a lot of severance pay — a sci-fi workplace thriller on Apple TV Plus — takes place in a brightly lit office, where characters huddle in front of unfamiliar computers, where their jobs are told to be both mysterious and important. In the show, the production looks a bit like an alternate reality Minesweeperexcept the characters are trying to find numbers that “feel scary” even though they have no idea what that really means — and the actors are essentially going through the same experience.

The computers on the show are fully functional, so when Mark and Hayley move pixelated numbers around the screen, that's what the performers are doing on set. "When you see us, we're really improving the numbers," Adam Scott, who plays Mark and serves as a producer on the show, told us edge. "There are actually ways to do this."

The computers are the brainchild of prop master Cath Miller and production designer Jeremy Hindle. people in office severance pay They went through a process of separating their work from their outside lives, effectively creating two people, one of whom existed only in the basement office of Lumon Industries. As Hindle told me in 2022, this allowed the team to design the computer with playfulness in mind. "We kept thinking, 'If you were doing an experiment on these people, what would you put in front of them?'" Hindle told me. "Imagine how much fun it would be to sit on this thing if I put a laptop in front of them. It would be like a kid's device."

For Scott, using these devices, which pair old-school touchscreen monitors with keyboards with built-in trackballs, is a nostalgic experience. "They remind me of the old Apple IIe (computers) I had as a kid, which both my brother and father had," he explains. But while these terminals look familiar, they're different enough to make them feel almost surreal—perfect for severance pay. "They also have their own interface, keyboard and trackball, but the buttons are in an odd position ergonomically," Scott added. "So it's tricky to use. But I feel like me and (co-stars Zach Cherry, Britt Lorre and John Turturro) have figured out how to use it."

Scott said the computer's power greatly aided his performance, noting that often, when an actor interacts with a gadget, there's actually nothing on the screen. But in severance payeach actor was able to "actually refine the numbers and come up with their own strategies and apply their own meaning to them."

This is important because no one knows what happened in Lumeng's basement. They sit there clicking away on their computers without understanding the importance of their work (nor, at this point in the story, does the audience understand its importance). So for actors to actually use a computer and be as clueless as their character can help them get into character better.

"These people don't know what they're doing," Scott said. "They just know that when they're scared, they need to feel it out to perfect the numbers. It's really important to actually do that when we're in front of the camera, and it really helps a lot."

severance pay Season 2 will premiere on Apple TV Plus on January 17.