Severance star Adam Scott on balancing Hollywood fame with family life: ‘Everything’s a challenge at some point’
Adam Scott says achieving a healthy work-life balance can be tricky for actors who spend large chunks of time away from their friends and family.
The 52-year-old star, who is about to return to our screens for the second season of Severance tells Sky News: “It’s hard because we live in Los Angeles, and we make the show in New York. So, it’s months and months away from home.”
Pic: Apple TV+
It’s been three years since the first season of the Emmy-award-winning workplace thriller, which was met with widespread critical acclaim.
Scott plays Mark Scout, a microdata refinement team leader who catalogues numbers for shadowy corporate entity, Lumon Industries.
Part sci-fi experiment, part chilling workplace parable, the show imagines a world in which workers can opt to undergo a surgical procedure called severance to divide their consciousness into separate professional and personal entities, dubbed “innie” and “outie”.
While Scott’s character has undergone the procedure to help him divide his time more effectively, he has come up with a less extreme solution to achieve work-life balance.
Best known for his role in Parks And Recreation, and with numerous other credits including Big Little Lies and Party Down, Scott and his wife, TV and film producer Naomi Sablan, set up their own production company Gettin’ Rad Productions in 2012.
He explains: “My wife and I work together when I’m not making the show. We have a company, and we make indie movies and TV, so it’s great. We have an office that we can go to, and that’s a great way to spend time together.”
They also have two children, a son Graham, 18, and daughter Frankie,16.
Scott goes on: “My kids are teenagers now, so they can just fly out on their own, which is great. But it’s hard. We figure it out, you know. Everything’s a challenge at some point. We make do.”
Pic: Apple TV+
Getting the second season in the can was clearly a big relief for him, and fans will be pleased to hear a third is rumoured to be in the works.
Scott says: “We finished making the show almost a year ago now, so I’ve been home for a while and it’s always great to be home.”
‘Just a little oppressive’
So, how did it feel to work in such an oppressive office space of Luman Industries, even though it was all make-believe?
Scott admits production designer Jeremy Hindle had done a big chunk of the work on his behalf.
Describing the “incredible experience” of entering the set, he says: “In our office, there are those green carpets and then the fluorescent lights, and the ceiling is just a bit low.
“It’s not crazy low. It’s just low enough to feel like something’s off, that it’s just a little oppressive. Little decisions like that by Ben [Stiller] and Jeremy [Hindle] make this whole world feel active and alive when you’re there.
“So, as far as a kind of nightmarish feeling, after you’re there for 12, 14 hours, it’s not difficult to summon those feelings.”
Pic: Apple TV+
‘I like trying different stuff’
And what about Severance’s star director, Ben Stiller?
A far cry from his screen appearances in comedies like Zoolander and Tropic Thunder, Stiller is both executive producer and lead director of the show.
Scott says Stiller is his favourite director to work with.
“He’s someone who obviously understands actors, so is able to talk to them, work with them and understand that language.”
Scott also says he trusts Stiller “completely and implicitly”.
He says: “With a director, it’s really important that you trust them, that they know when something is working, that they’re not going to move on until they feel they’ve gotten a scene.”
A perfectionist, Scott adds: “I’m always ready to do more and more takes. I like doing a lot and trying different stuff. But if Ben says, ‘We’ve got it’, then I trust that we’ve got it and I’m ready to move on.
“I love his filmmaking. He’s a great guy, and also just the best person to work with.”
The 10-episode second season of Severance will debut globally on Apple TV+ with the first episode on Friday 17 January followed by one episode every Friday.
Entertainment
A third of daily music uploads are AI-generated and 97% of people can’t tell the difference, says report
Do you care if the music you’re listening to is artificially generated?
That question – once the realm of science fiction – is becoming increasingly urgent.
An AI-generated country track, Walk My Walk, is currently sitting at number one on the US Billboard chart of digital sales and a new report by streaming platform Deezer has revealed the sheer scale of AI production in the music industry.
Deezer’s AI-detection system found that around 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks are now uploaded every day, accounting for 34% of all daily uploads.
File pic: iStock
The true number is most likely higher, as Deezer’s AI-detection system does not catch every AI-generated track. Nor does this figure include partially AI-generated tracks.
In January 2025, Deezer’s system identified 10% of uploaded tracks as fully AI-generated.
Since then, the proportion of AI tracks – made using written prompts such as “country, 1990s style, male singer” – has more than tripled, leading the platform’s chief executive, Alexis Lanternier, to say that AI music is “flooding music streaming”.
‘Siphoning money from royalty pool’
What’s more, when Deezer surveyed 9,000 people in eight countries – the US, Canada, Brazil, UK, France, Netherlands, Germany and Japan – and asked them to detect whether three tracks were real or AI, 97% could not tell the difference.
That’s despite the fact that the motivation behind the surge of AI music is not in the least bit creative, according to Deezer. The company says that roughly 70% of fully AI-generated tracks are what it calls “fraudulent” – that is, designed purely to make money.
