Mr. Milchick and the Impossible Task of Being Both Black and Corporate

Despite his promotion, the “Severance” character realizes how disempowered he is as a Black man at Lumon.

Courtesy of Apple TV+

A lot of what happens in “Severance” feels relatable for those working corporate jobs but still just farfetched enough to remind viewers that the show is science fiction.

Drilling holes into employees’ skulls to install a chip that separates their work and personal identities? Scary, but improbable for now. Living in a corporate town that feels like it's stuck in the ’80s with only winter weather and an obvious disconnection from the rest of the world? Elon-adjacent but we’re not totally there yet. Possible human cloning? The last time folks took those rumors seriously was when Gucci Mane got out of prison.

It’s entertaining to watch and connect the dots between this show and our real world. But there’s one element season 2 explores that is by no means a stretch of the imagination: the office racism Mr. Milchick faces and choosing between his identity and his employer. (Spoilers ahead.)

Mr. Milchick, played by Tramell Tillman, is the breakout character of the Apple TV+ series for a few reasons.

This season, he’s the boss. Milchick has more power after getting promoted from assistant to severed floor manager, overseeing the innies (the consciousness of employees that only exist at work). And his attention-commanding fashion choices (like a leather biker jacket and that all-white fur look), reflect his newfound confidence. And he has a tall task ahead of him in putting the pieces back together for a team that doesn’t trust the company.

But while showing the ways Milchick has leveled up, we simultaneously see him realizing how disempowered he is as a Black man in corporate.

When the show first aired in 2022, we were introduced to a handful of Black characters in Kier, the town named after Lumon Industries’ founder that the company runs and oversees. It was clear Black people lived in this weird town that felt like time had forgotten about it. However, the writers never explicitly addressed race and the role it played last season.

More than halfway through season 2, audiences have seen Milchick navigate obstacles and face petty microaggressions and blatant racism because of his skin color.

In episode 3, Natalie, the PR representative and board liaison for Lumon who is also Black, gifts Milchick with a series of paintings on behalf of the Lumon board. The “art” depicts Kier, the Lumon founder the company worships like a deity, and other previous CEOs in blackface. Appropriately, Milchick is offended. But with the ominous board listening in through Natalie’s headset, the new manager knows he must receive the paintings gracefully. When alone in his office later on, however, he stows the portraits out of sight on a hard-to-reach top shelf in the back of his closet.

Like many Black folks in corporate America, Milchick understands that how others perceive him is the difference between climbing the ladder and standing in the unemployment line. The eerie smile he constantly forces (though his eyes tell a different story), his high intelligence and the unwavering discipline he has about his work are a part of his Type A personality, yes. But they are also markers he sends to everyone around him: he’s not an angry Black man, he’s not a threat and he belongs at this company just like his white colleagues.

But just like that, he’s told to change. At his performance review, he’s chastised for placing paperclips backwards, so he spends most of the following workday correcting this until his hands shake and it’s ingrained as a habit. His bosses tell him he’s also gotten complaints for using big words, so he practices his speech in the mirror. He repeats what he said to his assistant and forces brevity. A calm “You must eradicate from your essence childish folly” turns into an agitated and grunting “Grow.” This is a transformative moment for Milchick.

In the first episode of the “Severance” podcast, hosted by executive producer and director Ben Stiller and star Adam Scott, Tillman talked about what it meant for Milchick to be both Black and devoted to the homogeneously led Lumon.

“What does it mean to be in a world where you are not represented and how does Milchick buy into that,” he asked. “I think there’s something that Kier feeds, there’s a doctrine, there’s a philosophy, there’s a history that he really attaches himself to that empowers him in some way that he continues day after day to be a part of this.”

Let’s be clear, Milchick is one of the bad guys on this show. For the sake of power and success, he’s helped this company enslave, torture and gaslight its employees. He’s a sellout. As is Natalie, who also received blackface paintings yet only gave a smile and eyes that mimicked Georgina’s in “Get Out” when Milchick asked her how she really felt about them.

And at its core, this show is about losing your identity for your job. Though Milchick and Natalie aren’t severed, we see that they, too, are Lumon’s victims. But they have a choice. That’s evident when we see Reghabi, a Black woman who formerly worked there but is now actively trying to take the company down.

Replace “Lumon” with “whiteness” and so much of this applies to the real world. Black employees have had to water themselves down, code switch and be hyper vigilant in the workplace. It’s a risk if we don’t have a thorough understanding of how whiteness works at our jobs. But God forbid companies take real strides to truly understand their Black employees, as we see happening now with mass DEI rollbacks.

Conforming to and adjusting in spite of these limitations can and has taken a toll on Black corporate workers, making the position Milchick finds himself in, all too common.

The pressure to perform for a company operating from the principles established by a white man who died long ago requires overachieving Milchick to abandon himself. That will, inevitably, cause him to crash out in one direction or the other. He will decide to either continue down this dark path of devotion to his employer or revolt for the sake of his own freedom.

But with Lumon severed employees already on the precipice of yet another uprising, I wouldn’t be surprised if Milchick finds himself on their side of history.