5 Best Adam Scott Movies & TV Shows To Watch After Severance

I'm not breaking new ground when I say that Adam Scott is excellent on "Severance." This isn't a hot take; it's decidedly room-temperature. Technically, Scott plays two characters on Dan Erickson's twisted take on a "workplace comedy," even though they are the same person: Mark Scout, a miserable man who lost his wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) in a tragic car accident, and to deal with his overwhelming grief, who takes a job at Lumon Industries that offers a procedure called "severance" that splits his consciousness into two distinct parts. When he leaves work, he's stuck being plain old Mark Scout, but at work, on the "severed" floor, he's Mark S., a willing acolyte of Lumon who has no idea that he ever had a wife, let alone lost one.

As his innie (Mark S.) and outie (Mark Scout), Scott delivers one of his very best performances; in the show's critically adored sophomore season, he takes things to a new and absolutely wild level when he argues with himself using a camcorder in a secret Lumon hideout. (He's also been undergoing a "reintegration" process that might allow his innie and outie to sort of merge. What can I tell you? "Severance" is a complicated and twisty show.) After the season 2 finale of "Severance," Scott may be well on his way to an Emmy nomination and win — though he is going to have to fight off Noah Wyle from "The Pitt," his strongest competition this season. 

All of this is to say that Scott is a really charming, funny, and talented performer — so if you love him on "Severance" but you're not familiar with his body of work, you need to check out these five projects. Here's what you should watch if you love Adam Scott in "Severance." 

"Are we having fun yet?!" That's the catchphrase everyone yells at Adam Scott's Henry Pollard on "Party Down," a cynical and hilarious look at a Los Angeles-based catering company called, well, Party Down. Henry takes a job with the company after failing to book any major acting gigs after a beer commercial — that's where the catchphrase comes in — and meets the rest of the gang, which includes fellow aspiring actors Kyle Bradway (Ryan Hansen) and Casey Klein (Lizzy Caplan), sci-fi novelist and screenwriter Roman DeBeers (Martin Starr), and wildly overeager team leader Ronald Wayne "Ron" Donald (Ken Marino). Each episode brings the Party Down crew to a different event, from an adult entertainment award ceremony's afterparty to the sweet 16 party of a wealthy film producer's hard-to-please daughter — and I don't think I need to tell you that, at every single event, something weird and deeply funny happens.

"Party Down" experiences some pretty major cast changes throughout both its original two seasons on Starz (which ran from 2009-2010) and its third-season reboot in 2023. Jane Lynch started the series as Party Down employee Constance Carmell, but when Lynch had to exit the show for "Glee," Jennifer Coolidge's Bobbie St. Brown briefly replaced her until Lydia Dunfree, played by Megan Mullally, finally took over the role in season 2. Lynch, Mullally, and newcomers Jennifer Garner, Tyrel Jackson Williams, and Zoë Chao all showed up in season 3, and because of the show's central conceit, guest stars like J.K. Simmons, June Diane Raphael, Kristen Bell, Ken Jeong, and Joey Lauren Adams all get to play in the sandbox too ... and it's anchored brilliantly by Scott, whose sarcastic everyman Henry is both a funny character in his own right and an audience surrogate.

There are few better sitcom boyfriends-turned-husbands than Ben Wyatt, Adam Scott's character on "Parks and Recreation." Incredibly, Scott and his super-positive counterpart Rob Lowe, who plays Chris Traeger, didn't even join Michael Schur's beloved comedy until the very end of the show's second season — Ben and Chris work as state auditors who visit Pawnee, Indiana, where the show takes place, to check on the local government's budget — but once they show up, it's hard to imagine the series without them. 

Obviously, "Parks and Recreation" is helmed by Amy Poehler's hardworking, overly enthusiastic Leslie Knope, but its cast of supporting characters — like April Ludgate (Aubrey Plaza), Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt), Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari), Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones), Donna Meagle (Retta), Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), and Jerry Gurgich (Jim O'Heir) — is what really brings the show to life. When Ben and Leslie first meet, they hate each other, largely because Leslie is fiercely protective of the Pawnee government budget that Ben is attempting to slash to the bone. Still, they're undeniably compatible — both of them are huge dorks who really love their jobs — and when they fall in love, it feels incredibly earned; it doesn't hurt that Poehler and Scott have truly great chemistry.

"Parks and Recreation" really benefits from Scott and Lowe's presence once they jump on board, and throughout the rest of the show, Ben gets to be his own unique, funny character — he does invent a whole insane boardgame called Cones of Dunshire, after all — while also being the perfect partner for Leslie. Plus, there's an incredible Claymation plotline for Ben that "Severance" might have referenced in its season 2 premiere, except they upped the ante and brought Keanu Reeves into the mix. (Showoffs.) If you haven't watched "Parks and Recreation" yet, do yourself a favor; its political outlook might feel a little too sunny, but it's worth it for Ben and Leslie's relationship journey alone.

