For a small city, Kingston’s had a lotta cameos—over 60 movie and TV appearances in the last 10 years. Some of the more high-profile releases include The Undoing, Skin, White House Plumbers, I Know This Much Is True, and Cold in July.
For its latest role, Kingston stands in for Kier, PE in the hit TV show “Severance,” whose long-awaited second season debuted last week on January 17. For both season one and two, the crew filmed all over the Hudson Valley, including in Beacon, Nyack, and New Paltz. Kingston’s iconic Broadway Chinese restaurant’s Eng’s has its own moment in the limelight, transforming into Zufu. You can also glimpse iconic Gunks terrain and a few other local panoramas.
Directed by Ben Stiller with a star-studded cast including Christopher Walken, Patricia Arquette, and Adam Scott, “Severance” has been a hit since the release of season one in early 2022, only gaining steam as anticipation has grown for the second season. “It took a while to write Season 2,” Stiller told IMDB. “Then we started to shoot in October of 2022, and we got shut down by the strike in May [2023]. At that point, we had completed about seven of our 10 episodes, and then we had to regroup after the strike.”
To make things worse, the final episode of season one ended on a grade A, scream-out-loud cliffhanger. Even after a Google Alert informed me last May that filming had wrapped on the second season, the wait for not just the new episodes but for the simple release date was agonizing. Then the news came that starting January 17, 2025 Apple TV would release one episode a week, every Friday. Infuriatingly old school.
I’ve already assembled my biweekly watch crew (we’re the binge two episodes back to back type). If you haven’t started on season two yet, I strongly recommend a rewatch of season one, episode nine. It’s an action packed, suspenseful 40 minutes where enough goes down that you won’t mind the refresher.
“Directed by Ben Stiller with a star-studded cast including Christopher Walken, Patricia Arquette, and Mark Scout” Mark Scout is the name of actor Adam Scott’s character.
Thanks for catching that. Fixed!