Severance Stars Set the Table for Burt and Irving's Ham Dinner With John Noble: ‘There's a Little Tension!'

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16-02-2025

Apple TV+'s Severance is ready to answer the age-old question: What happens when an Outie has dinner with his Innie's ex's Outie, plus that man's husband?
When last we tuned into the acclaimed drama, John Turturro's Irving Bailiff — newly terminated at Lumon following the whole ORTBO mess — confronted the man who'd been repeatedly spying on him from a car at night. That lookie-loo was revealed to be Burt Goodman (Christopher Walken), another Lumon alum whose Innie of course engaged in an 'unsanctioned erotic entanglement' with Irving B., prior to his own forced retirement.
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Burt explained to Irving that he simply was curious about the man who had furiously banged on his door that night when three-fourths of the MDR team was 'awakened' in their Outie lives, thanks to the OTC protocol.
A contrite Burt went so far as to suggest that Irving come over to his home, properly and invited, for a ham dinner with him and his husband (Cecil) Fields.
Speaking with TVLine ahead of the season, Walken remarked, 'I'd forgotten that he cooks a ham, that ham is his specialty.
'It's interesting that an actor would be cooking another actor a ham!' he added with a chuckle.
Burt's partner was briefly glimpsed, from afar and in silence, in Severance's Season 1 finale, then played by character actor Arthur Brooks. But for Season 2, the Apple TV+ drama enlisted Fringe vet John Noble to give the character — and Episode 6's dinner-for-three — some real bite.
'I'd seen [John's] work before but I'd never met him' prior to Severance Season 2, Walken shared. 'They said, 'Here's your husband,' and away we go!''
Regardless of how expensive a bottle of red wine Irving shows up with, how well could this ham dinner go? After all, both Burt and Irving surely are curious about the 'erotic entanglement' they shared that neither of them, as Outies, can remember.
'The whole scene is navigating brand-new territory,' John Turturro told TVLine, 'and lots of stuff is still bleeding in from their relationship as Innies.' Meaning that while Irving and Burt don't outright recall what transpired between them inside Lumon's walls, 'It's still there,' Turturro asserts. 'It's there in all the characters, you can't completely escape that.'
Suffice to say, many a glance, and many a spoken word, carries extra, unsaid weight as the dinner conversation unfolds.
'It's a big adjustment when someone who is the apple of your eye is taken,' Turturro noted. Ditto, 'seeing what their relationship is like and how that person' — meaning Fields — 'is suspicious of what [their partner] has done or not done,' as an Innie.
Fields, in turn, is sure to have thoughts about sharing a meal with his husband's ex-of-sorts, especially as Burt shares details about his 'scoundrel' past, and what led him to Lumon. As the wine flows, Fields himself shares his opinion on whether Innies should be able to 'experience love.'
Previewing the unpredictable repast to come, Walken said, 'It is one of those dinners that you dread, like one of those holiday dinners with your family where you're not supposed to talk about politics but somebody does, and everyone starts fighting and everyone wishes they hadn't shown up.'
In other words, 'Yeah, [there's] a little tension!'Best of TVLine
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