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The Case for Adam Scott

[Medium]

In the first episode of Severance, Mark sits across from Helly in the boardroom and awkwardly announces to her that it’s okay if she’s disoriented because she’s at an orientation, and the first time I watched it I unexpectedly laughed out loud and immediately understood why they chose to have a “comedy actor” play Mark.

The humor on Severance is weird, off-putting, and (at least for me) funnier with each rewatch. The tone the show sets is not just eerie and devastating but also just on the right side of whimsical and ridiculous. The music dance experience makes you wonder what the fuck you’re watching, and Helly hanging herself in the elevator makes you wonder what the fuck you’re watching. Through each tonal shift, both dramatic and subtle, you feel uneasy but safe in the knowledge that this is a real world, these characters are real people, and the subject matter is deadly serious. No matter the shift, I am wholeheartedly in, with a steadfast belief in the realness of the world in which I have been dropped.

Severance could have just been a drama. In the hands of different creatives, it may have been. Without the performance of Tramell Tillman’s Mr. Milchick, the severed floor may have felt like an unrealistic place. Without Britt Lower’s Helly being the first innie we meet, the premise may have unraveled before the end of episode one. And without the performance of Adam Scott’s Mark S./Mark Scout, the tone of the show may well be unmoored.

The show does not try to make Mark Scout a likable guy — he is straightforwardly an asshole — and yet he is compelling and somebody you want to root for much of the time. Most of this has to do with Adam Scott making Mark Scout seem like a) a real guy, b) like his grief defines him and so you pity him more than hate him, c) someone who at some point was kind and funny but has become lost. He says to Reghabi in season 1 that he is “not a bad person,” and the unsure, regretful way he says it is heartbreaking.

Compare this depressed, self-sabotaging alcoholic to Mark S., who is gentle and kind and doing the best he can to be a rule-follower while also finding things he cares about, discovering what it means to be human with his limited existence. The differences between Mark S. and Mark Scout are so subtle that the first time I watched season 1, Petey says the line about Mark’s voice being “different up here, worse,” and I scoffed because I didn’t hear it. Adam Scott’s performance is not one that hits you over the head with its obviousness, not one that allows you to look down at your phone for even a minute for fear of missing something miniscule. His voice is different, in his inflection and register, as Mark S. sounds like a guy who has never raised his voice in his life, someone who has never spoken to anybody other than coworkers and authority figures. His tone is light and professional; Mark Scout’s is heavy, not performative. This is something I did not notice consciously the first time I watched the show, but if someone had asked me what’s the main difference between Mark Scout and Mark S., I would’ve used the word heavy. Mark Scout holds himself like the world has beaten him down. There is a distinct heaviness to him that is missing from Mark S.

One of the unfortunate things about awards season is that actors submit one episode for consideration, and I believe Adam Scott’s performance cannot be clipped into a three-minute “look how good this acting is” video to be fully understood. For instance, if you take Mark S. yelling at Cobel and Devon in Cold Harbor out of context, it seems ridiculous. He is essentially an adolescent having a temper tantrum because he is being tasked with too many responsibilities, too many things to process about his limited life, and, as stated before, he has never raised his voice like this before. He is not intimidating in the slightest, all angst and no bite. We’ve spent two seasons with Mark S., seeing him go from a scared company man to a rebellious renegade, from a survivor to a lovesick fool, and the childish way he yells here is the culmination of his overwhelming changing circumstances and his personal development.

It’s been said before, but Adam Scott’s ability to play a regular guy is unmatched. Despite having a very interesting, unconventionally attractive appearance that sparks frequent arguments about whether he is hot or ugly — I land on the side of hot, but I think he’s an acquired taste that looks better the more you get to know him — he comes across as “just some guy.” He makes you feel like Mark Scout could be your neighbor, somebody you pass in the grocery store and never notice. There is an ordinariness to his character that makes him relatable and yet isolated, with his demeanor as Mark Scout making him feel like an island. He has a way of imbuing his voice, his posture, and his eyes with a kind of monotony, a deadness that makes you wonder if Mark Scout is ever fully present or if he’s somewhere else in his mind. He is still capable of politeness and jokes and even frustration, but there is a constant fatigue to him, an air about him that he hates himself even as he tries to better his life.

When we see Mark Scout most present and grounded is when he is grieving, and it is not a pretty grief. It is ugly and mean and heartbreaking, but it is when Mark Scout seems the most alive. Our introduction to the character of Mark Scout is of him sitting alone in his car, crying like a baby before work. We don’t know what he’s crying about, and we don’t know him, so there is no earned sympathy, no connection. His cry is ugly and unguarded, not played to the camera or to the audience at all, isolating him from the jump. Adam Scott was given the impossible task of playing an unlikable character with nothing to make us feel for him, nothing to invite the audience in, and yet I find myself loving Mark Scout. Even when he’s being an asshole, even when he is screwing over his innie, I find myself rooting for him. I find myself believing that he can get better, that he can heal.

When he grieves his wife at the tree where she died, it is a softer, sadder, and prettier kind of reverence. He is still isolated, but now we are here with him. We know him. We are alone on his island with him.

Severance was initially put on hold because of Covid, and while waiting with the world at a standstill, Adam Scott lost his mom. When filming began, he was isolated and alone in an apartment away from his family and grieving his mother. While it is tragic to think he does everything to make her proud and that she is not around to see him now, it is extraordinary and a sign of true professionalism that he was able to channel and relate his own grief into his work in such a heartbreaking, respectful manner.

