Keanu Reeves Reveals How His Surprise Severance Cameo Happened
One phone call from Ben Stiller and suddenly, you're a talking building.
Severance is a show where everything feels at once familiar and unfamiliar. Long, stark-white office hallways create a feeling of dread, while beloved actors known best for their roles in comedies must suffer through unspeakable horrors. But one cheery cameo in the second episode of Severance Season 2 sparked recognition in many viewers of the Apple TV+ show, and prompted them all to say, “Wait, was that Keanu Reeves?” Yes, that is indeed Reeves’ voice as the animated Lumon building in the short video that the Macrodata Refinement team (or MDR) are forced to watch in Episode 2. Reeves reveals how he got the surprising cameo.
“I got a call from Ben Stiller out of the blue and he said, ‘You want to do a voiceover?’” Reeves tells Inverse in an interview for his upcoming Roku docuseries Visionaries. He says that after he got the call from the Severance executive producer, he read the script and immediately said yes. And that’s how he ended up as the voice of the Lumon building in the animated video that greets MDR when they’ve all been reunited and put back to work.
Keanu Reeves voices the talking Lumon building.
In the stop-motion animatic, which is structured like a friendly corporate instructional video, a sentient Lumon building recounts the events of the Season 1 finale, which saw MDR’s innies launch a coup by taking control of their outties bodies for a few minutes and making contact with the outside world. The Lumon building talks about how MDR’s “uprising” was a success, and giddily lists the “kindness reforms” that have now been put in place for innies, including pineapple bobbing and a “playful Mirror room.” It’s an eerily happy video — and one that Severance creator Dan Erickson knew Reeves was perfect for.
“We always wanted it to be somebody that people have certain associations with, but also, it had to be a very warm presence,” Erickson told Collider. “The Lumon building is very friendly in the context of this video, and there’s a friendliness to that particular voice and a heart to that particular voice.”
Reeves offered the “warm” presence that the short cameo called for.
However, Erickson also mentioned to Collider that they talked to “a couple of different people for that role” before the role ended up going to Reeves — perhaps after Reeves had recently made a great impression with his voice acting debut in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. So, has Reeves caught the voice-acting bug now? Could we see more little voice cameos like this in the future? Reeves responds to Inverse in the positive, saying, “I love the show Severance, and Ben Stiller's incredible.” But as to whether we could see more such appearances of him in the future of the show, he was a little more vague. “It was a really cool opportunity, creative opportunity. I'm game for good art,” Reeves concludes. At least we can thank Kier for the fun little cameo that graced our screens.
