Just when Tramell Tillman thought he had a handle on how deeply “Severance” has seeped into the zeitgeist, he started to see “devour feculence” pop up on political protest signs.
The phrase comes from Season 2, Episode 9, of Dan Erickson’s trippy sci-fi series, spoken by Tillman’s Seth Milchick to his superior, Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), in a moment of ultra-eloquent rebellion. Now, it’s officially escaped the containment of the show and made its way into the pop-culture vocabulary. It’s become social media shorthand, an instantly iconic meme, and, yes, an effective way to tell corrupt politicians to eat shit. “I had a friend of mine thank me the other day for that phrase. He now uses it just about every day of his life,” Tillman tells me, flashing a smile far warmer than the one usually deployed by the icy Milchick.
The actor has a lot to smile about these days. While he’s been a fixture of the New York theater scene since his Off-Broadway debut in Classic Stage Company’s 2018 revival of “Carmen Jones,” his public profile has skyrocketed thanks to the runaway success of “Severance.” The Apple TV+ hit, which wrapped up its second season in March, follows four employees at biotech company Lumon Industries—Mark S. (Adam Scott), Helly R. (Britt Lower), Irving B. (John Turturro), and Dylan G. (Zach Cherry)—who have undergone the “severance” procedure, which splits their identities into two. Their “outies” have full lives outside the office, while their “innies” only know the world within the blindingly white walls of the Severed Floor.
Lumon is run by Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry), who’s also the leader of a fanatical cult dedicated to its founder, Kier Eagan (Marc Geller). Also, the company may or may not be experimenting with unethical ways to manipulate human consciousness. “Severance” takes some surreal swings—goats roaming behind closed doors, cryptic paintings, a watermelon sculpted into the shape of Turturro’s head.
And then there’s Tillman’s incredibly unsettling performance as Milchick, the supervisor-turned-boss of Lumon’s Severed Floor. The actor has crafted a perfect antagonist for the age of the tyrannical middle manager. With flawless posture and supernatural stillness, Tillman plays the dead-behind-the-eyes cheeriness of an HR professional tuned to menacing extremes.
“Severance” racked up 14 Emmy nominations and two wins for its first season; in its second, it overtook “Ted Lasso” to become Apple TV+’s most-watched show. But beyond the numbers, what’s even more striking is how much online buzz the series generates. Not since “Game of Thrones” has a weekly storyline been this closely picked apart for clues and theories.
I tell Tillman that, right before our conversation, I got sucked into a Reddit video analyzing the different tones of the elevators inside Lumon. All he can do is laugh. “If I spent my time dissecting every theory and every observation, it would drive me bananas,” he says. “That’s why I’m not on Reddit much anymore.”
That doesn’t mean the actor hasn’t gone down a rabbit hole of his own. As he waits to get scripts for the already confirmed Season 3, he finds himself returning to his character, trying to untangle what makes the man tick. “I still have so many questions about Milchick,” he says. “I don’t think he ever leaves me. This guy lives with me. I won’t be able to put him down until I figure him out.”
When Tillman was first cast on the series in January 2020, the sparse character breakdown offered few clues. He had to dig deep into his bag of tricks to begin shaping Milchick, starting with a technique he learned while studying for his acting MFA at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “We were given an animal, and our job was to go to the zoo and study the different movements of that animal,” he recalls. “Then we’d spend time on a monologue or piece of text and try to create a character through the guise of this animal. It really taught me to understand body, voice, and movement.”
Preparing to play Milchick didn’t require a trip to the zoo, but Tillman still tapped into that approach: “I would watch nature documentaries like ‘Planet Earth’ and really study the birds and mammals and reptiles, and just start allowing my imagination to really explode,” he says. “I was like, Is Milchick a snake? Is he more of a raccoon? Is he an eagle? I just really had fun finding ways to incorporate that animalistic behavior and fusing it with the intentions and motivations of the character.”
“There are times when I do surprise myself. I scare myself when I watch scenes from the first two seasons and think, Who the hell is that guy who has my face?”
Tillman also turned to documentaries about cults in order to analyze the mindset of a person who buys in at any cost. “There was a behavior I noticed: a conviction, a devotion, almost a selflessness,” he explains. “It’s not only a commitment to the cult’s ideals, but a commitment to its leadership. There isn’t a whole lot of space for these followers to question the leadership. That was a really powerful trait I could carry forth with Milchick; and it’s so different from myself, because I ask questions often.”
Beyond his research, Tillman also worked closely with Erickson, director–executive producer Ben Stiller, and production designer Jeremy Hindle to curate the items on Milchick’s desk, each one a subtle clue to who he is. There’s a picture of an iceberg, the majority of its mass hidden beneath frigid water; a statue of an optical illusion that’s either a duck or a rabbit, depending on how you look at it; and a bonsai tree, famously a symbol of harmony and balance, along with the wound paste he uses to treat it after regular prunings.
This devotion to small details helps Tillman to, in his words, “switch” into Milchick’s mindset. He’s halfway through this thought before we both notice the irony that when a director calls action and it’s time to get to it, he fully transforms into someone else. (Sound familiar?)
“Based on accounts from Ben, Dan, and my fellow cast members, they don’t really mess with me. I’ve been told I’m very scary when I’m in Milchick mode,” Tillman says with a laugh. “When they yell, ‘Cut!’ and there’s a space for air, I’m able to pause and look at the playback, because I learn by watching. There are times when I do surprise myself. I scare myself when I watch scenes from the first two seasons and think, Who the hell is that guy who has my face?”
