Severance creator used his real blood to convince Apple TV to make the show

For Dan Erickson, the creator of Severance, it really did take blood, sweat, and tears to convince Apple TV to make it – emphasis on the blood.

Fans have been waiting almost three years for Severance Season 2. That’s a big gap for any TV show, but this has been especially painful, given that Season 1 ended with one of the most agonizing (and best) cliffhangers of the decade.

The series follows Mark (Adam Scott), an employee of Lumon Industries who’s been ‘severed’, splitting his day-to-day experience of work and personal life; his outie arrives at his job, but his innie does all the work and has no knowledge of the outside world.

It’s a crazy idea, and considering the rave reception (read our five-star review of Severance Season 2), it’s hard to imagine Apple needed much convincing. However, Erickson didn’t take any chances.

Severance creator “poured his lifeblood” onto the pitch

Apple TV+

While appearing on the new Severance podcast, Erickson spoke about writing the script and figuring out how to pitch his idea to Apple and other distributors.

“We worked with Ben [Stiller] and Jackie [Cohn] on this pitch document. I got it in my head that what this needs to have is a bloody coffee mug print, as though somebody took a bloody coffee mug and laid it down on the page,” he explained.

“I was working on that for a while, and this was all just me in my house at this point. I tried a bunch of different things, I tried food coloring… and guys, I’ve never told you this so I hope you still like me after this: eventually, I was like, ‘It doesn’t look like blood, so it needs to be blood.’

“So, the ring that ended up on the document that we’re all looking at right now, I bought a little lancing needle that you use to draw blood and I literally poured my own lifeblood out in order to make this.”

Erickson admitted that he didn’t tell Stiller, Scott, and most of the show’s team about it as he feared they’d think he was “crazy.”

However, Cohn, an executive producer on the series, added: “We went through probably 30 iterations of just the coffee stain on this. We were done with the document that we were using to pitch it and then Dan would just come in every day with new little blood stain circles.”

You can’t read the original pitch document (probably because it has spoilers for where the series will go), but you can check out one of the initial scripts for Severance.

Until the second season premieres on January 17, 2025, find out more about O&D, why Season 2 took so long, and other TV shows you should check out in 2025.