“The common denominator is the ambition to boost streams on specific tracks in order to siphon money from the royalty pool,” a Deezer spokesperson told Sky News.
“With AI-generated content, you can easily create massive amounts of tracks that can be used for this purpose.”
File pic: Reuters
The tracks themselves are not actually fraudulent, Deezer says, but the behaviour around them is. Someone will upload an AI track then use an automated system – a bot – to listen to a song over and over again to make royalties from it.
Even though the total number of streams for each individual track is very low – Deezer estimates that together they account for 0.5% of all streams – the work needed to make an AI track is so tiny that the rewards justify the effort.
Are fully-AI tracks being removed?
Deezer is investing in AI-detection software and has filed two patents for systems that spot AI music. But it is not taking down the tracks it marks as fully-AI.
Instead it removes them from algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists, a measure designed to stop the tracks getting streams and therefore generating royalties, and marks the tracks as “AI-generated content”.
“If people want to listen to an AI-generated track however, they can and we are not stopping them from doing so – we just want to make sure they are making a conscious decision,” the Deezer spokesperson says.
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Deezer’s survey found that more than half (52%) of respondents felt uncomfortable with not being able to tell the difference between AI and human-made music.
“The survey results clearly show that people care about music and want to know if they’re listening to AI or human-made tracks or not,” said the company’s boss Alexis Lanternier.
“There’s also no doubt that there are concerns about how AI-generated music will affect the livelihood of artists.”
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Musicians protests AI copyright plans
Earlier this year, more than 1,000 musicians – including Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn and Kate Bush – released a silent album to protest plans by the UK government to let artificial intelligence companies use copyright-protected work without permission.
A recent study commissioned by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers suggested that generative AI music could be worth £146bn a year in 2028 and account for around 60% of music libraries’ revenues.
By this metric, the authors concluded, 25% of creators’ revenues are at risk by 2028, a sum of £3.5bn.
Entertainment
BBC apologises to Donald Trump over editing of Panorama but says there isn’t ‘basis for defamation claim’
Saturday Night Live UK has announced its top creative team ahead of the series launching next year.
An American pop culture institution, SNL launched the careers of stars including Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy, Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell – and now a “new generation” of British comedians is set to be cast in the first UK spin-off on Sky.
While the show’s stars are yet to be revealed, details of the creative team behind it have now been announced.
Kim Kardashian hosted the show in 2021. Pic: Sky UK/NBC
Two-time Emmy winner James Longman will serve as lead producer, BAFTA winner and live broadcast specialist Liz Clare will direct the series, while writer, comedian and composer Daran Jonno Johnson takes on the role of head writer.
Longman’s credits include The Late Late Show With James Corden, for which he produced famous sketches with stars and notable figures including Sir Paul McCartney, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise and then president Joe Biden.
He also worked on the Friends reunion special in 2021 and hit UK shows such as Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Alan Carr: Chatty Man, The F Word and The Friday Night Project.
L-R: James Longman, Liz Clare, Daran Jonno Johnson. Pic: Sky UK
Clare’s directing credits include An Audience With Adele, The Brits and MTV awards ceremonies, Glastonbury, the BAFTAs and shows such as The Voice UK and Britain’s Got Talent, while Johnson, who is part of the acclaimed sketch group SHEEPS, has written for shows including Wedding Season for Disney+, Siblings for the BBC and Rose d’Or winner Parlement for France.TV.
Saturday Night Live UK marks the first time the US producers have adapted the show, which celebrated 50 years on air earlier this year, for a British audience.
Channel 4 ran several series of a similar programme on Saturday and Friday nights in the 1980s, featuring comedians like Ben Elton and Harry Enfield, but it was domestically produced.
‘A lot of big US comedy is stolen from the UK’
Pete Davidson at SNL’s 50th anniversary celebrations. Pic: Janet Mayer/INSTARimages/Cover Images/AP Feb 2025
Comedian Pete Davidson, another SNL star, told Sky News he’s excited about the UK version – and that it is about time the UK is able to take from US comedy, rather than the other way round.
Speaking in the summer during promotion for The Pickup, Davidson said: “I think it’s a smart idea to have SNL over there because… not that it’s a different brand of comedy, but it is a little bit.
“A lot of the biggest stuff that’s in the States is stuff that we stole from you guys, like The Office or literally anything Ricky Gervais does… there’s just tonnes of great comedy over there. Jimmy Carr is a great stand-up.”
Also highlighting Jack Whitehall, he continued: “I think anything that’s great over there, we just kind of steal… and it doesn’t seem like the other way around. This is the first time I’ve ever heard anything American going to the UK, so I think it’s great.”
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Producers say the UK series will follow the same format as the original, featuring “a new generation of comedy players in the core cast, alongside guest hosts and musical performances”.
The UK show will be overseen by US producer Lorne Michaels. Along with his production company Broadway Video, which has made The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and 30 Rock, the show will be led by UK production team Universal Television Alternative Studio.
Saturday Night Live UK will be broadcast on Sky Max and streaming service NOW in 2026.
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