Severance writer Mohamad El Masri tells us about his film Other Other, Severance season 2

We recently got the chance to talk to filmmaker Mohamad El Masri, who's worked as a writer on shows like Here & Now and October Faction. He's also writing on the second season of Severance, the bracing sci-fi drama on Apple TV+ that's returning after nearly three long years off the air. He told us about that experience, but first, we talked about his short film Other Other.

Other Other is about an unlikely romance between Spyro (Scoot McNairy, of Godless and True Detective) and Myka (Sosie Bacon, of Mare of Easttown and Smile). The two of them are dating online, their romance confined mostly to screens. Another issue: they're from different dimensions. Other Other is a story about online dating in the multiverse.

How do they handle that situation? Check out Other Other above, and then read our interview with El Masri!

WIC: What's the reception been like to Other Other?

Mohamad El Masri: "It's been phenomenal to have thousands and thousands of people watching this thing. When you're making independent film and especially a short film, you're sort of always having to make a decision about how you're going to distribute it, how it's going to be seen. Do you want it to go to festivals and possibly get in front of industry folk who might wanna, you know, do something else with it, or do you want to reach the widest audience possible? And with the short film, your options are limited. And so we sort of really made a conscious choice to sort of go, 'let's get this in front of eyeballs.' I want people to watch this. This feels like it gets at what a lot of people are feeling about online dating, about relationships, about intimacy and technology and how it's all sort of creating anxiety...People are afraid to sort of go back into reality once they sort of meet on these boxes and these screens.

"So I think the reaction so far has been kind of what I'd hoped for. On the one hand, people come to me with tears in their eyes and they're like, 'Oh my God, this touches a really deep nerve and it's really moving and really getting at something that I'm feeling in my life or my relationship.' And then there are definitely people who want to get into the mythology of it in terms of the multiverse: 'What's really going on here, what's the logic here?' What's the mechanism at play? And I think that that was something...I expected when I started writing the movie.

"To me it's all great. All these reactions are perfect...I think, as a filmmaker, as long as you're getting a response, that's the goal, because at the end of the day, you can't control what the response is. You can't manipulate it. So it's been fun, man. It's been a real thrill to sort of see how people are interacting with it and the questions that come up and some people have brought stuff up that I just never really had considered. It's really thoughtful conversation so far."

Any response that you hadn't considered worth noting? Anything that surprised you or delighted you or terrified you?

"I think, for me, the ending was always a sense of hope. The ending was that he walks out he grabs the key and he senses that she was just there and he sort of goes out; I guess we're presuming that he's following her. And that's sort of what I told Scoot: 'you think she might just be down the stairs or she might be outside.' So he's going after her and there's that moment at the door where he pauses and sort of looks out and I think it looks like he sees somebody and he walks out and we're sort of out of the movie. And that was very deliberate.

"I think most people have felt like...the ending was really about, 'oh, these people weren't meant to be together.' And they sort of see it a little bit more tragically than I think I had seen it, which is interesting. You know, people project onto it whatever they feel is going on. And I felt that was really, really great. The majority of the people that I've talked to think it's a sad ending whereas I think it's a little bit hopeful, and that's what I intended, but it's just been great to sort of suss it out. And maybe it is sad. Maybe there is no one outside the door, maybe he goes out and it's something else, maybe it's the garbage man or something. I don't know."

Let's lay some quick groundwork, because I don't think we've really said that Other Other is about two people who are online dating, not realizing at first that they were in two different universes and then figuring it out the hard way when they try to meet. And like you said, it's not so much about the mythology, but about the metaphor of this kind of thing happening. Where did the idea for this come from, which might be a polite way of asking, is this based on anything that you went through yourself?

"That's a really good question. Society-wise, I realized, coming out of the pandemic, that people weren't sprinting back to reality...If you had [social anxiety] before, it's more acute. If you didn't have it, you now have it. We for whatever reason wanna stay within these boxes; nobody was like running to be back and face to face. And part of that was obviously COVID. But I think as time passed, I realized: no, COVID is just a sort of shield for, 'no, I'd rather stay in this curated box where I get to tell you what you see and then I can turn you off and I can go off in my life.' And I just was interested about that. What is that? Like, what's going on? And then when I would meet people in real life after the pandemic, it wasn't the same. There was definitely a palpable anxiety that everyone seemed to have about that. And then, you know, there's obviously the online dating stuff. I feel like the horror stories about online dating and the apps...it's a true horror. [Other Other is] not a commercial, let me tell you.