When Mark Scout finds out his wife is actually alive, his performance is unexpectedly beautiful. I had imagined what it would be like for Mark Scout to learn this information, what it would do to a person to find out your two years of grief were wasted, and I think it is nearly impossible to imagine being in his shoes. His reaction is not over the top, not overplayed. He simply gets out of his car and portrays everything he’s feeling in the subtle expressions of his face. He is overwhelmed, confused, possibly elated but also dumbfounded and doomed because he has no way of getting to her. Getting out of the car showed his fight-or-flight instinct, the need to just get away when information is too much to process. As is often the case with Adam Scott, this performance was not the obvious choice nor the most clipworthy choice. It is very difficult to take any part of his performance out of context and understand the level at which he’s performing, as so much of what he does feels less like acting and more like watching an actual guy go through these things. For me at least, the biggest sign of a good performance is forgetting that it’s a performance.

Compare this to Mark S., who is a bit performative in the robotic way he carries himself, the way he speaks, and the less subtle expressions of his face. His emotions are bigger, more simplified, and he comes across as childlike. With everything stripped away and with him confined to an environment where he only ever works, Mark S. is lighter, less reserved, and yet also more scared. He is obviously someone who has learned to comply, that rebellion is not worth the punishment, and that he can try to have a fulfilling half-life by caring about his work and the people around him. Through Mark S.’s innocence and good humor, we can see that Mark Scout could be better because there is a better version of him.

By season 2, however, Mark S. is no longer scared. He’s seen the outside and wants to help his outie, and he is obstinate and reckless because he fears no consequences. He has learned that there is more to life than what he has been given, and he is driven with purpose toward a goal. Through this, Mark S. is still a bit stiff, a bit obvious in his emotional expression, and terrible at lying. His eye contact is more intense, his face masking a quiet rage beneath the surface. Even so, he has some similar mannerisms as his outie. He does the same kind of sinister smile when he wants to manipulate someone. He stands up when he’s mad. He has the same stupid little fake laugh.

Both versions of Mark are tonesetters for the show’s concept. Adam Scott’s ability to infuse slightly off-center humor and physicality into his performance, subtle shifts in his expressions and demeanor, and his everyman persona ground the world in this off-putting reality. Mark Scout and Mark S. manage to be both unapproachable and unintimidating, assholes and kind. And at the center of this performance, what I think might be the most important reason to make a casting choice like Adam Scott, is a man in love.

Despite very little screentime devoted to Mark and Gemma’s relationship, Mark’s grief and his poor handling of his wife’s death haunt the narrative. On the other side, Mark’s innocent, pulling-pigtails-on-the-playground kind of falling in love with Helly is sweet and a little melancholy. Everyone has an opinion about Mark S.’s choice at the end of Cold Harbor because you can so clearly see reflected in Adam Scott’s minute expressions in that scene that Mark S. is making a choice for himself possibly for the first time in his life, and although he feels bad about it, it changes him.

Adam Scott’s unique ability to play a lover, to have chemistry with seemingly anyone he’s put onscreen with, and to differentiate between an old, lived-in kind of love versus a new, puppy love are essential features of the story. The fact that everyone fights about Mark’s relationships with Helly and Gemma, that everyone cares so much, is due in large part to Adam Scott’s believability as a romantic. From Party Down to Parks and Rec and even to Big Little Lies, it’s obvious Adam Scott should’ve been cast as the lead in every romcom in the mid-2000s and likely would’ve been if his nose was smaller or something (Adam, if you’re reading this, please do not do anything to your perfect nose).

The thing about Adam Scott is that if he read this, he would likely scoff and wonder how anyone could bloviate about him like this, but I do hope he’s learned to hate himself less as he gets older. He was a regular kid from Santa Cruz, on the chubby side until puberty, with teachers for parents. He saw Indiana Jones at a formative age and had pictures of Scorsese and DeNiro in his locker and dressed like Marty McFly in junior high, and he grew up thinking this was the only thing he ever wanted to do. He frequented the video store and read the backs of VHS tapes, stayed up late watching TV on his five-inch black-and-white screen, and pretended like he was being interviewed on Letterman. He spent at least two decades chasing his dream through hard work, grit, determination, obsession, and a steadfast belief that if he just stuck it out he would make it. He did all of this while remaining down-to-earth, not taking himself too seriously and not taking anything for granted. He’s beloved by his peers and spent many years getting to do fun work he enjoyed with his friends, and he became the kind of actor you say “oh yeah, that guy from that thing” whenever you see him in something, and maybe that would’ve been enough.

We’ll never know if it would’ve been enough though, because after about 25 years, he finally, unequivocally got an opportunity he was uniquely positioned for, as it requires not just hard work but good humor, humility, and decades of learning and growing to successfully pull it off. He was given the impossible task of making an unlikable protagonist the center of this massive universe, and I just do not think Severance would be what it is without him. I don’t think I’d be writing this if it were any other actor at the helm.

On a podcast with Scott Aukerman just a few years ago, Aukerman asked Adam where he keeps his awards at home, and Adam answered in a self-deprecating manner, “It’s called ‘empty shelf.’”

Personally, I think it would be a shame for that shelf to remain empty for much longer.

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