Britt Lower

Dimitri: Congratulations on your amazing project. I just finished Severance season one. My mind still spinning from the finale.

Britt: Thank you so much.

Dimitri: How did you get into this project?

Britt: My team called me up and said, there’s this really special script out there and we think you’re really right for this role. They were at the time having a hard time getting me an audition slot. They suggested that I make an audition tape at my house, a self-tape. I filmed the very first scene of the show in my bathroom, because it had great lighting, and they sent the tape off. That eventually got into the right hands. I was called back to do a callback with Adam Scott, and Ben Stiller was in the room. Somehow I just got so lucky that they felt that I had something of the character I brought to the table.

Dimitri: You’re amazing in the show. You don’t see too many truly original stories these days. Everything seems to be regurgitated from something else. This is actually unique.

Britt: I think that too, there’s such a refreshing tone. It’s an original take on this very human question of who am I. That’s the very first question of the whole series that Helly is asked is who are you. As an audience member, you’re really in so many characters’ point of view for sure throughout the show, but Helly is really our way into understanding exactly what you said, which is what the hell is going on here. A lot of Helly’s actions are investigating, asking questions, doing reconnaissance, questioning what’s going on.

She becomes this catalyst that disrupts the office status quo. You begin to see all of the characters start to question the nature of their work and their own identity, who they are on the inside and who they are on the outside. I thought that was just a really beautiful and intriguing way to highlight and embody the idea of duality, that we are one person in certain environments and another in a totally different environment. What if those two people never met one another, even though they’re the same person? My favorite thing about Dan’s writing is that he brings such a vulnerability and delight to these characters.

Each role is written with such nuance. I really connected to the sense of vulnerability and wonderment that each of the characters have, even though they’re going through a really dark circumstance. They’re are essentially trapped, they’re essentially in prison in this office environment. It’s the family that they build together, the connections that they have to one another become– The most important thing to them is their connection to each other and to their objective to find out who they are.

Dimitri: Absolutely. To be honest, we can all relate because we all had office jobs, and it’s that the whole 9:00 till 5:00, it’s definitely not for me. Even prior to COVID I always said that the creative people don’t have to be stuck in office. Creativity is supposed to happen outside, outdoors really, not stuck in the dusty office. All you need is just a laptop these days. That’s why that show really resonated with me personally.

Britt: Do you know where I am at right now? I’m inside of my camper.

Dimitri: No way. Are you serious?

Britt: Yes. I’m here in St Louis, performing in a circus.

Dimitri: Seriously? Wow. I didn’t expect you to be performing as well.

Britt: This is my little home for the month. I’ve got a little setup here. I live in this little — Part of the year I live in my camper and I drive around the country. I call it the egg. I’m same to you, I like to have a sense of expansiveness. This stint performing in this circus is a dream come true. I’m here performing in Circus Flora, I’m playing my ukulele and singing.

Dimitri: Wow.

Britt: It’s a lifelong dream come true. I’ve always had a love for the circus. I directed a movie here a couple of years ago called Circus Person, about a woman who develops a spontaneous desire to join a circus after she goes through a heartbreak. This is my first time performing in a circus. I ran away to the circus during my Severance hiatus.

Dimitri: That is so random and so cool at the same time. Congratulations on doing something out of norm, that’s impressive.

Britt: I’m having the time of my life so far. My mom and I ran a small face painting business together when I was growing up. We were painting kids faces into butterflies and cheetahs. That’s when I was a teenager, I first got to know circus performers and just fell in love with the whole world of it. Circus Person was born out of that love. I’m definitely getting some work-life balance in this summer.

Dimitri: When are you coming back to film season two?

Britt: We’re going to start filming this fall season two.

Dimitri: You have such an amazing cast. You have Ben Stiller directing, not the full, but of course a portion of it. He’s EP on the whole production. You have Adam Scott, he’s brilliant. The whole crew, Christopher Walken, John Turturro, Patricia Arquette to name a few. What else could you ask for? There’s not that many names you want to-add to such stellar cast. Especially to me, Christopher Walken. Do they even give him a script or he just comes up with his own stuff?