"And then there are [long-distance relationships where you spend time] over phone, on computer, WhatsApp, Skype, FaceTime. So when you're in a relationship like that, there are days where you wish this would just go away because it's just easier. But then you also go, 'thank God that I have this because I love this person so much.' But also how great is it that I don't have to worry about the practical day-to-day interaction of a true relationship? So on the one hand, it's sort of this ease and convenience, but on the other hand, it's this tragedy and it's this sort of burden of, 'God, I just want someone who's here who lives in my city who I can walk to the cafe with.'

"So I think that's the original sort of place. So I thought, 'I need to find a metaphor for that feeling that everyone seems to be having.' There's a tension between intimacy and technology...So, what is that?...It feels like we're living in a parallel universe when actually we're in the same world. We're in one another's homes but we might as well be in separate worlds."

So kind of like the one line that Spyro had, 'a real relationship is about...' and he listed all these bodily fluids.

"Yeah. Blood and guts and cum, you know, farts and all that. Yeah, that's the stuff of life. and some people have a real anxiety about that. They don't want any of that."

Let's talk about the style for a second. I saw one interview where you described it as "surreal," "fantasy," "magical realism." Is that a style that you decided early on? Why do you think that was the best approach for this kind of film?

"Yes, I did choose that early on, and it was a conversation with my producing partners, with Elizabeth Valenti my producer and with my DP Josh Knoller. And also with the cast. I think I had to really make the case for why we weren't explaining why no one at some point was going, 'hey, let's figure this out what's going on.' There's a throwaway in the film where he's just sort of like, 'what if someone's doing this to us?' And she's like, 'what, like there's a conspiracy and we're part of something or whatever?' And she's just sort of laughs it off. And to me that was my way of sort of winking [and saying], 'this is not gonna go there, this is really about the emotional consequences of a situation that's really quite astonishing.'

"And the rules of this situation aren't really that clear. There are some totems that we have for story purposes. You know, when she brings in the book and she puts it down and it crosses over and he finds it in real life. We'd be like, 'how the fuck did that happen? Oh my God. How is that possible?' That's not where I wanted them to go. I wanted them to go for like, 'oh, I didn't know we were getting gifts.' Like, it's date anxiety. I just love the way he delivers that line. He's just so worried about like, 'oh, I didn't get anything.' So that's just sort of where the movie lives. And n that way, it's fantasy.

"I'm always trying to inject a lot of my work with what I call the Eastern Canon, you know, the non-Western Canon. And that is rooted a lot more in magical realism. A lot of Latin American filmmaking is very similar. It's not a 1-to-1 causality sort of logic in the films. You're asking the audience to buy into a sort of a fairy tale quality. You see it in Iñárritu's work, you see it in Cuarón, you see it in Bong Joon-ho. There's not always a sort of impulse to explain scientifically what's going on. Whereas I think in western filmmaking you get more of that, you get more of the didactic; there's always the guy with the board going, 'ok, here's what's happening.' And I think the Eastern Canon is a much more ancient and rooted in sort of an emotional logic as opposed to an actual logic.

"The film is based off...a TV pilot that we were gonna take out before the strike. And because of the strike, I wasn't able to do that. And I got a waiver from the guild to make a short film. And I just adapted the pilot into into the film. And the tone of the pilot was very much what I'm talking about. It was sort of like a fairy tale. It was Once Upon a Time. It wasn't hard science fiction.

"I think a really good example of this is a beautiful movie that I saw, All Of Us Strangers. I think that's a great example where you've got a ghost story, you've got time travel...but it's not really [about] that; it's not those things. I think David Lowery had this great film called Ghost Story, starring Case Affleck and Kate Mara. He becomes a ghost with a sheet and holes in the eyes and all that stuff and haunts his family through the course of the film. It's the most original ghost story I've ever seen, even though it's an iconic sort of Halloween ghost, you know. So I think that was this is a very long monologue answer, but that's what my intention was. It was really focused on the metaphor, focused on the emotion.

So I'm just now noticing: is the door behind you the door from the film?

"Yeah, we didn't leave my building. We shot the whole thing here. We were on the roof, we were out in the hallway, we were in the bedrooms. Originally we had locations, we were gonna be outside and all this stuff was gonna happen, sort of up on a hilltop somewhere. And I think the smartest decision was actually keeping it here, not just from a production standpoint, but even creatively, it somehow created a world within the building. And we also use anamorphic lenses. So we had this sort of distance that it was creating, even though we were in small intimate places, it just created sort of a breadth of scope, and you sort of build a little universe and it starts to feel like a fairy tale.

"And I think your observation was really apt. I think at the end, it's the first time someone just goes outside. And I thought that was a big part of the message too, was, 'get outside, go be with people, leave, get out.'"

Now the question occurs though: So if this is all filmed at your place, does that mean that you're mattress is on the floor like Spyro's?

