Aside from Parks and Recreation and Severance being Adam Scott’s two most famous roles that just happen to primarily take place in his characters’ workplaces, recently, fans have made another connection between the two shows. During Season 6, Episode 12 of Parks and Recreation, Scott’s character of Ben Wyatt basically pitches the concept of Severance to his wife, Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope. And yes, Scott has seen the scene go viral.
While we cry over the Severance Season 2 finale and get ready for Season 3, Adam Scott was recently shown the Parks And Rec clip where Ben suggests that he and Leslie keep their home life and work life “separate” like a “firewall system.” Check out his reaction while on Radio X:
@radiox
♬ original sound – Radio X
How wild is that scene? If you have any suspicions about it, as a huge Parks and Recreation fan, I can confirm it’s from an episode that aired back in 2014, over a decade ago.
What blew my mind even more was what Adam Scott shared about the making of it:
Isn’t that weird? Actually, I directed that episode which is extra weird.
It’s true. Adam Scott only directed one Parks and Recreation episode in the 96 he was part of, and it was the one people keep sharing for its Severance connection. It’s called “Farmers Market” and it has Ben Wyatt coming back to work at City Hall after a hiatus. And when Leslie Knope goes over-the-top, as per usual, with taking work home with her, Ben suggests the couple leave work at work.
And funny enough, Scott didn’t even remember filming the scene until the internet found it. In his words:
That never even occurred to me until I saw it on Instagram a couple months ago.
So in other words, Adam Scott kept his work at work when it comes to this growingly popular moment on Parks and Recreation. This has such severed energy!
Now, one might think the scene from the show is proof that it was actually Scott who created the idea for Severance. However, it was creator Dan Erickson who created the idea for the AppleTV+ show while working temporary jobs and imagining a world in which he could dissociate from work instead of experiencing it.
After Ben Stiller got ahold of the script for the first episode of Severance to direct it, he got in touch with Adam Scott and pitched him the idea. Scott called the concept a “sticky, catchy, great idea,” and he waited a year before he even saw a script, but he was in!
As we learned recently, Stiller had to fight for Scott to earn the lead role, but one of the reasons he did want him in the first place was because of his history on a workplace comedy like Parks and Recreation (which the actor actually hasn’t rewatched for a sweet reason).
Now, as we return to Severance hiatus mode, check out one Ben Wyatt-coded moment during our exclusive interviews for Season 2 and go back and watch that Swverance -coded Parks and Rec moment with a Peacock subscription.