Your outie likes to adventure. Your outie never chooses the middle seat. Your outie judges people who take off their shoes on planes. Your outie also wants you to see the real-life Lumon building, which is closer than you think if you’re based around New York City.
If you’re reading this article, odds are you already know what an “outie” is, but just in case you’re not watching Severance, perhaps the best television show to come around in decades, let us introduce you to the concept. In the show, the characters have “severed” their brains to become two different versions of themselves: one for the outside world (outies) and one for the workplace (innies).
It’s all thanks to the sinister and mysterious company Lumon, which runs experiments on people in a labyrinth of a building that is what our hellish, overhead neon lighting nightmares are made of. And if you’re a true fan of the show, you can go see that building for yourself just by heading over to New Jersey.
Specifically, you can visit the Bell Works building in Holmdel, New Jersey, which was the one-time home of Bell Labs, the research arm of AT&T.
Known today as Bell Works, it is now home to various businesses. According to Curbed, the building was designed by architect Eero Saarinen and opened as a massive mid-century office space in 1962. It was here that researchers worked on everything from microwaves to cell phones before it was left abandoned in 2007 and revived in 2013 by developer Ralph Zucker, Screenrant reported. And now, its lobby and outdoor spaces are often used as the stand-in for the fictional Lumon industries.
As Zucker told Curbed, Severance isn’t the first movie or TV show shot in the space. It’s also featured in both American Horror Story and Emergence. Those shows also led to the building getting mobbed by fans, but it’s nothing compared to Severance viewers.
“I have heard that we have a lot more people coming in and taking pictures of themselves in the space,” Zucker told Curbed. “We have a whole team that works on social media, and they’re inundated.”
However, there is one critical point to make: there is no official tour of the building. People really do work here, so it’s important for all visitors to remain as respectful as possible while on the grounds. You also cannot visit the upper levels (sorry, Mr. Milchick likes his privacy), so it’s best to just take that selfie outside or in the lobby.
“We always understood that people would realize that this was not, you know, real life,” Zucker added. “Although Severance portrays the headquarters as this empty devoid-of-life space, in reality, we’re literally teeming with life.”
See all the details about the building at curbed.com.