's great, you know, if he sees it and it's wrong, he'll tell you and he's never wrong.

Like, he is always really good about making a good aesthetic of choice when he sees it in front of him.

It's very clear.

Have you got a favorite prop you've ever made?

Is it the diamond encrusted firs or something from Severance One?

That's like, I don't know, asking you which child is your favorite.

Which of your babies is your favorite?

No, I do.

I will say the one that was the most challenging and I had the most fun, like, kind of figuring out and navigating was the break room table in season one of Severance.

Kind of making that from scratch and really like duct taping wires together underneath the table and create, you know, an EKG machine and a simulator and the machine was from the 60s and the tape recorders from the 80s and the projector, which was constantly overheating.

So we were constantly like putting a little fan to it in between takes.

But the fact-

I do love the use of cassette tape.

The cassette tape, the analog of it all.

Yeah, definitely the analog of it all.

And the fact that I could provide that practically and none of that was VFX'd.

So everything that was lit and above, you know, all of that was completely practical.

And that's cool to be able to provide that for both the actors and the camera.

That was a fun one.

I'm going to show you something.

I've not shown anyone this because I used to do sound, right?

So I have a little-

I don't know if you can see it up there, a little audio museum on the shelf.

Look at that.

There's an original cell phone from the 70s or something from my in-laws.

There's a 1960s-

I'll show you a couple of things.

Is that a Walkman too?

This is before Walkman.

This is a radio from the 60s.

It's like an old, cool, aerial and everything.

There is a Walkman from the 90s as a mini-disc.

Mini-disc man.

I love it.

Your mini-disc.

I've got two iPods.

That phone's incredible.

That's from my in-laws.

I was doing a show in Edinburgh that required a rotary phone.

And they said, would you like a cell phone from the 80s as well?

And I was like, I mean, yeah, I didn't use it, but look at that.

Look at that.

It's amazing.

Yeah, and that is so good.

It would be severancy.

You would have to paint it white and MDR blue.

But no, that's so good.

It's called, look at that, O Keyphones.

Never heard of that in my life.

Okay, I guess they didn't survive.

I guess not.

Yeah, I love having.

Blackberry came around.

I love my, I love the mini-discs because I was a big fan of mini-discs.

Remember that?

Yeah, I have like six of them in my kit.

Oh, have you?

Yeah.

Of course you have.

Yeah, sorry, that's a bit of a side thing.

I had to show cat my audio collection because, you know, I once went to, like it's funny, you said you went to the Computer Museum in Rhode Island, is that what you said?

I went to the Sony Walkman Museum, well, the Sony Museum in Tokyo.

And they had all my childhood Walkmans and I felt like I was 100 years old.

Wow, that is so cool.

That is so cool.

I know, but it's weird to have such recent issues.

In the Museum.

In the 80s and 90s decades.

Yeah, I know.

Anyway, I'm just going to end it with a couple of fun questions for you.

Okay.

So, Cat, what is your favorite TV theme tune?

Can't say Severance.

And I should say, by the way, with Severance, it is one that I never skip past.

I always watch it.

I hope they're going to do new animation for season 3.

I mean, Severance is like top-notch.

Oliver is so good.

And I didn't think he could do better for the season 2.

But season 2 is really, like the season 2 one is really interesting and it reveals some things but not everything.

And he doesn't get to read the scripts.

This is a little nugget.

He does not get to read the scripts before he makes his animations.

Yeah, he just gets to talk with us and chat with us.

And we get to talk about the things that we're doing.

I mean, obviously, he interfaces with Ben all the time about it.

And then he comes up with his concept of it and then he shows Ben stuff and makes it.

And that's how season 1 and season 2 were made.

It's really up there.

It's such a good intro.

And the tune is incredible as well.

It's up there with, I'd say, that succession, probably the two.

But I will say that Teddy Shapiro, who created the actual theme and creates all the orchestration for the show, is amazing.

And I think that it's so eerie and good and I think it all just works.

You know, like, when they have quiz shows, they'll play a TV theme.

They go, watch shows and you're, oh, what is that?

