‘Severance’ Star Gwendoline Christie on Phenomenal Amount of Goats: “They’re All Mine!” – Hollywood Reporter
Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood ReporterSubscribe for full access to The Hollywood ReporterThe ‘Game of Thrones’ star speaks with The Hollywood Reporter about playing Lorne, the mysterious new character in charge of Lumon’s even more mysterious goats.
By
Josh Wigler
Contributor
[This story contains spoilers from season two, episode three of Severance, “Who Is Alive?”]
Once upon a time, Gwendoline Christie was the GOAT knight in Westeros. Now, the Game of Thrones veteran is the GOAT goat wrangler on Severance.
Several leagues away from her time on Game of Thrones, Christie now stars on the Apple TV+ thriller as Lorne, an enigmatic woman in charge of corrupt corporation Lumon’s even more enigmatic goats. Why are there goats all over the Severed floor of Lumon? It’s a fantastic question, one the Severance faithful have been asking for the nearly three years since these sweet creatures first debuted on the show.
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Back then, it was Mark and Helly (Adam Scott and Britt Lower) who found the first goat, in the arms of a sad man who was not yet ready to part ways with the animal. Now, in season two, it’s Mark and Helly making the discovery again, except this time, they find an entire field filled with goats, as well as a whole team devoted to their care led by Lorne, proud pack mother to these goats and their keepers.
What’s Lorne’s deal and, why does Lumon need these goats? The third episode in season two provides only a little bit of detail on those questions, instead opting to amplify the surreality of the situation. By season’s end, expect to find out more about the goats’ purpose. For now, let’s find out more about how Christie found her flock, as the Emmy-nominated Thrones veteran speaks with The Hollywood Reporter about joining the Severance universe.
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Were you a Severance fan before you joined the show?
I really adore this show. It’s my absolute favorite thing on television at the moment. I actually saw Ben Stiller before [the series premiere], and he talked about this show he was going to be doing, and it sounded so interesting. But nothing could prepare me for watching it the first time. That opening image of Helly R on the table … it is so bold, simple, essential, strange. It offers so many questions and is so immediately disturbing in a way that isn’t even quite tangible. I was immediately hooked. All of the performances are extraordinary and it was a story unlike anything else I’d known before. We’re transported into this world we have no knowledge of, that we cannot predict, that feels somewhat like our own, and we don’t quite know what the rules are. There’s a lot of uncertainty and, my favorite thing of all, an enormous amount of mystery.
Oh, I thought you were going to say “an enormous amount of goats.”
There is a phenomenal amount of goats. (Laughs) And they’re all mine!
In my position, I have to play close attention to all of the mysteries on Severance, and there’s no mystery bigger than the goats, for me. How much thought did you give the goats when you were watching season one?
I was obsessed. They were one of my absolute favorite elements of the show. I remember the first time watching and hearing the goat cries… I just chuckled. There might have even been a thigh slap. I remember thinking, “Wow. Just when it couldn’t go any further, you’ve taken it… there.” It’s a dimension that is so strange and organic and unknown and disturbing. I was transfixed. When they asked if I would be interested in being involved in the show, I was really hoping it might have to do with the goats.
Hope pays off! Tell me more about them asking you join the show?
I had my meeting with Ben on a Zoom call, when I was in Scotland in the Cairngorms, this exquisitely beautiful mountainous area. It was summer, and he asked me if I’d want to play this character, Lorne, who is in charge of the goats, and I think I screamed. I was trying to be so professional and cool but then I screamed because I was so delighted. It was exactly what I wanted. It was such a magic element of the show and I wanted to know so much more about the goats. I felt an enormous amount of protective energy immediately toward those goats. I drove through the mountainous expanses filled with sheep and a seemingly limitless skyline, and felt I had somehow started the voyage into the world of Lorne.
What did that voyage look like, as you prepared for the role?
