“Writing for narrative was just always the thing that I knew I wanted to do,” says composer Theodore Shapiro. “I was never really interested in writing for the concert hall.” Shapiro started his work in television as the composer for MTV’s The State after being introduced by a friend in the sketch group. “Of course, I represented that I was completely qualified to do it and I was completely unqualified to do it,” he says, “but it gave me this amazing opportunity to work on an actual television show with very limited experience and technical know how.”
Having worked with director Ben Stiller for many years, Shapiro was excited when he got the call and heard what the concept of the show was. Directed by Stiller and Aoife McArdle, Severance is a sci-fi psychological thriller that follows employees at Lumon Industries, a sinister biotech corporation. Mark (Adam Scott), among the employees that went through a controversial “severance” procedure that separates his work and non-work memories, starts to unravel conspiracies surrounding the mysterious company. The series is nominated for 14 Emmys, including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Music Composition For A Series (Original Dramatic Score) for Shapiro.
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“Initially when we started talking about the score, I thought we should do something that plays on one idea for the innie world and one idea for the outtie world,” says Shapiro. While he and Stiller agreed on the idea at first, their opinion changed as Shapiro got to work composing. “The concept was that we were going to do something kind of cold and electronic for the innie world,” he says. “I wrote this piece and it had this section in the middle that Ben really liked and I was like, ‘I should see what else I can do with that material.’ I took the chord progression of the section that Ben liked and I started playing it at the piano and immediately it was like, ‘That’s the sound of the show.’ Its not about an innie world and an outie world, its about the whole show feeling like a mystery. Somehow the starkness of the solo piano playing those chords… that really unlocked what the show was.”
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This discovery led to another conclusion that changed Shapiro’s approach entirely. “Ultimately we ended up realizing that the show really is not about a dichotomy between the two worlds,” says Shapiro, “it’s about one mystery and one puzzle that we explore over the course of a whole season.”