Adam McKay's 2008 comedy "Step Brothers" is categorically insane. Nothing that happens in this movie makes a lick of sense, and that's why it's so good. The whole conceit is beautifully stupid right out of the gate, honestly. When literal grown men Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and Dale Doback (John C. Reilly) are shoved into the same house after their parents Nancy Huff (Mary Steenburgen) and Dr. Robert Doback (Richard Jenkins) fall in love and get married, because despite the fact that Brennan is 39 and Dale is 40, they both still live at home. After overcoming their initial hatred of each other, Brennan and Dale become best friends, which actually creates a larger problem; they're so intense about their friendship that they get into a ton of trouble, from trying to make their normal beds into bunk beds to stealing Robert's beloved boat for a music video and crashing it during filming.

So, where exactly does Adam Scott come in? He plays Brennan's younger brother Derek, who has the hilarious job of "helicopter leasing agent" and looks down on Brennan because he's successful and has a family. (Derek's wife Alice is played by Kathryn Hahn, who's always brilliant but particularly out-of-pocket in this movie; after frantically seducing Dale in a men's bathroom, she tells him, "Stay golden, Ponyboy," butchering that quote from "The Outsiders." It rules.) Derek is a lunatic who forces his family to sing along to songs like Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" in the car and screams at them if they get anything wrong, and even though he and Brennan eventually make up after the all-important Catalina Wine Mixer, he plays an absolutely delightful a-hole in this movie. Put a pin in that, because one of Scott's other douchey performances makes this list in just a moment.

HBO's "Big Little Lies" — the first season of which is based on Liane Moriarty's best-selling novel of the same name — really focuses on its female characters, like Madeline Mackenzie (Reese Witherspoon), Celeste Wright (Nicole Kidman), Renata Klein (Laura Dern), Bonnie Carlson (Zoë Kravitz), and Jane Chapman (Shailene Woodley), who all come together while their children attend the same elementary school in Monterey, California. In the first season (which is excellent), we know someone dies right from the start and ultimately learn that it's Alexander Skårsgard's abusive Perry Wright, Celeste's husband. In the second season (which sucks), Perry's awful mother Mary Louise Wright (an oddly miscast Meryl Streep) shows up and tries to gain custody of Perry and Celeste's two sons.

Once again, where is Adam Scott in all this? He plays Madeline's beleaguered second husband Ed MacKenzie, father of her younger daughter Chloe (Darby Camp) and stepfather to Abigail Carlson (Kathryn Newton), Madeline's eldest daughter from her marriage to Nathan (James Tupper). Ed's role in the show is basically to look exasperated at Madeline's antics, but his turn did actually help him book "Severance." As he told The Guardian in 2022, "Big Little Lies" helped casting directors think of him as a candidate for heavier dramatic roles: "I fought really hard to get the role in 'Big Little Lies.' And that really helped to stretch myself and zero in on more dramatic stuff." Clearly, this did open some doors for him, even if Ed is a supporting role.

Okay, so technically, Adam Scott isn't part of the main cast of "The Good Place," Michael Schur's whip-smart and emotionally resonant series about the afterlife. That honor belongs to Ted Danson, Kristen Bell, Manny Jacinto, William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil, and D'Arcy Carden, who portray reformed demon Michael, dead humans Eleanor Shellstrop, Jason Mendoza, Chidi Anagonye, Tahani Al-Jamil, and not-a-girl, not-a-robot Janet, respectively. Scott does reappear throughout the show's first three seasons, though, as a true Bad Place demon named Trevor, and he sucks, but in the funniest way possible. 

See, the first season centers around the fact that Eleanor, upon her arrival in what Michael calls "the Good Place," realizes she shouldn't actually be there; when she confesses, Trevor brings a band of Bad Place demons to the apparent Good Place to collect his prey. Trevor won't stop telling Eleanor to smile more and leaves whoopee cushions on everyone's chair. He's wonderfully odious, and Scott's gleefully snide performance makes him a deeply memorable character, even on a show where the supporting cast is unbelievably stacked. When Trevor reappears in season 3 — during which the dead humans are back on Earth and alive, which is a long story, just watch the show! — he's an overly earnest "nice guy" who forces his friends to wear matching shirts with their faces on them, and somehow, he's even worse that way. Scott is such a funny jerk, and Trevor is a perfect example of that.

As for "Severance," you can watch it on Apple TV+.