Dan Erickson interview: ‘Severance’ creator

“The more you get into the story, and the more that you unpack what are the natural, logical consequences of this technology … it just gets scarier and weirder and more upsetting,” says “Severance” creator Dan Erickson about diving deep into the world he’s created on his Apple TV+ drama. We talked with Erickson as part of our “Meet the Experts” Writers Guild Award nominees panel. Watch our exclusive interview above.

“Severance” is set in a dystopian near-future where a controversial new technology allows an individual to sever one’s consciousness, creating a work half that doesn’t remember home life and a home half that doesn’t remember work life. The series follows the employees at Lumon Industries, the company that pioneered this sinister technology. “I’ve had a sort of end game in mind the whole time we’ve been doing it,” Erickson reveals about where the story is going. “But there’s a lot of different twists and turns that can take along the way, many of which we certainly don’t have figured out yet.”

The WGA nominated Erickson three times this year, for Best Drama Series, Best New Series, and Best Episodic Drama for the first season finale episode “The We We Are,” which ended on a cliffhanger that will lead into season two, currently in production. “I feel like we’ve only scratched the surface in season one,” he suggests. “There’s just so many other ways to think about how might people actually use this technology in the real world if it existed. And that provides almost endless story opportunities.”