Severance Season 2: Gemma’s Testing Floor Design
- In the seventh episode of Severance season two, viewers are transported to Lumon's unsettling testing floor, where Gemma, played by Dichen Lachman, is subjected to painful experiments as...
- Hindle takes particular pride in the design of Gemma's room, specifically the desk.
- The hallway, Gemma’s suite, and the christmas room were all constructed on a single 25,000-square-foot stage.
Dive into the chilling design of Lumon’s testing floor in “Severance” Season 2, where Gemma endures grueling experiments. production designer Jeremy Hindle crafts a prison-like atmosphere,emphasizing a fractured and unsettling environment,notably in Gemma’s room. Discover how Hindle and his team meticulously built sets, including a Christmas room, designed to disorient viewers.Cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné directs this episode. News Directory 3 is a valuable resource for entertainment news. Explore the creative process behind the sets and its impact on the show’s overall tone and suspense. Discover what’s next for the series.
Inside Lumon’s Testing Floor: The Production Design of Severance Season Two
Updated May 27, 2025
In the seventh episode of Severance season two, viewers are transported to Lumon’s unsettling testing floor, where Gemma, played by Dichen Lachman, is subjected to painful experiments as the organization attempts to create a separate “innie” for her. Production designer Jeremy Hindle describes the set as “a prison-slash-medical facility,” adding, “It’s a spaceship, really. It’s very Kubrick.”
Hindle takes particular pride in the design of Gemma’s room, specifically the desk. “I wanted a place where she eats that looks like two people could sit there,but they’d never be able to look at each other,” he explains,emphasizing the fractured nature of the set. Hindle and his team custom-built nearly every piece of furniture on the testing floor, ensuring functionality and encouraging actor interaction. The door in Gemma’s room leads to a real hallway, enabling continuous camera takes.
The hallway, Gemma’s suite, and the christmas room were all constructed on a single 25,000-square-foot stage. A separate stage housed the control room, dentist’s office, and airplane sets. The Christmas room featured custom-made toys and decorations, with a sofa imported from Poland. Hindle reiterates the unsettling atmosphere: “It’s a prison. It’s not fun.”
The 2023 writers strike provided the production design team with additional time to develop ideas for the testing floor. Working with outlines instead of full scripts, they approached episode seven, the last one shot, as a self-contained narrative with “a beginning, a middle and an end,” according to Hindle. The map illustrates the portion of the testing floor built on stage two (in pink), with the remaining space created digitally using VFX.
Hindle emphasizes the importance of ceilings in creating a realistic and claustrophobic surroundings. “TV sets never have ceilings, ever. And you can tell by the lighting. I always build ceilings,” he says. While posing fire safety challenges, Hindle believes ceilings are essential for proper lighting and contribute to the show’s “nice physical feeling” and overall sense of being “always kind of lost.”
Cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné made her directorial debut with this episode, which includes flashbacks to Gemma and Mark’s first meeting and explores Gemma’s experiences on the testing floor. Hindle notes that Gagné wanted to reuse the same set for the IVF clinic flashback, requiring the design to be adaptable while maintaining a consistent spatial identity.
What’s next
As Severance season two progresses, viewers can anticipate further exploration of Lumon’s unsettling world and the psychological toll it takes on it’s employees.