"No, that's all production design. That's Abby St. Clair Thomas, who is a writer as well and is not a production designer, but she was the production designer on this and she did a phenomenal job. But no, that room, I use it for working out. It's actually empty. So that is my mattress from the master bedroom on the floor...Those are my books."

Let's talk about the actors. I'm gonna guess that you met Sosie Bacon on the set of Here and Now, when you worked on that show. I wasn't sure if you'd worked with Scoot McNairy before; how did he get involved in the project?

"Yeah, Sosie and I got on really well on Here and Now. I thought she was a really smart, good actor who is also a nice person. And we'd stayed in touch and I sort of kept track of her career. And I wrote this and I just immediately went, 'This is Sosie. She would be perfect for this.' And at this point she'd come off of Smile, she'd come off of Mare of Easttown, and in my mind I'm going, 'she's got no time for this. Why would she do this?' But I took a risk. I emailed it to her and she responded, she got on the Zoom with me and she started talking about the story, talking about what she was thinking...[and we spent] a couple of sessions trying to get the story to a place that she also can get really excited about. And I said, 'I'd love for you to do it.'

"And I knew that she also was partners with Scoot in real life, but there was no intention of getting Scoot involved. We had actually started talking about another actor that she'd worked with, who she was hoping to take the script to. At the end of the day, if she was coming on as the lead, which is Myka, I wanted her to have a say in who would play her partner. That's part of the collaboration here, she's doing us a favor. So we got the script to a place where she finally said, 'Hey, I want to send this to Scoot.' I'm like, 'hey, you know, no pressure. Sure. If you think this is something that he'd respond to, please do. I don't want you to feel like you have to do that.' And she sent it to him. He responded, and we all got together and talked about it and we workshopped the script quite a bit.

"Initially the story was closer to the pilot. In the pilot, the other couple are characters. It's a four-hander. So the Other Myka and the Other Spyro are more prominent, and they were more prominent in the short film. And at the end of the pilot, we reveal that Other Mika is a serial killer and that Other Spyro has also been in touch with her. They've also had their own little cross-streams. And when Other Myka shows up at his door, in the original script, she stabs him to death. And our hero Myka is watching this on the phone and she shuts it off and she goes off on her date with the Spyro in her world.

"It was a lot darker, and I think in the collaboration with Scoot and Sosie, we got to a place where [we said], 'let's focus on our main couple, we can see the others for sure. They play a role, but let's focus on our main couple. That's who we're rooting for. And let's make this a romance, let's make this a poignant doomed romance [with a] hopeful little turn at the end. And I have to give Scoot and Sosie so much credit because they're character actors and they're so thoughtful. And they're so good at what they do that they also have really great story instincts. So that collaboration was incredibly satisfying, to sort of work with them and get the script to a place where, 'this is what we can all get excited about.' That's how they came together. Also, the strike was still ongoing when we started, so they were available. So I just lucked out that they had nothing better to do."

I was gonna ask you how what the show would have been like and now I know. That does sound more intense.

Oh, yeah. The idea was that it was gonna be a tonal mash up. So you're gonna have one couple that was sort of a rom-com or romantic drama, and then one couple was gonna be like Basic Instinct. And so the idea was that Other Myka moves in downstairs, and she's a killer and he doesn't know it. And then Other Spyro is a principal at Myka's school where she's a teacher, and she meets him and he meets her...and then there's a complication of, 'you and I still are in touch this way, but we both know that we've met the other person on our side. So what does that do for our relationship?' And it just complicates it in a really interesting way. And that's how the series launches. So totally, it was a sort of mash up of those two worlds."

That sounds pretty cool. I'd turn on Prime Video for that.

I appreciate it. Yeah, it is pretty cool. A lot of people have seen this and they're like, 'oh, this is a movie.' So there are a couple conversations that we're having now about adapting it to a feature film, but I'm still hung up on the series and the pilot. So I appreciate you saying that.

Do you mind if I ask you a couple questions about your new gig on Severance?

"Yeah, absolutely. But it's not new; we started writing season 2 in the summer of 2021, during the pandemic. And so by the time season 2 comes out in January, that'll have been 3.5 years ago. But yes, happy to talk about that experience for sure."

I know that you wrote on shows like Here and Now and October Faction, which were one-season shows. How was it different going into a show that was already a success? And now it's going into this second season that I think a lot of us, me included, are looking forward to.

"Yeah, I'm looking forward to it too. I can't wait for sure. I mean, I can't wait for everybody to just see it. I think we've all been waiting such a long time that I feel like the world is gonna be watching and waiting. It's exciting, I'm excited for everybody involved, and the fans.

