Britt Lower of ‘Severance’ Takes a Swing Britt Lower of ‘Severance’ Takes a Swing

In the three years since her breakout role in the fantastical series, she ran off to join the circus — twice. Season 2 may raise her profile even more. What’s next?

“I’m very much a beginner,” the actress Britt Lower said.

This was on a mid-December evening at a warehouse space in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. Dressed in a T-shirt and houndstooth-patterned leggings, Lower climbed a ladder to a narrow platform where an instructor clipped her into a safety harness. Seconds later, Lower was upside-down, swinging from the ceiling of the España-Streb Trapeze Academy.

She dismounted, exhilarated. It was her fifth trapeze class.

Lower (rhymes with flower), 39, has been performing — professionally and at lower altitudes — for a decade and a half, with arcs on a spate of shows including HBO’s meditative stoner series “High Maintenance,” Hulu’s spiky dramedy “Casual” and FX’s surreal comedy “Man Seeking Woman.” She became more recognizable in 2022, as a star of “Severance,” the fantastical Apple TV+ show about co-workers who have volunteered to have a procedure that psychically separates their work lives from their home lives. Season 2 premieres on Jan. 17.

Lower, who has a low voice, wide eyes and a strong eyebrow game, begins the show as Helly R., a defiant new member of Lumon Industries’ Macrodata Refinement department. In her “outie” life, as the Season 1 finale reveals, she is also Helena Eagan, the daughter of Lumon’s chief executive. In both roles, she is dynamic, determined, dangerously self-possessed.

In his review for The New York Times, James Poniewozik praised the “nervy intensity” Lower brought to Helly R. Lower has some of that nerve offscreen, though she generally presents as looser, less insistent. Helly is the kind of woman you would follow into battle. Lower would hand you a balloon on your way.