Jessica Lee Gagné is the cinematographer who gave Severance its two worlds: an office you cannot place in time and an outside that is plainly somewhere else. It is exact, patient work, and it is a large part of why the programme unsettles.
Fi1m perspective
The thing Jessica Lee Gagné does in Severance (2022) that most cinematographers would not is keep the two halves of the programme from looking like the same show. Jeremy Hindle designed Lumon's offices so that you cannot say which decade you are in, and Gagné lights them clinically enough that the effect never slips. The world outside is shot as a different place altogether, so that when the story crosses from one to the other the picture has already told you something before a line is spoken. We found we wanted out of that office within a few scenes, and were unsettled by how little the outside soothed us once we got there. That is her work as much as anyone's.
She came up shooting independent films in Quebec, including three with Chloé Robichaud and two with Denis Côté, work done on small budgets in awkward places without letting the look wander. Sweet Virginia (2017) brought her to Ben Stiller, and Escape at Dannemora (2018) was her first television job of any size and the turn in the career. Mrs. America (2020) followed. Then Severance, where she was director of photography for two seasons, became a producer on the second, and directed one of its episodes, 'Chikhai Bardo', shooting it herself. We have not reviewed that second season and will not judge the episode here, except to say that a cinematographer directing from behind her own camera, in a visual language she built, is the natural next step.
The strength is consistency. On Severance she uses anamorphic lenses and a clinical, slightly textured light, and holds to it across hours of television, which is harder than it sounds and rarer than it should be. The risk is the flip side. Our review of the first season said it took too long to gather pace, and when it dawdles the frame is often what keeps you in your seat. That is a compliment to her, and not quite one to the script; a look this assured can make waiting feel like a plan.
She has said that her favourite part of filmmaking is creating a language and a look, and the language is plainly done. Whether she can carry a story on her own, without Stiller alongside her, is the question the next few years will answer. On the evidence of the office, we would give her the evening.
Biography
Jessica Lee Gagné is a Canadian cinematographer and director. A native of Quebec City, she began working as a cinematographer shortly after college, supported by public funding for short films and features in Canada.
She gained recognition for her work on the films Sweet Virginia (2017), Despite the Night (2015) and Daddy (2017). Her collaboration with director Ben Stiller began on the miniseries Escape at Dannemora (2018) and continued on the series Severance (2022), where she served as director of photography on most episodes, received a producer credit in season two, and made her directing debut on the episode "Chikhai Bardo". In 2025 she became the first woman to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (One Hour) for her work on Severance.
