John Turturro shares fascinating Stanley Kubrick story on ‘Severance’ podcast

Listeners of The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller & Adam Scott were treated to an unexpected story about Stanley Kubrick, courtesy of podcast guest Turturro.

In the podcast’s Jan. 15 episode, during which Stiller, Scott, and Turturro discussed Severance Season 1, episode 8, “What’s for Dinner?,” Turturro mentioned that the series had a “Kubrickian approach” to it.

He added: “I never worked with Kubrick. I almost worked with Kubrick, but I didn’t say the right thing to Stanley.”

Turns out, Kubrick wrote the part of Nick Nightingale, which later went to Todd Field (Tár), for Turturro.

Turturro recalled that during his and Kubrick’s two-hour conversation about the film, Kubrick said he thought Turturro was a “really wonderful actor.”

“I was embarrassed, and I said, ‘Thank you,’ and he said, ‘Well, you are,’” Turturro said. And I said, ‘Well, I can’t walk around my house telling my wife that I’m a wonderful actor, because she’ll hit me with a frying pan.’”

The best (and silliest) part of the story comes when Kubrick asks Turturro how to send him the script. “I said, ‘You could FedEx it to me,’ and he said, ‘What if you’re not home?’” Turturro recalled. “I said, ‘My FedEx man throws it over my gate. I know him, his name is Ray.’ And he said, ‘That’s unbelievable. Mine doesn’t do that.’

“I said, ‘Well, do you talk to your FedEx man?’” Turturro continued. “He said, ‘No, I don’t know his name.’”

FedEx talk aside, Kubrick ended up passing on Turturro, as he worried that he might have other projects or conflicts over the next not one but two years. (Taking over 15 months to film, Eyes Wide Shut currently holds the Guinness World Record for longest continuous film shoot.)

“I would have been replaced, probably,” Turturro told Stiller and Scott. “A lot of people were replaced. But I wanted to see what that experience of the 100-take thing was.”

He closed out the story by bringing it back to Severance, saying, “So when I was on this show, that kept coming into my brain. I never really told you, but I was thinking, ‘You know what? This is better anyway. I’m better off being here.’”

“The one decision that I ever made that could compare favorably to Stanley Kubrick is that I hired you,” Stiller joked.

Severance Season 2 premieres Jan. 17 on Apple TV+, with a new episode every week.