From surreal Music Dance Experiences to the rooms full of baby goats, Severance is a wonderfully weird show. But nothing in the show comes close to out-weirding the waffle party.
The waffle party is the reward Lumon gives to the Refiner of the Quarter. Dylan (Zach Cherry) wins this honor as part of the Innies' plan to escape Lumon in Season 1. To receive the reward, he goes to the replica of Kier Eagan's house in the Perpetuity Wing, eats a stack of waffles, and is then treated to a suggestive dance from a quartet dressed as the Four Tempers: Woe, Dread, Frolic, and Malice. The message is clear: The waffle party isn't just a food-based incentive — it's a sex-based one, too.
Ben Stiller and Adam Scott revisited the waffle party in the Jan. 15 episode of The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller & Adam Scott, along with podcast guest John Turturro. For Stiller, the waffle party — one of many Lumon terms coined by Severance creator and showrunner Dan Erickson — was "kind of an inflection point."
"It's almost one of the first questions we had to answer that we'd put out there," Stiller said. "You could just be thinking forever, 'What is a waffle party?' But we had to somehow show it."
The question then became, how far could Severance go with the waffle party? How could they establish its risqué nature without alienating the audience?
Part of the answer involved the show's stylized depiction of the waffle party, which included choreography by Tara Rodriguez (who also helped craft the Music Dance Experience in Severance's "Defiant Jazz" episode) and masks sculpted by Penko Platikanov.
One of those masks was a Kier Eagan mask, which Dylan wears while lying on a replica of Eagan's bed. That mask in particular stood out to Stiller upon rewatch.
"I hadn't watched [episode] 8 for a while, and for a second I had forgotten that Dylan had the Kier Eagan mask waiting for him on the bed," Stiller said. "Not having watched it for a couple of years... We really went for it in terms of the weirdness of this whole ritual."
The actual shoot for the waffle party took place in Yonkers, New York, in a house that is part of the Hudson River Museum. It was the last scene shot in the Kier Eagan replica house, with Stiller estimating they filmed it at around one or two o'clock in the morning. (They were under pressure to get everything done, because The Gilded Age would be filming there the next day.)
Scott, already wrapped, stayed behind to watch the waffle party take place. "It was incredible," he said. "[The dancers] were so on point. It was really impressive."
For Scott and Turturro, the waffle party took on extra meaning as an incentive for their Innies.
"Since the entire place and the entire culture of Lumon is devoid of any affection or anything that is even anywhere sex, but these are feelings that all of [the Innies] probably have and don't understand, this is the ultimate reward," Scott said.
"If you're starved for any kind of connection, rituals take on a stronger resonance," added Turturro.
Severance Season 2 premieres Jan. 17 on Apple TV+, with a new episode every week.