They told me some things about the character and then I went away, as I always do, to do a huge amount of thinking and looking and watching. What occurred to me is that she’s a very physical character because of what she does. She cares for animals. I have friend who are sheep farmers and I asked them a lot of questions about goats. They had no idea why I was asking them these questions (laughs) but, I asked! I read a lot of books, and went out into the countryside and studied goats, and spent a lot of time in fields just so I could get used to being connected to the sheep and cows and the land. It was so fulfilling for me to get to that process, to work on the inner and outer of the character, and then start to receive the scenes and different versions of her.
You say “inner and outer,” but we only meet the innie, as far as we know. Did you spend much time thinking about Outie Lorne?
Only about 300 million hours. And because it’s a combination of the thrilling secrecy of the show, but also the degree to which I’m a fan and want to watch the show and discover it, that they had their own choice of privacy, which I always completely and utterly respect, but they gave me what I needed. And then also I started to think about, as any actor does, a backstory and had a very small conversation, a small but thoroughly enjoyable conversation, with Dan Erickson about it. It was a bit of a yes or no game where I said, if I was thinking this, would that be wrong? No. If I was thinking this, would that be wrong? Maybe. Okay, “if I was thinking this, would that be right?” “No.” And so it was all just so enjoyable. I mean, talk about an enigma wrapped inside a puzzle. It was thrilling, the layers upon layers of intrigue.
Did you have a favorite goat and if so, who?
I had three. I gave them names. There was Baby, who was huge. Then there was Bambi, who was quite extraordinary looking with huge eyes and the longest eyelashes. Then there was a really tiny, very small, quite nimble one I called Size, who seemed very content, receiving a lot of treats, thoroughly enjoying nibbling at my costumes. We were shooting these scenes and there were goats everywhere. It was honestly one of the most delightfully bizarre experiences of my life.
There was one really incredible moment, where we were performing the scene, and Adam [Scott], who was just so exceptional, he was trying to just continue and play the scene while this goat was nibbling at his ear. And he said, “I’m sorry. There’s a goat nibbling at my ear, I just can’t.” And he was really divine. And I think that actually Britt was the best. She was able to give a totally straight face all the way through while there’s a goat nibbling at her ankles.
But there was just one extraordinary moment where we’re playing the scene and Lorne is being incredibly stern. And then there’s a goat under the desk nibbling at my skirt, and I really do my best. It was a delight. It really was. And they seemed really happy, and they had lots of minders around and they were really affectionate. And the goats would climb up to me as I was walking. I had treats in my pocket so the goats would follow me around and they would sort of climb on me. It was a delight. It truly was.
It must have been extraordinary to play those scenes on such an elaborate set.
It was incredible, and even just being such a fun of the show but trying to be cool about it… which never really works with me. I’m sort of fundamentally not someone that can be cool about things. I was so ecstatic to be there. It was all this natural earth and grass, but in manmade forms. It’s a golf course, outside and cold, but in a huge tented area with lights, absolutely extraordinary… and then of course I got very excited by [the rest of the Lumon set]. I kept fiddling with the Lumon vending machines!
Wait, they’re real? Are there actually shriveled raisins?
Everything in it is real, as far as I’m concerned. I mean, all of it’s real, which just adds as an actor, you are there. You can believe in the world. But what’s so brilliant about the show is the incredible attention to detail. The creativity is very refined. It’s flamboyant, but incredibly refined and extraordinarily worked and detailed. And it is a conflict on top of conflict. It’s one layer of absurdity against total believability and naturalism. And I think that’s what makes it entirely any other show on television and why we’re also rightfully bewitched by it.
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Severance is now streaming the three episodes of season two, with new episodes releasing Fridays on Apple TV+. Follow along with THR‘s mystery tracking.Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every dayInside the business of TV with breaking news, expert analysis and showrunner interviewsSubscribe for full access to The Hollywood ReporterSend us a tip using our anonymous form.
