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Spoilers follow for the seriesSeveranceand season- finale episode The We We Are.
Helly on the outside is very aware that people are looking at her.
But even in that version, Helly is described as quietly fierce.
Like you said, they have overlapping qualities of strength.
Theyre both extremely clever and willful.
How do you practically do that?
For me, Innie Helly represented that id part of us thats almost teenager-like in her angst.
I think thats a question that the show really highlights: Who are we?
Am I my memories, or is it nature versus nurture?
And I came into this season knowing all my lines for nine episodes.
I had them memorized.
Every morning I would do an intuitive drawing to get into the feeling of the scene.
This is punk!Id just go nuts.
Something about scribbling like that helped me.
The props are really loaded with meaning.Absolutely, they are.
And each one is so specifically chosen.
I will say, the scene I was most scared to film was actuallythe scene with the paper cutter.
Just thinking about the idea of fingers being chopped off was horrifying to me.
What did you name it?I named it Harold.
It just felt like the right name, and then I wasnt intimidated by it.
How does one dance to defiant jazz?
It was fun to let Helly, albeit briefly, let loose for a minute.
Imagine never hearing music, and then all of a sudden you hear it.
They dont see art down there; they dont hear music.
Theyre deprived of any kind of stimulus.
Up until that point, Helly is so skeptical of any Lumon-affiliated task.
But the ability to have five minutes to dance she really enjoys that.
That really sparks something in her.I know.
Its something she and Dylan share, which is theyre both trying to game the system in different ways.
Theres a lot asked of your character in terms of being our entry point into the series.
I would say 80 percent of my dialogue in the first three-quarters of the season are questions.
Were all asking, What the hell is going on here?
The tonality of her questions is a mixture of bemused and demanding.
How did you land on your specific level of sarcastic?[Laughs.]
Its like a cocktail of things going on that I was always mixing.
Its kind of the job of the clown, right, to reveal and to share.
The clown is always sharing, trying to strip away the layers and reveal the experience that theyre having.
The sacred and the profane at the same time.
We could feel that as a cast moving through the story as well.
Lets talk about the Helena reveal.
I think there was something like 54 images in this huge space, on these giant cubes.
It made me a little nauseous to see so much of myself everywhere.
We filmed that primarily with a Steadicam, so youre following Hellys journey within this very fluid movement.
It feels like she is inside of a dream space.
Hes an amazing photographer.
When I say that the images made me nauseous, its not because they werent beautiful photographs.
It was just that there were so many of them.
Shes a gut-instinct character.
For me, it was a moment of her reckoning with herself and taking responsibility.
She takes matters into her own hands.
If its effective, I dont know, well have to see.
Helly is not one tonotmove forward when shes made a decision.
Its a much quieter moment than weve seen with her.
Its the closest version of a prayer that she has.
Its obviously memorized after having said it 1,000 times.
Its almost like giving herself a pep talk in this very strange way.
I think thats why the connection between the characters is so strong.
There was something really beautiful about it.
It was almost like being in a play.
Were just focused on the connection with each other because the set is so sparse.
Initially, we thought about them as kindergarten students.
In a way, theyre these archetypes that weve all been in different parts of our lives.
What do you think Helly would have asked for?Honestly, I think the same thing.
Theres something in that moment when Helly says to Dylan, I should be the one to stay behind.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
