How Gemma’s Testing Floor Was Built for ‘Severance’ Season 2

Severance season two takes audiences to Lumon’s testing floor in episode seven, giving a glimpse into the day-to-day of Gemma (Dichen Lachman) as the organization tries to create a separate innie for her to endure painful experiences. “It’s a prison-slash-medical facility,” production designer Jeremy Hindle says of the set. “It’s a spaceship, really. It’s very Kubrick.”

All the Wrong Angles

The desk in Gemma’s room (in background) is something Hindle is very proud of. “I wanted a place where she eats that looks like two people could sit there, but they’d never be able to look at each other,” he says. “Every set has something that’s fractured about it.” Hindle and his team designed and built nearly every piece of furniture on the floor. “Actors should be able to play with anything [on the set], and it should be functional,” he says. “Anything that would be in the testing area were things that no one would’ve ever seen before.” The door leads to an actual hallway that offered the camera operators the ability to shoot continuous takes.

Not Merry & Bright

The hallway, Gemma’s suite and the Christmas room were all built on one 25,000-square-foot stage. Three other sets — the control room, the dentist’s office and the airplane — were built on a second stage. For the Christmas room, the toys and decorations were fabricated, while the sofa was imported from Poland. “It’s a prison,” says Hindle. “It’s not fun.” 

A Bird’s-Eye View

Due to the 2023 writers strike, the production design team had a lot more time to conceive ideas for the testing floor. Having only outlines instead of scripts, the team knew episode seven (the last one shot) would be a stand-alone, so it had “a beginning, a middle and an end,” Hindle says. On the map to the right, you can see the area of the testing floor that was actually built (in pink) on stage two. The rest of the space was digitally rendered with VFX.

An Endless Hallway

“TV sets never have ceilings, ever. And you can tell by the lighting. I always build ceilings,” Hindle says. While it causes “a huge fire problem,” it’s the only way Hindle believes a room can be properly lit. “I think that’s why the show has such a nice physical feeling to it because it feels lit like a real place,” he adds. Building ceilings also added to the overall feeling of claustrophobia in the series. “It was supposed to feel like you’re always kind of lost.” 

Double Duty

The show’s cinematographer, Jessica Lee Gagné, also made her directorial debut on this episode, which flashes back to how Gemma and Mark (Adam Scott) met and walks audiences through Gemma’s testing floor. “With that room, Jess wanted to use the same set for when she flashed back to them in the IVF clinic,” says Hindle. “It’s the same space dressed differently, so the design had to be able to become something else but still be that space.”

This story first appeared in a May stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.