Is that the A team or dinner?

No one's ever going to wonder what show that was.

You either know it or you don't.

You know what I mean?

It's in there for life.

Yeah.

So, yeah, have you got one that you...

Let's go different.

Okay, adverts, advertisements.

Have you got a favorite jingle?

Oh, boy.

It can be obscure.

I'm doing more silence than Louie Theroux.

I don't know.

All I'm thinking about is like McDonald's, and I'm loving it or something.

Except I'm not loving it.

Right.

Sorry, I've got drawn to blank.

Steve, you got me.

Do you go off and do movies in between the seasons, or is that what you're doing now?

Yes, I do.

Confess Fletch was one of those, in between season one and season two.

I did Confess Fletch and Murder at the End of the World.

And then since Severance season two ended, I just finished an Arnold Schwarzenegger Christmas movie, which was really fun.

Oh, right.

And now I'm-

I've seen video of him walking around New York.

Yes, Santa.

He plays Santa.

It was great.

And then I'm just hopping on now to another Michelle Williams movie.

Oh, cool.

I love her.

Is it weird when you're in a room and you just look over and you go, I'm standing next to Ben Sooner chatting about props.

Is it still weird sometimes?

Do you grab yourself?

Oh, look, Schwarzenegger over there.

Must be weird, right?

With some people, it's weird.

With Ben, I always-

I forget that he's a movie star and I just-

he's my boss, he's the director.

I see him.

I'm more in awe of how he directs than just because I see it and I think he's such a good director.

But there's like Laura Linney.

I totally fangirled out and could not keep it together when I was in the room with Laura Linney.

She's such an artist and such an actor's actor.

There's some, there's a few.

It's not a lot, but I try and keep it cool.

I try and keep it together.

When I worked for Darren, he would have people in his dressing room so I'd go after the show and get the microphone and be like, fucking Dexter's standing in his dressing room or whatever.

Like, well, that's normal.

Michael, whatever his name is, Seyholt, just stand in there.

Of course he is in Manchester.

Why not?

Why isn't he in there?

Of course that's normal.

It's kind of weird sometimes.

Got to keep it cool.

But it's cool.

It's cool that we can be in those worlds and be in awe of it, but also be totally normal with it.

To see people like Ben fan out about other people as well.

We're all just humans.

Well, you're a very special human and you're creating what many people consider probably the best television show of this decade easily.

And I really hope you get to do at least a couple more seasons because it's phenomenal television.

And thank you for coming on to Television Times.

I really appreciate talking to you.

Thank you so much.

It's wild for me to talk to you.

I mean, I'm watching a TV show and thinking, so who came up with that computer?

Okay, let's chat to her.

I mean, how do I get to do that?

That's also wild.

Yeah.

It's wonderful.

This has been so much fun.

And what a like, I don't know, an hour passed.

I didn't even realize it.

Talking about us and life and art.

And how cool.

Well, thank you, Cat.

Thank you for coming on to the podcast.

And I shall say goodbye now.

Thanks so much.

Bye.

That was me talking to Cat Miller, the property master on the massive Apple show Severance.

I think you enjoyed that, right?

That was a good chat.

I really liked talking to her.

She was so nice and so easy to talk to and really giving and told us loads of stuff, right?

So, you know, check her out online.

There'll be links on here and, you know, keep watching Severance, people, because we're waiting for season three.

And now to today's outro track.

Okay, today's outro track is a song called Damaged Goods.

Now, this is a song that was essentially a demo.

I was on tour in a friend's house, staying in his digs.

And I'd only recently got together with my future wife and I wanted to write a song about how I felt.

And I put this song together in about the time it takes to listen to it.

It was really quick.

I sang it and played the guitar live and a couple of overdubs afterwards.

But yeah, this is a really honest, nice, romantic, dare I say, song.

That was Damaged Goods, a song by me from 2009.

It was on an EP called The Transatlantic EP.

I hope you liked my chat with Cat Miller, and come back next week for another great episode.

Until then, thanks for listening.

See you next time.

Bye for now.

Look into my eyes.

Tell your friends about this podcast.