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This post contains spoilers for the eighth episode of<\/em> Severance\u2019s second season, \u201cSweet Vitriol.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Coming into this week\u2019s episode of Severance<\/em>, the last we saw of Patricia Arquette<\/strong>\u2019s Harmony Cobel was closer to season two\u2019s beginning<\/a>, when she was angrily driving away after being denied her old job of managing Lumon\u2019s severed floor. We didn\u2019t know where she was headed, or what role she\u2019d go on to play in a season that\u2019s since gone thrillingly off the rails. But \u201cSweet Vitriol\u201d puts a pause on all of the surrounding action<\/a> with Mark (Adam Scott<\/strong>) and co. for an eerie, revelatory standalone spotlight on Harmony.<\/p>\n Suddenly isolated from the company that\u2019s defined her since childhood, Harmony returns to her hometown that\u2019s been ravaged by that same company and has failed to recover. She reunites with an old flame, Hammond (James Le Gros<\/strong>), as well as her aunt Sissy (Jane Alexander<\/strong>), a true believer whose devout dedication to Lumon helped shape Harmony\u2014for better or worse. Harmony is now seeking leverage, plotting her next step with no clear path in sight. Along the way, we learn that Harmony was the secret \u201cgenius\u201d behind the severance chip, designed in grief over the loss of her mother, and that she was a student of Lumon\u2019s founder, Kier, for her entire life.<\/p>\n Directed with chilly intensity by Ben Stiller,<\/strong> this episode was filmed on location in Newfoundland, which only added to the whole Cobel mystique for Arquette (who is also an EP on the series). \u201cWe were out in this really far off tundra. It\u2019s really trippy and very rare now to get this experience where you feel the real, true essence of a place, because it\u2019s so cut off,\u201d Arquette tells Vanity Fair.<\/em> \u201cThis old fox house\u2014we were shooting in the real old house that had no insulation, and the wind was whipping through it.\u201d<\/p>\n In learning so much about Harmony\u2014with about a dozen new questions raised too, no doubt\u2014Oscar and Emmy winner Arquette shines by showing a complex new side of her oft-opaque character. She breaks down what the revelations in \u201cSweet Vitriol\u201d mean\u2014and what could be next.<\/p>\n Vanity Fair<\/em>: This episode completely recontextualizes Harmony Cobel for viewers. When did you start to learn about her backstory, and her history with Lumon?<\/strong><\/p>\n Patricia Arquette:<\/strong> We\u2019ve been talking about a lot of the tendrils of this for a very long time, since early in the first season\u2014maybe even before we started shooting: the mom, and the town, and how it had been ravaged by the industrial waste of early Lumon. These ways of controlling people, which are reflections of things that have happened with other drugs in different parts of the world that we\u2019ve seen operations or government use. It was exciting to get into all that. Cobel has this learned, acquired coldness and sort of inscrutable quality\u2014and the landscape up there is similar.<\/p>\n It\u2019s kind of a remove too, right? I find that the way you play her, you can never quite pin her down, and then you see her in this place that feels so isolated from anything else. A lot clicks into place.<\/strong><\/p>\n And as much as this is about science fiction, we still go back as human beings to what were our pivotal early experiences in our life that impacted who we are today. Even her early love affair. We see her really intimate, emotional, interior life.<\/p>\n As you\u2019re revealing so many new layers of Cobel to the audience, what are some characteristics you wanted to emphasize in your performance?<\/strong><\/p>\n Her need to shut down is, we see here, where her needs were not met, where she didn\u2019t have a safe place. Even now, she\u2019s in this dynamic with Lumon Corporation, for which she\u2019s constantly trying to prove her value and her worth. Even if she seems cold or disconnected, she is on this Habitrail of constantly trying to get them to recognize her. She keeps getting her security pulled out from underneath her. She\u2019s in trouble. She didn\u2019t do this right. She didn\u2019t do that right.<\/em> Her aunt is like that. That town is like that. The long-term experience of not getting any acknowledgement\u2014it\u2019s a pattern of trying to throw yourself at somebody who\u2019s never going to recognize you.<\/p>\n The other thing we get revealed to us is how critical she is in the whole Severance development. In religions and things like that, it\u2019s often that you\u2019re not supposed to have your own ego involved. It\u2019s all supposed to be for the glory of the religion, or the corporation; you\u2019re signing a contract saying, \u201cWhatever you think of here while you\u2019re at work, whatever you come up with, we own forever.\u201d But this is her way to say, \u201cYou can\u2019t use what I have. I have something that can compel you to treat me better than you are.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n