Ben Stiller Says ‘Severance’ Originally Started as a Workplace Comedy Like ‘The Office’ Before It Got ‘Weirder and Stranger’

Ben Stiller originally thought that “Severance” would be the new viral workplace comedy taking the spot of “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation.” Well, not quite.

The darkly existential “Severance,” which became a critically acclaimed Emmy-winning series in its own rite, is far from the office hijinks in the aforementioned NBC sitcoms. Director and executive producer Stiller admitted during First We Feast’s “Hot Ones” that the series became “less comedic” in development than what he originally thought, and is distinctly a drama instead.

“It always, for me, started in comedy because it’s sort of a workplace comedy, but it’s also very, very strange and maybe a little bit scary,” Stiller said of the series. “And then as the show developed, it got a little weirder and stranger and maybe less comedic than I’d originally thought it was. But I feel like that’s always at the the kind of the root of it, is that workplace comedy, kind of like shows like ‘The Office’ or ‘Parks and Rec.’ Those were shows for me that were sort of in the DNA of what the show was.”

Stiller, who directs five episodes of the second season, also recently told Vanity Fair that he appreciated how much fans became intrigued by the mysteries of “Severance.”

“When [Season 1] came out, it was fun to look at all of the reactions and how people would kind of dig into theories,” Stiller said. “We wanted to pick up the story where it left off. We’re bringing the Innies to the Outie world and then will answer some questions by the end of the season. Hopefully we keep it enough of a mystery and intriguing enough that people want to keep following the story. […] My hope is that, when they see this season, there’s an awareness that we’re trying to connect some dots and also leave some dots unconnected and put out some new dots to connect.”

He added, “It’s an interesting process making something like this second season because you now know there’s an audience there that cares. That has been in our minds the entire time, ‘Wow, people really are paying attention to these details.’”