Why ‘Severance’ Can’t Be Made Any Faster, According to Ben Stiller

Ever since Severance’s first season was released on Apple TV+ back in 2022, it’s been both fun and terror watching Lumon Industries getting deeper into its workers’ mind, which was also all the way more frustrating when the show’s cliffhanger took three years to bring an explanation.

Despite its immense popularity and record 27 Emmy nods, Severance is clearly struggling to find compassion among fans who don’t want to google a recap of previous seasons every time the new instalment comes out.

However, Severance’s big boss and producer Ben Stiller has repeatedly stated that he’d love to make new seasons faster, but so far there seems to be no other way out of the vicious circle.

Ben Stiller Says It’s Impossible to Make ‘Severance’ Go Faster

While the show keeps becoming a constant victim of comparisons to other hit TV series like The Bear — which gets a new season basically every year — Stiller feels like this is where complications of Severance’s entangled storyline come in.

“On a certain level, it’s just the affirmation of when you follow your instinct—knowing that you have to make sure something feels right, and that you get it to the place you need it to be. The frustration for us was that it was taking so long, honestly”, the producer-director revealed in a new interview with Vanity Fair.

Talking about the matter, Stiller added that he would still be looking at his colleagues’ work on other TV projects, somehow feeling jealous of them moving forward faster than Severance’s team.

“Chris Storer will shoot an episode in an hour and a half or something on The Bear. I’m like, “Goddamn, why can’t I do that?” Stiller complained.

Public Response to ‘Severance’ Is Still Complicated, Despite the Show’s Popularity

Even though both critics and viewers praised the first two seasons, with the second instalment getting even more accolades, Ben Stiller doesn’t let the immense success blindside him.

As the actor and producer also revealed, he feels constantly trapped in this vicious circle of being dependent on what the public will say about whether all of this was worth the wait, which prompts you to “move forward blindly” anyway.

“If everybody thinks it sucks or they don’t like it, does that mean that the last two years of what you did didn’t mean anything, or was for naught? No. It can’t be that. You have to somehow figure out a way to have that perspective. I’ve been in the business a long time, and usually the response has not been like it is on Severance”, Stiller said.

Meanwhile, Severance’s season 3 is now believed to be released on Apple TV+ sometime in 2027.