From surreal Music Dance Experiences to the rooms stuffed with child goats, Severance is a splendidly bizarre present. However nothing within the present comes near out-weirding the waffle social gathering.
The waffle social gathering is the reward Lumon provides to the Refiner of the Quarter. Dylan (Zach Cherry) wins this honor as a part of the Innies’ plan to flee Lumon in Season 1. To obtain the reward, he goes to the reproduction of Kier Eagan’s home within the Perpetuity Wing, eats a stack of waffles, and is then handled to a suggestive dance from a quartet dressed because the 4 Tempers: Woe, Dread, Frolic, and Malice. The message is evident: The waffle social gathering is not only a food-based incentive — it is a sex-based one, too.
Ben Stiller and Adam Scott revisited the waffle social gathering within the Jan. 15 episode of The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller & Adam Scott, together with podcast visitor John Turturro. For Stiller, the waffle social gathering — one in every of many Lumon phrases coined by Severance creator and showrunner Dan Erickson — was “type of an inflection level.”
“It is virtually one of many first questions we needed to reply that we would put on the market,” Stiller stated. “You possibly can simply be pondering eternally, ‘What’s a waffle social gathering?’ However we needed to in some way present it.”
The query then grew to become, how far might Severance go together with the waffle social gathering? How might they set up its risqué nature with out alienating the viewers?
A part of the reply concerned the present’s stylized depiction of the waffle social gathering, which included choreography by Tara Rodriguez (who additionally helped craft the Music Dance Expertise in Severance‘s “Defiant Jazz” episode) and masks sculpted by Penko Platikanov.
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A kind of masks was a Kier Eagan masks, which Dylan wears whereas mendacity on a duplicate of Eagan’s mattress. That masks specifically stood out to Stiller upon rewatch.
“I hadn’t watched [episode] 8 for some time, and for a second I had forgotten that Dylan had the Kier Eagan masks ready for him on the mattress,” Stiller stated. “Not having watched it for a few years… We actually went for it by way of the weirdness of this entire ritual.”
The precise shoot for the waffle social gathering occurred in Yonkers, New York, in a home that’s a part of the Hudson River Museum. It was the final scene shot within the Kier Eagan reproduction home, with Stiller estimating they filmed it at round one or two o’clock within the morning. (They had been beneath stress to get every thing performed, as a result of The Gilded Age can be filming there the following day.)
Scott, already wrapped, stayed behind to look at the waffle social gathering happen. “It was unbelievable,” he stated. “[The dancers] had been so on level. It was actually spectacular.”
For Scott and Turturro, the waffle social gathering took on additional which means as an incentive for his or her Innies.
“For the reason that whole place and the whole tradition of Lumon is devoid of any affection or something that’s even anyplace intercourse, however these are emotions that each one of [the Innies] in all probability have and do not perceive, that is the last word reward,” Scott stated.
“In the event you’re starved for any type of connection, rituals tackle a stronger resonance,” added Turturro.
Severance Season 2 premieres Jan. 17 on Apple TV+, with a brand new episode each week.
