‘Severance’ Options Upstate New York Restaurant Phoenicia Diner

Followers of tv sequence Severance and individuals who have hung out within the Catskills will acknowledge a well-known restaurant within the newest episode of the Apple TV+ present. Phoenicia Diner, positioned within the gorgeously distant hamlet of Phoenicia, New York, reprises its function 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 workers — like Adam Scott’s Mark and Britt Decrease’s Helly — endure a process referred to 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 workers to course-correct at work.

And that’s the place Phoenicia Diner stepped in. Earlier than the Emmy-winning sequence premiered, Courtney Malsatzki, the restaurant’s director of operations, acquired an e-mail saying {that a} new Apple TV program was fascinated 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 individual concerned with Severance, they usually sat in the identical sales space that will later be used on the present. “They spent just a few hours there they usually had been similar to mapping scenes,” Malsatzki says. “So I used to be instantly like, ‘I believe they’re filming right here.’”

Courtesy of Apple

On the time, Malsatzki couldn’t speak about what was taking place till the trailer aired, however preserving 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 momentary 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 massive 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 obtained a present card from Lumon to make up for a piece harm.

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 ingesting mugs of sizzling espresso. On the similar time, a Lumon henchman lingers on the counter, spying on them.

Severance turns the throwback attraction 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 folks into senseless cogs.