Britt: Oh, no, he’s definitely very on the pay. He and John Turturro come from theater. They come to set very prepared with the script, and just consummate professionals. The thing about this cast and the people involved, everyone is so passionate about the work and creatively generous, and kind. There’s a real sense of kindness on the onset, which is so refreshing. Particularly because we were filming during the pandemic, there was a lot of uncertainty in the world, and we were also filming prior to vaccination, so navigating the new protocols on set, we really bonded together over that experience. Yes, it’s an incredible group of people. I can tell you about each of them in terms of my circus world.

Dimitri: Tell me, please.

Britt: Ben Stiller is like a juggler, because jugglers are very mathematical, very precise. They’re able to juggle a lot of different things at once like you do as a director. Ben, because he’s worn a lot of hats in this industry, he’s so good at communicating with each of the departments. I would say Adam is like the ringmaster. He’s everyone’s cheerleader and very generous with his community-building.
John Turturro is like a trapeze artist. He just has this wonderful connection to his body and the best posture in the world. Patricia is like a daredevil. She’s just raw, visceral. She has you on the edge of your seat. I would say Tramell is like some kind of acrobat, and obviously an amazing dancer. Zach Cherry would be some version of a clown or a magician, or like a funny magician. Did I get everybody? Who am I? Helly is–

Dimitri: The one that eats swords.

Britt: Yes. She’s a sword swallower. Yes. Helly is the sword swallower. Nailed it.

Dimitri: Helly’s character is hell a character. What you do to her, is you just throw her sideways completely, literally just throw her from place to place without giving too much away. Its so twisted and it touches subjects such as suicide, it does touch that because people are actually killing themselves over work. You were trying to do that to your character to escape. It’s insane, it’s a really tough subject that you guys touch in that series. How did it make you feel personally?

Britt: To touch on that point is something that Helly values more than anything is her autonomy and freedom, and so when those two things have been taken away from her, the extent to which her feelings of feeling betrayed by herself, I think that the sequence that you’re speaking of is it speaks to the depths of what she feels trapped and betrayed by herself.

What was really interesting to me about the character’s journey is that you watch someone literally wage a war against herself. She really feels as though her outie version of herself is a totally different person. I think that’s just so relatable. I think we do have parts of ourselves that we don’t want to face sometimes, or parts of ourselves that we don’t like, or ways that we’ve behaved that we’re like, “I don’t recognize my own behavior.” Speaking to ways that we numb ourselves, the severance procedure is for all intents and purposes, a way to forget about the uncomfortable part of your life, which is, for a lot of people, their work life.
It raises the question, does numbing yourself for half the day, does that make things better or does it make things worse? I think the argument for this, at least my character would say, it makes things worse.

Obviously, the show deals with the subconscious and how much our memories carry over from– We talked a lot about that, how much of who we are do we bring actually into the any world, and the somatic memories that we carry with us in our bodies that we’re not even aware of. We talked about a lot of that as we were developing the characters, and discovering that as we were going along as well.
I think there’s something in the show about, again, going back to the question of who are you, and how much of your work defines who you are, what you do for a living, and examining, are you your job or is that just something you– is that the way to pay the rent and the groceries? I think we do live in a culture where we pride ourselves on being overworked, and we wear our exhaustion as a badge of honor.

Dimitri: Exactly. So true.

Britt: I think it’s a good question to be asking that. Are we blindly overworking ourselves, and not having enough time for our personal life and ourselves?

Dimitri: When did you decide to be such a free travel person, pick up and go?

Britt: I think what happens is when I’m filming something like Severance, we become this family on set. The casting crew get really close. Then when you finish filming, there is this period of, for me at least, there’s a period of heartache where I miss that family that we’ve just built together. My coping mechanism is that I get in my camper and I travel, and I go watch a circus.
I go find a circus to watch because I– It brings me joy, but I also like to experience their sense of family and community. That’s what I’m experiencing right now, is this very beautiful, ephemeral neighborhood that we built from the month while we were together. There’s a magic to it that I love. That’s the end of this. There’s a magic to it in that I love.

Dimitri: Where do you prefer to travel in your camper?

