How the Other Half Live

Patricia Arquette returns for season 2 of Severance. Free from the corporation, she reveals her character's struggle with her newfound independence

- SHANNON POWER

PATRICIA ARQUETTE'S BELIEF THAT THE PREM-ise of her hit TV show Severance reflects modern reality might raise some eyebrows ahead of its sophomore season premiere.

After all, the highly acclaimed Apple TV+ drama follows the lives of seemingly ordinary office workers who turn up to what seems to be a standard office building in a nondescript American town. They clock in, greet security, sit at a cubicle in an open-plan office space for eight hours, say farewell to the security guard and then head to their average cars in the dreary parking lot before returning home.

But of course, in the age of premium television, there is a twist. The memories of these office workers reset as they descend in the elevator to begin their shifts at the mysterious Lumon Industries.

For the duration of the day, their office personas (Innies) have no clue about their real-life identities (Outies). They have consented to the medical procedure known aptly as “severance” and are aware that they have lives outside their cubicles, it’s just they have no clue who they really are.

Coproduced by Zoolander actor Ben Stiller, who also directs a number of episodes, Severance featured in many critics’ “best of” lists when it first aired in 2022.

Arquette, the Best Supporting Actress Oscar-winning actress for Boyhood, thinks real life is not much stranger than Severance’s fiction. “I feel like we’re all really severed,” she told Newsweek. “You know, there’s people that have a home and a family and then they’re having an affair and they’re in love and they’re like teenagers and it’s like, ‘Hey man, this is not integrated.’”

She argues we can never be “real everywhere” and used the world of gaming as an example, where people might have an avatar online which is completely different from their real-world selves.