Britt Lower on Venturing Outside World of ‘Severance’ for ‘Darkest Miriam’ Film

You don’t have to be an innie or an outie to know Severance has taken television by storm with Season 2 finishing up as Apple TV+’s top show. The driving force behind the proverbial water cooler talk has been Britt Lower’s Helly R./Helena Eagan and her relationship dynamic with Adam Scott’s Mark Scout/Mark S. inside and outside the MDR department at Lumon. 

Lower has built on her success by digging deep into playing a grief-stricken librarian in the movie Darkest Miriam, which hits digital and VOD on April 15. The star portrays Miriam Gordon, who works at the Allen Gardens branch in Toronto Public Libraries, which brings in a unique cast of characters each day. This mundane routine of mediocrity and trying to come to grips with her father’s death takes a turn thanks to a love affair with Janko (Tom Mercier), a younger  Slovenian  cab driver. In the midst of it all, Miriam receives a series of oddly threatening letters. 

The film, which premiered at last year’s Tribeca Festival, was adapted from Martha Baillie’s novel “The Incident Report.” Ahead of the official release, we sat down with Lower on how she challenged herself in new ways through the role. 

Tom Mercier and Britt Lower

When it comes to Miriam, I think she would actually be one who would sign up to get severed given the emotional baggage she carries. What were your initial thoughts of her? 

Britt Lower: My first impressions of Miriam was reading Naomi Jaye’s script that was an adaptation from Martha Baillie’s book called “The Incident Report.” I was really drawn to Miriam’s sense of humor and the way she looks at the world around her. She just has this very rich interior space that I was really fortunate and excited to step into. To look into the world from her point-of-view. 

This was filmed in Toronto with a lot of the story taking place in the library. How was it digging into the job of a librarian? 

Martha Baillie, who wrote the book, is an actual librarian. I got to go to a sort of mini-librarian school of sorts with Martha the weeks of prep leading up to the film. I got to learn how all the books go back into circulation and got a sense of what it’s like to be working in these public spaces. I also loved getting to bike around Toronto. I rode Miriam’s bicycle around the city. I’m a huge fan of Toronto as a city in general. It was great to just feel the energy of the city and to feel how this very private person moves through such a vibrant city and maintains her sense of isolation until she doesn’t’. She falls into this construction hole and her heart opens and all of a sudden she is open to the world around her. 

She falls for Janko, and they lean on each other in a lot of ways. There are a lot of intimate scenes between you and Tom. What was it like building that connection? 

Janko and Miriam meet in Allen Gardens because they have lunch there every day. They see each other from afar. It’s really Miriam falling into a construction hole, and her world kind of gets cracked open. It’s that following day she has the courage to go and introduce herself to him. They just kind of click in right away. He has this way of looking at the world through the lens of an artist. I think she really longs to be in that kind of space. She has her own creativity in her writing we see toward the end of the film. There is something about his ability to access his art within himself that I think is appealing to her. They really have a kindred spirit with one another that is quite tender. 

How would you compare their dynamic to the one we see with Mark and Helly? 

I think that’s something the audience should decide for themselves. I don’t know. It’s such a different project. 

Tom Mercier and Britt Lower

How was it digging into this new project that required a lot of emotional depth? 

I have to give so much credit to our incredible director Naomi Jaye, who just led this film with such a beautiful and strong perspective. It felt like Martha, Naomi and myself were all playing Miriam together navigating the story. I felt it was a such a wonderful canvas to create within. A very different world than Severance. Severance is set inside an office. This is set in a library. Maybe there are some similarities there, but with the library there are so many books and textures inside a library. There is this rich world. That is what I love about libraries. There is this feeling that once you enter the library you can go anywhere inside your mind. 

How do you reflect on this past season of Severance and the strong view response? 

It’s an incredible experience to have the audience have such a personal connection to the show. We couldn’t be more grateful. 

Do you have any hopes for Season 3? 

I don’t know how to answer that aside from that I’m so excited to see where all the characters go. There are so many pathways to be explored. 

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Mark chooses Helly in the end. How does she feel about this considering how supportive she was about finding his wife Gemma/Ms. Casey all season?

That’s a question we can unpack all day. I think more important is how the audience receives it because these are really complex questions. I like to think of it less of a love triangle and more of a tetrahedron. There is a lot to unpack here. 

I think with Miriam, the film says a lot about how someone goes  through grief and how we cope, but also the places we may take ourselves mentally and how the relationships we have factor into all that. What was a takeaway? 

I think for me the film is really about those times life brings us to our knees and how we navigate the experience of grief. Whether it’s losing a loved one or something else that is taken away from us suddenly and how we decide to move on and move forward is what is at the heart of this film. 

Darkest Miriam premiere, April 15, digital and VOD