Tramell Tillman says ‘Severance’ got him ‘Mission: Impossible’ role

Thank you for your service, Captain Milchick.

Severance star Tramell Tillman has an ace role in the upcoming Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, and it’s all thanks to his unsettling role as former supervisor-turned-manager of the severed floor at Lumon Industries.

“So, I don’t know if you know this, but Christopher McQuarrie is a big fan of Severance,” Tillman tells Entertainment Weekly of his Final Reckoning director.

When McQuarrie, who has been part of the Mission franchise in some way, shape, or form since 2011’s Ghost Protocol, requested a Zoom meeting with Tillman, the actor firmly believed he was just calling to chat about the hit Apple TV+ series.

Instead, Tillman says, “He went on to talk about Mission Impossible, and he said that there was a role in it for me, and I asked him, I said, ‘Well, what do we do from here? What’s the deal?’ He said, ‘You think about it, and if you want to take the role, it’s yours.'”

He continued, “And I ended the meeting and I closed my laptop, and I jumped up and down, and ran around my apartment, and called my team and I said, ‘Listen, I know that we’re gearing up to film for season 2 of Severance, but we got to figure this out.’ And I accepted the offer to come play in Mission: Impossible.” Praise Kier.

In Final Reckoning, Tillman plays Captain Bledsoe, the enigmatic leader of a stealth U.S. submarine. Bledsoe and his crew are pivotal to Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) latest mission, in which he and the IMF team hope to take down the rogue AI cyberweapon known as the Entity once and for all.

McQuarrie wasn’t the only Severance enthusiast on set, though. Some members of Captain Bledsoe’s crew were also fans of the show. “Funny enough, in between takes, they would whisper, ‘We love Severance,’ and then go back to filming,” the actor reveals. “It’s always a delight to be a part of a project that people respect and love the work.”

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Unfortunately for those fans, the Final Reckoning role doesn’t require him to utter such incredible phrases as “devour feculence” à la Seth Milchick, but it does require him to rattle off naval terms with the confidence of someone who is at the top of their game.

To help, there was a team of naval advisors on set. “Any questions that we had, how to pronounce it, what they meant, they were on deck to teach us every step of the way. And I was so grateful for the instruction because I needed it. I had to sound like a guy who had done this for years. And so having their guidance was so pivotal for me,” Tillman says.

One thing he didn’t need guidance on, however, was stunts. Captain Bledsoe is pivotal to the story, but not so much to the film’s action. Tillman says he was happy to leave all of that to Cruise, though. “No, I was kind of glad [I didn’t have stunts],” he says. “I was kind of glad to be the boss behind the controls and tell people what to do instead. That was good enough for me.”

Okay, no stunts — but what about one of those iconic Milchick-approved dance parties? “Bledsoe danced his commands,” Tillman says with a laugh. “That was a dance right there. That man is talented, and he does not play.”

Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, which also stars Hayley Atwell, Esai Morales, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Angela Bassett, Shea Whigham, and more, hits theaters May 23.