Across its two-season run, Severance has routinely confounded its audience — questions such as “What’s up with the goat guy?” and “Why does Irving B. see the black gooey substance so frequently?” fill up the show’s sub-Reddits. That aspect of the fandom initially took Ben Stiller, Severance’s executive producer and primary director, by surprise. When he was first producing the show, those sorts of mystery-box elements were not the preoccupations that Stiller expected from its audience; he was much more attuned to Severance’s tone and emotional stakes.

After the success of season one, which left many of the most important questions unanswered, Stiller was well aware that a second season without definitive revelations would risk disappointing Severance’s rabid fanbase. During a recent appearance on our podcast Good One, Stiller discussed that audience dynamic. Some of the fan theories, he explained, may be unfounded: Sometimes a green carpet is just a green carpet. Here’s an excerpt from their conversion, which you can watch in full above.

Jesse David Fox: It was clear after season one that a lot of people were very invested in the mystery aspects of the show. How much do you personally care about that element?
Ben Stiller: I care that people care, so I don’t not care about it. It’s important to people, and I understand that because nobody wants to feel like you’re just making it up as you go along. But for me, I was a little bit surprised at how drawn in people were by that. I’m more into the feeling of the place, the tone, the humor, and definitely the weirdness of it.

Going into the mammalian scene, for example, was scary for me because I felt like, Oh, we’re expanding the believability of the world here. I care a lot about that and making sure that whatever reality you’re creating, there’s enough of a grounding in some sort of identifiable reality that you believe it, even if it’s really weird or comedic. That was scary to me because all of a sudden it’s like, Okay, these people are different and they’re kind of feral and they’re living off the land, and yet they’re in this room that’s off a hallway, so how do you believe that? So when casting the mammalian people, we really tried to make sure that we were going for something that would be somewhat believable, even though it’s so crazy and absurd that they’re in this room doing that. I was scared because if we don’t buy this, then we’re going to get outside of the reality of believing in the rest of the show.

Has audience feedback made you more focused on the mystery aspect than you might’ve been otherwise?
Yeah. It’s interesting to see what people connect with. Some people connect with the relationships — Mark and Helly or Mark and Gemma. And some people are just not as into that stuff and are more into what the numbers mean. It’s great that people are connected to the big mysteries of it, but I do think ultimately you watch a show because you want to feel something, you want to be emotionally connected to the things that we can relate to in our own interactions with other people, be it feelings of love or loss. Those are the core elements of what the show is about and was always on my mind.

What do blue and green mean on the show?
Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t sit around and talk about those thematic ideas. When we were creating the office, we had to decide on the color of the carpet. We’re going to be living with this carpet for many years, if the show goes on. I’d never made a series before. So I thought, Let’s make sure we like this color green. But then it becomes the world that we live in.

I will say, you have to look at the introduction of a new color in our very controlled palette and go, Okay, that has to feel intentional. Like the red that comes in at the end of season two feels to me like a new idea. Red can mean a lot of different things, but it’s both. Obviously there’s love with red, but it can also mean emergency. That was fun to really play with at the end because I knew it was going to feel different. But I wouldn’t ever pretend to say blue represents this or that. It’s instinctual for me mostly.

There are a lot of fan theories about the colors, so I’m sure they are going to pick apart your answer, thinking you are hiding something.
You don’t want to tell everybody everything, but I’m not going to pretend that I’m smarter than I am.

My theory is ultimately Severance is about the integration of all versions of oneself. Have you ever felt not integrated?
Yes, there have been times when I’ve felt out of balance. Honestly, I feel like life is about trying to find that balance. At first you have to be aware that you’re out of balance. Over the years, there were times where I wasn’t as self-aware. When I was younger, I just went off of instinct. I didn’t really understand why. Over the years I’ve been out of balance at times, personally, in relationships, marriage, work, all of those. Now I feel I have a better understanding of, Wait a minute, something doesn’t quite feel right. I want to try to fix that.

It’s really hard. When you’re going through life, sometimes you’re just trying to survive, literally just trying to get through the next day no matter what’s going on in your life. Sometimes if you’re lucky enough to not have to worry about going out and getting food every day and you have a home and all these things, then it opens up all these other conundrums to you of what is this all about? Ultimately the creative process has to be about, What is it I want to say and why do I want to say it? I don’t pretend to understand all of that, but I do have more of a sense of understanding what’s important for me to have in my life that feels connected.

And it can’t just be the creative. It also has to be my relationships and my life with my friends and my wife and my kids. That feels more integrated to me now than it has. I got to this point in 2017, after Zoolander 2, of having a little bit more of a sense of, Oh no, I want to make something purely because I want to have this thing exist. I want to see it. I want to bring it into existence. That’s the main voice that you have to listen to.

 Ben Stiller loves the series’ mysteries, but he also wants you to appreciate its weirdness without explanation.