"Funnily enough, when we started writing, the show hadn't come out yet. We were still filming season 1 when we started writing season 2. This was the summer of 2021. They were filming the end. And obviously, [producer Ben Still] and [showrunner Dan Erickson] had shared as many of the episodes that were sort of cut together as they could...So we started in June of 2021. The show didn't come out till Feb of 2022. So when we're writing the second season and we're trying to sort of connect it to the first season, we didn't know. We didn't know if this is something that people were gonna respond to. We didn't know if this was gonna be [part of] the huge sort of zeitgeist-y conversation that everyone was having. And then when it did come out and it was this big thing, the pressure definitely suddenly goes up to really get it right and to really connect the dots.

"So that was a fun experience. In any creative endeavor, you just never know when you're doing it. You have an instinct that this is something that people are gonna connect to, but there's no guarantee. That's just sort of the tragedy of art and creativity. We have to believe in it, if nobody else does, that's the most important thing.

"It was timing. The pandemic was starting to open up. I think the world was opening up and people were having a conversation about their relationship between work, the office, remote work. There was this sort of discourse that was happening, and there was a tension, there was an anxiety about going back into the world. And so it came out right when that was on people's minds. It was just a great serendipity of timing, and sometimes that's what you need: the culture and your art need to be in sync. It was just incredible.

"To answer your question about what it's like to jump onto a moving train, it was actually refreshing. You know, we got like a 50-page Bible where it's sort of, 'here's the plan, here's where we're thinking this is going, and here's where it already is.' And you already have a season finale, you know what the end of the first season looks like and you know, where you're sort of launching off into.

"Having said that, regardless of what's available to you, you still have to sort of figure it out, because it's a moving, living, breathing sort of piece. And so we did spend the first couple of months going, 'Let's redeclare intentions here. What is Lumen? What do they want? Why is Mark special, what's going on with Mrs. Casey?' You really do have to sort of go back and go: 'All right, wait a minute, what are the order of operations here?' And Severance is unlike Other Other in the sense [that it is] hard science fiction. And it has a mythology and has a magic to it, but you do have to present the audience with the whys and the hows and the whos. You do have to do that on this type of show. Like the goats. What are the goats? Why are they there? What's the man doing? Everything has to connect. What are they refining? What are these numbers that they're sort of seeing? What's that all connected to? What is this family? Now that we've revealed that Helly is a big part of this company, what does that mean for this family? What do they want? What are they doing? What's the history? We had to sit and sort of wade through all that before you can just sit and write a season of television."

I'll ask one blatantly quote-fishing question and then that'll be it: Will we get the answers to any of those things you were just talking about in the second season? What are the goats? What are they refining, and so forth?

"I would probably be taken out to a shed and assassinated if I gave away anything, but I will say this: Dan — and Ben as well, the two of them are just like the dynamic duo — but Dan in particular, he's got it all in his head. He's not like the 'let's make this up as we go' guy. There is a method to the madness of everything you see on Severance, and he's thinking about it day and night. He's mapped it out in his head and he's going to tell you about it and you're gonna sort of work with it and figure it out. He's that sort of creator, he's that sort of writer. And I said to him, 'gosh, you know, this is almost like a video game. It's like a map that you're uncovering; this building, this town, this world...You're just uncovering levels and characters and tools and doors and hallways and bosses.' That's how I sort of was able to make sense of it creatively. Let's think of it that way. That's not to say that we we didn't hit walls in the room; believe me, we did. And you're sort of banging your head against the wall trying to like, make sure like the Rubik's cube sort of fits. So that's all really round about beat around the bush way of answering your question. Dan's the answer man. Trust in him, for sure."

I have one more question for you, a more general question. I found this quote of yours when you were talking to the Vancouver Film School where you said that as an artist you were inspired by, and I quote, "blinding rage at the absolutely horrid state of the human condition." Any particular parts of that condition you want to explore in your work going forward or already have?

"In my own work, yeah, I'm always sort of leading with outrage, for sure. And that's not necessarily political. That's sort of like, you know, as an alien observer, if I've been dropped down and I'm watching humanity and the tumult and all of us sort of running around, including myself. That's what sort of drives my impulses in my own work. Other Other I think is a good example of that. I'm sort of like, 'gosh, look at us, we really don't like reality. Like, this is more real than reality. This, you and me here, is more real than reality for a lot of us. So part of that is sort of the blinding rage at just how we how we're going about things. But also fascination; I'm fascinated, you know, we're all anthropologists at the end of the day; if you're writing or you're observing, you're sort of trying to understand and make sense of why we do the things the way we do."

Mohamad El Masri, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. Congrats on Other Other and looking forward to Severance season 2.

Thank you, man. I appreciate all the time. That's very kind.

Thanks very much to Mohamad El Masri for talking to us! You can watch Other Other here. As for Severance season 2, new episodes will start airing on Apple TV+ on Friday, January 17, 2024.

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