When a 4.8 magnitude earthquake hit New Jersey last April, Zach Cherry didn't feel a thing. He had something a little bit more disruptive in his immediate premises: A marching band. Horns blaring. Snare drums a-rat-tat-tatting. Cherry was on the set of the Macrodata Refinement room to filming the cacophonous Severance season 2 finale -- which completely drowned out the tremor that startled the entire tristate area.
"I had no idea what was going on," Cherry tells me over Zoom. The 38-year-old actor plays Dylan G., a lovable misanthrope who is forced to work a mysterious desk job after he severs his work and personal lives via a computer chain in his brain. "My wife texted me and was like, 'I think there was an earthquake?'" Cherry recalls. "Then I started to see all these reports that were like, 'Earthquake! Earthquake! Earthquake! I just thought it was the drums."
The marching band also serves as the perfect distraction for the MDR team's heist in the season 2 finale. Mark (Adam Scott) uses the chaos of the celebration to go main-character mode and free his wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman). Then, Mark's Innie decides to stay with Helly (Britt Lower) on the severed floor -- a move that will dictate the course of Severance's future. But where Mark and his Innie cannot come to an agreement in the finale, Dylan's two sides are able to reach an understanding. He stays with his friends, rouses the marching band to aid in their rebellion, and matures into an honest-to-god hero.
"Ultimately, he does really care about the people around him, and he is willing to sacrifice to take care of them," Cherry says of his character. "In season 1, he says, 'I'll stay behind.' This season, he decides, 'I want to be here for my family, but I also want to go help my friends.' He finds the shared thing that works between the Innie and the Outie." So far, he's the only one.
Below, Cherry discusses Dylan's heartbreaking visits with his Outie's wife, his "coveted as fuck" slang, and why he believes Dylan decides to stay at Lumon in the finale.
Dylan has changed a lot. In season 1, he was really obsessed with his perks. That was all he really cared about. It's an optimistic reading of season 2 -- which is that this is a guy who has been known to be motivated by perks -- and this is sort of the ultimate perk. You get to spend time with your wife and you get to experience a type of relationship that you never had before -- and maybe none of the Innies have ever experienced before.
But that's the positive motivation. With everything on the severed floor, there's this sinister element that every perk is also a reminder of what can be taken away from you. This season, it definitely feels like a way to control Dylan and to prevent him from participating in the shenanigans. Now that he knows what his Outie has and he can experience a little bit of it, he's really anxious about the possibility of losing those opportunities.
It partially works out because of the way he experiences gaining the knowledge of his family. The other characters are learning about themselves in really traumatic ways. Helly learns about her identity at a gala and then she has these unsettling interactions with her father. Mark obviously has the very specific trauma of losing his wife, and Dylan is shocked the first time he learns he has a kid. But after that, he does get this pleasant experience of getting to know his wife in a relatively safe environment. He's not presented with it in a horrifying way. He's able to slowly come to terms with it.
For his Outie, it's a bit jarring when Gretchen first tells him what's been going on. It's a wake-up call for the ways in which he has not been the perfect partner. We all think of the Outies as versions of the same people, but with Dylan, it really is this window for the Outie to see what he could be like if he had found his thing that he clicked into. And for the Innie, it's like, Oh, that's what I could be if I was able to have a family. They're able to really see things about each other that they want to integrate into themselves, and they have this shared goal of taking care of their family but also being the best version of themselves for Gretchen. So, his Outie thinks, If there's a part of me that still has these good qualities, maybe it's a good thing that he still exists.
I love the opportunity to create new combinations of inappropriate words. At least for me, I think the characters have become more and more tailored to the things that we do well.
Definitely Baldur's Gate III. I dove very, very deep into Baldur's Gate III. I was a Dwarven Bard who was very bad at fighting. I hadn't played any of those games before, so I was sort of unaware of what I was getting myself into. When I first started playing it, I was so immediately hooked that I was treating it like a full-time job. Basically, just waking up, logging hours, going to bed. I love that game. It's one of my favorite games ever.
It was legitimately really hot. I'm a huge fan of Hot Ones. I bought all the hot sauces and tested them out, but I didn't fully immerse what I was eating in the sauce. I just did a little dab. On the show, I took a big bite and then went to a Knicks game and my lips were hurting well into halftime. It was like hours later and it was still painful.
It was really exciting -- and a little intimidating -- when they told me what my arc was going to be this season. I do a lot in season 2 that I haven't been asked to do before. So, I hope for even more new and challenging things. I am just so excited to see what we will do next.
I knew the show was good once we started shooting, but when I finally got to see some footage I was like, "Oh, this is really, really good." It's a hard show to describe. I wasn't sure how people would react to it, but it is very cool seeing people connect to it.