Followers of tv collection Severance and individuals who have hung out within the Catskills will acknowledge a well-recognized restaurant within the newest episode of the Apple TV+ present. Phoenicia Diner, situated within the gorgeously distant hamlet of Phoenicia, New York, reprises its position as Pip’s Bar & Grille within the fictional Northeast city of Kier.
Severance is a thriller satire about company work cultures, centered on the omnipresent (and cult-like) firm of Lumon run by the Eagan household. Choose Lumon staff — like Adam Scott’s Mark and Britt Decrease’s Helly — bear a process generally known as “severance,” which splits them into two selves: an workplace self (“innies”) and a real-world self (“outies”). The restaurant Pip’s takes its title from a member of the Eagan household, Phillip “Pip” Eagan. However the title additionally works as a play on efficiency enchancment plans (aka PIPS), formal documentation given to staff to course-correct at work.
And that’s the place Phoenicia Diner stepped in. Earlier than the Emmy-winning collection premiered, Courtney Malsatzki, the restaurant’s director of operations, acquired an e-mail saying {that a} new Apple TV program was thinking about filming on the diner and requested if they may go to. She agreed, and it occurred to be Ben Stiller, the manager producer and director for Severance. He visited the diner with one other particular person concerned with Severance, and so they sat in the identical sales space that will later be used on the present. “They spent a couple of hours there and so they had been similar to mapping scenes,” Malsatzki says. “So I used to be instantly like, ‘I believe they’re filming right here.’”
On the time, Malsatzki couldn’t discuss what was taking place till the trailer aired, however holding the key was tough. The restaurant needed to shut down for filming and the outside and inside adjustments had been apparent. “We had so many emails,” she tells Eater, particularly when the non permanent Pip’s signal was put up. “I used to be getting 100 emails a day — ‘I can’t imagine you closed;’ ‘What are you pondering?’ — hate emails, unhappy emails, simply all the things.”
As soon as the primary trailer aired in January 2022, “it was an enormous stress launch,” she says. “Not solely was it cool to see how they made it look and see someplace you’re keen on on the large TV, it was additionally like, ‘Okay, all people is aware of. Thank god.’” The ensuing scene exhibits Mark eating on the restaurant as a result of he acquired a present card from Lumon to make up for a piece damage.
For the second season of Severance, Phoenicia Diner returns as Pip’s. This time, it serves because the setting for a scene the place Mark and his sister Devon (Jen Tullock) have an essential dialogue at a sales space alongside the window whereas consuming mugs of scorching espresso. On the similar time, a Lumon henchman lingers on the counter, spying on them.
Severance turns the throwback allure of Phoenicia Diner’s on itself, making the diner, a spot that’s universally comforting and acquainted, right into a extra insidious backdrop in a city that threatens to show individuals into senseless cogs.
