Filming for the third season of Apple TV+’s “Severance” appears to be underway inside Bell Works, as evidenced by discreet written notices, but production “innies” won’t confirm. SUNAYANA PRABHU
By Sunayana Prabhu
HOLMDEL – No one connected to the production will confirm it, but the signs are everywhere.
Film crews have returned to Bell Works to shoot the third season of Apple TV+’s hit show “Severance,” but much like the series’ secretive fictional corporation, production is keeping things under wraps. Evidence of the indoor filming is playing out behind hand-lettered notices and closed-off hallways at the sprawling complex that once housed Bell Labs.
But discreet filming hasn’t stopped confirmation from emerging elsewhere. The show’s return was independently verified by one of its stars. Actor Adam Scott, who plays office worker Mark Scout and also serves as an executive producer on the show, confirmed the shoot was underway in an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show a few weeks ago. “Shooting is officially underway for season three,” Scott told host Craig Melvin, declining to share more details. Scott said the cast was only a few weeks into filming at the time.
Ben Stiller, executive producer and director on the series, also signaled the start of production in a July 27 social media post. Apple TV’s official account responded to the post with its own message telling fans to “please frolic in moderation,” a play on the show’s fictional corporate vocabulary.
Access to some portions of the Bell Works building has been restricted through Sept. 11. The onsite signage directs crew members toward a “base camp” and “set” for a production listed under the working title “Buffalo.” The notice also describes actors wearing Lumon Industries badges inside the building.
Bell Works has stood in for the exterior and interior of the fictional Lumon Industries headquarters since “Severance” began filming in 2021. The building’s roughly 2-million-square-foot modernist design, including its glass-enclosed façade and winding hallways and its exterior, has been featured heavily throughout the show’s run.
As reported previously by The Two River Times, the production’s connection to Bell Works was not accidental. Building management courted film and television projects, and a “Severance” production team first toured the site in December 2019. But a lengthy negotiation delayed a deal, Moshe Gross, CEO of the location-brokering firm Reset Locations, said in a March 7, 2025, TRT article about the production. The production crew closely studied the building before creating its sets. “They matched every little detail from this building,” Gross said.
Ralph Zucker, founder and CEO of Inspired by Somerset Development, which redeveloped the former Bell Labs campus into the Macrodata Refinement (MDR) department. Cast members, including Britt Lower, John Turturro, Zach Cherry, Tramell Tillman and Gwendoline Christie, attended, along with Stiller and Erickson.
Before its current life as a commercial and retail hub, the Holmdel campus served for decades as a research headquarters for Bell Labs, where numerous Nobel Prize-winning scientists and engineers worked. The building was designed by modernist architect Eero Saarinen and was acquired by Inspired by Somerset Development in August 2013.
Apple has not announced an official premiere date for the new season of “Severance,” and Bell Works representatives have not responded to requests for details on the current filming schedule.
This article originally appeared in the September 3-10, 2026 print edition of The Two River Times.