The defining Season 2 moment for Milchick (outside of that “devour feculence” mic drop) comes on Episode 6: Following a review in which he’s chastised for using big words, he says to his reflection in the mirror, “You must eradicate from your essence childish folly.” He repeats the phrase, each time paring it down to simpler language until “You must grow up” becomes “Grow up” becomes, simply, “Grow.”
The sequence offers a revealing look beneath Milchick’s hardened exterior. We understand not only how hard he works to conform to Lumon’s standards, but how much of himself he strips away to do so. It’s a breathtaking piece of character work that’s remarkably performed.
Tillman tells me the scene had to be captured in roughly 10 minutes due to the show’s tight shooting schedule—and he nailed it on the first take. “I don’t share that to be braggadocious. I do it because I’m celebrating what we were able to accomplish in the limited time that we were given,” he says. “It demonstrates the amount of focus and commitment that we as a team have when we rally with one another. We might not have oodles of time to get it exactly perfect to the way that I may want, because I’m a perfectionist. But we produce high-quality work. When we have the time, we take the time; and when we don’t, we’re zeroed in.”
Tillman is less illuminating when it comes to details about Season 3. “I’m pretty good at keeping secrets. Although I would love to be able to share gossip and spill tea left and right, these NDAs are pretty strong.”
The one thing he wants Season 3 to be? Uneventful. The actor’s time on “Severance” so far has been marked by major upheavals. He was cast just a few months before the pandemic shut down Hollywood, delaying production on Season 1 for eight months. Two years later, the second season had to be put on pause due to the simultaneous Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
“I had to let go,” Tillman remembers. “For so much of my life, I was a control freak; I wanted to have everything done the way I wanted. But I realized life just doesn’t work that way.”
It’s a hard lesson that he’s had to learn and relearn over the years. He was a natural performer from a young age, but the idea of actually working as an actor felt out of reach. “I was told that in order to be successful, I had to go into science, technology, engineering, or math,” he says. “I didn’t have a lot of mentors that looked like me who wanted to do the things I wanted to do.”
Tramell Tillman on “Severance” Courtesy Apple TV+
In the early aughts, Tillman enrolled at Xavier University in New Orleans on a pre-med track to eventually become an orthopedic surgeon. In 2005, he transferred to Jackson State University and switched to a mass communications major, which led to work in everything from the nonprofit sector to abstinence education to public relations. He still acted on the side, mostly in regional productions at Mississippi’s New Stage Theatre. But he wasn’t fully committed to the craft, and it was killing him.
“I remember my mom saying, ‘Whatever you do, I want you to be happy,’ ” he tells me. “I looked at members of my family and saw how important it was to go after the things you sought. I come from a long line of trailblazers—people who marched for civil rights and were active in voter registration. That taught me to not just accept what you’re handed.”
When Tillman finally headed to the University of Tennessee, it felt right; it felt like coming home. In 2014, he became the first Black man to graduate from the school’s acting program. “At all these other jobs I had, I was still performing,” he says. “I was performing on the job; I was performing in the bathroom; I was performing in the car. It was always a part of me.
“The one thing I could not escape was the joy I got from performing in front of people: telling stories, connecting with the community, helping people see a new perspective, changing people’s minds and hearts in some shape or form or fashion,” he continues. “I just wanted to be a part of that. Yes, I had to pay my bills, and I always found a way to do so. But what was most important is that I was following my passion. I firmly believe that when you put your art out there, when you present yourself and believe in what you’re creating and surround yourself with positive people, you will be taken care of.”
All these years later, Tillman is being taken care of. He’s starring opposite Tom Cruise in “Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning,” which hit theaters last month. The role came about because Christopher McQuarrie, who directed and co-wrote the film, is a “Severance” fan.
“It’s more than just another notch on my résumé; it’s affirming,” Tillman says. “Had I not been tenacious, had I not worked four jobs when I first got to New York, I wouldn’t have landed this job, which landed me another job, which eventually landed me ‘Severance,’ which then landed me ‘Mission: Impossible.’ I’ve been fortunate all the way, but I also worked my ass off.”
It’s hard to listen to him talk without noticing the ways he and Milchick overlap. “For me, acting has become a form of ministry. But initially, it was a gateway for me to forget, to kind of sever myself from life,” he says, not even realizing how close he is to describing the premise of the show.
But whereas Milchick is consumed by his work, Tillman is enriched by his. “No matter how many dreams I have seen come true, it is important that I can look in the mirror and be pleased with who I am as an adult, as a human being,” he says. And there it is—another parallel: the image of the actor facing his reflection.
So far, Tillman hasn’t eradicated from his essence childish folly, and it’s made all the difference. “That’s the biggest advice that I can give to young, new, emerging talent: Find ways to learn about yourself,” he says. “Allow yourself to evolve, stay rooted in positive communication and community, and love yourself.”
Or to put it monosyllabically: Grow.
This story originally appeared in the June 12 issue of Backstage Magazine. To hear our full conversation with Tillman, listen and subscribe to In the Envelope: The Actor's Podcast.
Photographed by Victoria Will on 4/10 in Brooklyn, NY. Groomed by Ruth Fernandez. Styled by Chaise Dennis and styling assistant on set by Mia Hurley. Cover designed by Andrew Turnbull.
