‘Severance’ Star John Turturro Unpacks Irving’s Train Station Send-Off: ‘Maybe It’s Not the End’

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Severance” Season 2, Episode 9.

Irving and Radar board a train, headed to a destination unknown.

It’s a bittersweet though very open-ended conclusion for John Turturro’s outie and his loyal dog in “The After Hours,” Episode 9 of “Severance” Season 2. Irving and Radar are given an opportunity to start a new life — in fact, it’s an urgent, ominous command — by Burt (Christopher Walken).

Burt, it turns out, is a longtime Lumon goon who has experience doing dirty work for the company. But he opts to spare Irving from a much worse fate, driving him to a rail line and pleading with his heartsick friend to go far away and never come back.

Irving tells Burt that he’s never experienced anything like the chemistry and bond that the two men share. Struggling to speak and holding back a sob, it’s perhaps Turturro’s most affecting sequence of the whole series.

“When you’re doing scenes at the end of the season, it’s always tricky to find that sweet spot,” Turturro told TheWrap about this poignant moment with Walken, which was filmed at a historic train station in upstate Utica, New York, built in the Italianate style in 1914.

“Because you think it could be the end, but it maybe it’s not the end,” he said.

As with his experience on Season 1, Turturro cherished the scenes he shared with Walken and thought it was appropriate for the two men to have a genuine moment of connection in the train station.

“Working with Chris is always a joy and a pleasure for me,” he said. “We’re like an old jazz band together and it’s always gonna be interesting when it’s the two of us. He throws it over to me and I just have to listen and react and with Chris I never know exactly what’s coming next.” 

What’s coming next — that’s the big question for Turturro. Though Apple has not officially confirmed a third season of “Severance,” director Ben Stiller has indicated that the writers’ room is working on ideas.

So are we going to see Irving again?

Turturro is keen to the idea, explaining that he’s been in “open” conversation with Stiller and creator Dan Erickson.

“If there’s stuff that’s good and active and interesting to do, then I could see that, yeah,” Turturro said. “If people wanted there to be [a third season], there could be, and there could be big, big surprises too. You know, Irving’s left all those paintings behind. There’s a reason why they went into his apartment, why they’re looking around.”

For sure, his one bedroom apartment is crammed with inky-black artwork of the mythical elevator hallway at Lumon. And twice during Season 2, we saw Irving speaking furtively to a person or persons on a pay phone in the dark. The internet has theories, but we still don’t know who was on the other line.

“I know, kind of, because Dan gave me a whole backstory, which I used when I did all my research,” Turturro revealed. The actor is instinctively careful about how much he says about his character or the plot, adding “in my mind” or “in my imagination” to much of the discussion of Irving.

But he does know why Irving was severed in the first place and stated that, “Some people do it for personal reasons and some people do it because they’re looking for something.”

A well-liked, veteran actor since the 1980s, Turturro mentioned that the popularity of “Severance” has been a new experience, even for him.

“When we did the show, I didn’t know how people would respond,” he said. “I can say that it’s been wild. And I think it’s because the audience feel this participatory element to the show. There’s an exchange happening between the show and the audience. That resonates. I think that’s really cool. That’s why we do it. And one person’s point of view is just as valid as mine.”

In fact, he encounters other points of view quite a lot. The Brooklyn based actor still hops on the subway whenever he needs to go into Manhattan, meeting “Severance” fans on the train – an appropriate setting, considering Irving’s send-off.

“And people say to me, ‘Well, you shouldn’t take public transportation.’ I say, ‘I take public transportation and I’m going to continue to.’ So that’s that.”

“Severance” releases new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+.

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