Britt: I love the national parks in our country. I also really love a good state park. Yes, I like to get outdoors. Sometimes I’m going and visiting, and getting to know the circus community, or other times, I’m just going out into nature and being myself.

Dimitri: Have you ever missed a casting call because you were outdoors somewhere and there was no cell reception?

Britt: They’re definitely always like, “Where are you in the world now, Britt?” Luckily, I haven’t missed any casting calls yet.
I feel really lucky to have this summer to get to have this particular experience in a circus. I’m doing a film in Toronto in July that– in August actually, that I’m really looking forward to. Then I’ll be excited to jump back into Helly’s shoes in the fall.

Dimitri: We didn’t see enough of Helly’s outie during the first season. We saw a lot of Adam’s character’ outie. We didn’t see anything of your character throughout the season pretty much until the season finale. Hopefully, we’ll get to know your character a bit more throughout the next season. Did you guys end up getting the pages throughout the whole season or were you kept in the dark about what’s happening?

Britt: We were really lucky to have all of the scripts ahead of time because we were supposed to have started filming in March of 2020, and then we shut down for the pandemic. Dan Erickson and the writers were able to finish all nine episodes ahead of filming, so we had that. Because were filming out of order, it was nice to be able to have that arc and understanding of the characters while we were filming.

Dimitri: Since you were filming completely out of order, was it a complete mindfuck trying to understand what’s going on with your character?

Britt: I drew little pictures. I’m a visual artist too. The way that I contextualize characters is often visually. I drew almost like a little graphic novel for myself on index cards of all of the scenes and what Helly’s actions are in the scenes through the whole series. I had them on my wall taped up. It was a little graphic novel on the wall so that whenever we were filming something, I could go and look and be like, “We’ve filmed that already. Next is this.” I can wrap my head around it visually.

Dimitri: Do you think having the platforms these days like Apple, for example, it gives opportunities to stories like these, which is completely, out of the norm?

Britt: I will say Apple is really artist-forward and creator-centering. It feels to me like they gave Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson a lot of room to expand the world in the way that they wanted to. When you’re making a show like this that is an imaginative reality, it’s a totally new tone that we were trying to figure out together. I’m grateful that Apple allowed them to let it be what it was as opposed to trying to fit it inside a more mainstream platform type of situation.

It’s been really gratifying to watch the fans discover the world too, and with streaming that they can do that on their own time. They can decide if they binge it or– Obviously, the show came out, I think they did two episodes and then one per week. There was initially a period of waiting for the episodes to come out. Now that they’re all out, fans get to watch at their own pace. I think there’s something really exciting about that too. Everyone is going to have their own experience with the material.

Dimitri: Are you a bit of a binger yourself or do you prefer to consume on a weekly basis, bit by bit? Or would you just sit through the night and watch until the sunrise?

Britt: I’m more of a pacer. I like to pace things along.

Dimitri: Do you have any other projects coming up?

Britt: The circus that I’m in right now, and then film that I’m doing next, I’m so excited about it. It’s called Incident Report. It’s based on this book by the same title. It’s about a librarian who starts finding these mysterious messages hidden within the books.
I’m going to be working with Tom Mercier, Charlie Kaufman is producing the film. Naomi J, it’s her sophomore film. She’s just a really incredible artist and writer and director. I couldn’t be more excited to do that.
My short film is going to be a feature-length film. Part of what I’m doing here with the circus is doing research for the long format version of the project that’ll be playing in production maybe this time next year, if it goes fast. I wrote and directed the short film. I have a writing partner I’m working with, April Shih. Her production company is Diversity Hire. She and I will be writing the project together.

Dimitri: You’re going to direct it yourself?

Britt: I’ll be the ringmaster of that.

Dimitri: Did you enjoy your photoshoot with Mike Ruiz?

Britt: I had fun putting on these outfits. Yes, it was a really cool day. I had so much fun getting out of my comfort zone and learning a lot.

Dimitri: Come on, you’re Helly. You already showed everything in terms of being out of comfort zone.

Britt: It’s different though. Acting is different than being in front of a still camera, I would say.

Dimitri: Really?

Britt: A lot, yes.Dimitri: If you could give your younger self advice, what kind of advice would you give yourself?

Britt: Face your fear with wild abandon.