'Severance' Q&A

'Severance' is the best horror film to emanate from these shores in years, a survival horror comedy about a group of office workers who get picked off one by one while on a team-building trip to Eastern Europe. Time Out therefore thought it was about time we sat down and had a chin-wag with the film‘s director Christopher Smith and star Danny Dyer. This is what they had to say.

Time Out: Danny, 'Severance' is pretty different to the kind of films we usually see you in. Did you enjoy having a go at horror?

Danny Dyer: Yes, absolutely, because this was quality. I’ve been sent horror before and they've been shit. You know, ‘Let’s start killing people. Let’s get to the scary bit.’ It’s a hard thing to pull off because it’s such an obvious genre, so it’s great to find something like this which is different. It’s brave enough to be funny, but not a 'Shaun of the Dead ' type funny, not 'Scream ' type funny, but horrific and funny all at the same time. I read it and knew what I was going to do with my character Steve, and I was intrigued by the other characters. Actors are quite selfish – you don’t really take any notice of the other characters, you just do what you’ve got to do and that’s it, but with this I was really wondering who was going to play the other roles. I was worried that there might be a weak link, but when we sat round a table to do a read through there wasn’t and I just thought ‘wow, this is going to be amazing!’

Time Out: So how did you get such a strong cast together then Chris?

Chris Smith: A lot of hard work really. For me, Danny was the only guy who could play the Steve character right from the start. And what happens is they give you names and all the money people have got their ideas as to who they think is funny or right for the part. And they didn’t think Danny would be funny enough. They thought he was a straight actor, so I asked them if they’d actually seen his comic timing in 'Human Traffic ' or 'The Football Factory '. For me, I wanted straight actors who could be funny; they couldn’t just be comic actors. And because I was brought onto the project quite late on I think there was a misconception as to what we were going for in the early days. But the actors I went for were good dramatic actors who could do comedy. Some were obvious, like Tim McInnery, and then we had someone like Toby Stephens, who isn’t someone you’d usually see in this sort of film. He’s done theatre and played 'Hamlet', but he’s not the guy you’d expect to see in this sort of film. But he plays it straight with a sarcastic ryeness that really makes it work.

TO: So when did you come onboard then Chris?

CS: James Moran had written the script and they wanted someone who had done a horror movie to direct. I had just finished 'Creep ', which had done quite well, I didn’t have a job, and so they offered it to me. But I had a few ideas and felt that the script needed developing, which I think the producer Michael Kuhn was pleased to hear. I think it was obvious that I wasn’t going to be a yes-man, which is what they wanted, because you have to be able to stand up for yourself in this job. And you also couldn’t be a blagger, because Michael could spot a blagger a mile off.

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