Name: Sarah Bock
Hometown: Raleigh, North Carolina
Current role: Miss Huang in Severance season 2 now on Apple TV+
Teen Vogue: If you could be the main character in any TV show or movie that’s not your own, who would you be and why?
Sarah Bock: After Sun, Lady Bird, and those coming of age movies. I would love to do that because I’ve never played a teenager who’s my age going through normal teenager stuff, so it’s like a weird dystopian experience which is fun [laughs]. Or I really want to do a musical movie, something like La La Land or Tick Tick Boom. Or if they ever bring a musical and make it into a movie adaption, I would love to do Next to Normal. That would be a dream.
Blunt. Reserved. Major superiority complex. That’s how Sarah Bock sums up her character Miss Huang, the newest — and youngest — hire at Lumon Industries in Severance season 2. When the trailer dropped a month ago, fans all wondered the same thing: Who is this new deputy manager, and why is she literally a child? Mark W., one of Lumon’s new employees, has the same question, to which Miss Huang gives an innocent yet matter-of-fact response in the trailer: “Because of when I was born.” Somehow, it managed to answer nothing and imply everything — a fitting addition to the unsettling, mysterious, and darkly comedic world of Severance.
As one of the highest-rated shows on Apple TV+ gears up for its much-anticipated comeback —episode 1 is out now — fans are bracing for answers. Realistically, what they'll get are even more questions: about Lumon’s eerie labyrinth, what those cryptic MDR numbers really do, and, yes, that creepy hallway with the ominous red arrow. And just when you thought things couldn’t get weirder, enter Miss Huang: a child somehow wielding corporate power in a world where adults barely hold onto their sanity.
It’s something of a mirror for Bock, who is now 18 but auditioned for the show when she was just 15, and who has been acting since she was 5 years old. “I still remember memorizing my lines in chorus class [in preparation for Miss Huang],” Bock tells Teen Vogue with a laugh. I can’t help but laugh along — I was in that same class with her in high school, completely oblivious of what she was preparing for.
Throughout middle and high school, Sarah lived a double life: part student, part professional theater kid. “A lot of people knew me as the person who would leave school early,” she says. “I would stay up until midnight for rehearsals and wake up at six for school.” For context? That’s longer than your average innie’s (severed workers) workday at Lumon. Between school and various musical rehearsals, Bock was also the voice of Baby Shark during middle school. Yes, that Baby Shark. “I was lucky to have the opportunity [to act in several projects], so I didn’t mind [the long hours] because I loved it.”
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Before stepping into Lumon’s eerie hallways, Bock began on a much cozier stage — a children’s production of Winnie the Pooh. “My mom signed me up because I was really obsessed with Winnie the Pooh as a kid, and I wasn’t great at soccer [laughs],” Bock says. A trip to New York City at age 8 to see Matilda on Broadway transformed that budding passion to full-fledged ambition. “I remember seeing all those kids on stage, they were bosses, and I wanted to be just like them."
By 12, she had made her professional debut in Annie the musical, a show she describes as especially meaningful. “It was my first time working with adults," she says. "They gave great advice, and I learned how to carry myself in a professional way.” An apt prelude to her role as Miss Huang, Lumon’s youngest and most perplexing authority figure.
The summer before her junior year of high school, Bock submitted a self-tape audition that would, much to her surprise, land her on Severance. “I thought the audition went terribly and was convinced I wouldn’t get the part,” she says. “But then I got the call and had two weeks to move to New York.”
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Miss Huang is unlike anyone else at Lumon Industries. As Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) steps into Ms. Cobel’s (Patricia Arquette) shoes, the teenager assumes Mr. Milchick’s role from season 1 as deputy manager. Disrupting the company’s shadowy hierarchy, she is both an outlier and an enigma, even to Bock. “For a while, I didn’t know her first name, so I was just making it up in my head,” she says. “I think it's interesting because the show really infantilizes all of the innies. Having a child especially in a position of power makes them feel like they have no power even further.” The unsettling irony? Miss Huang has technically been “alive” longer than most innies, whose severed timelines leave them just two or three years old. “Showing that a child might have more life experience than a full-grown adult just goes to hurt [the innies] even more.”
Read more: Gen Z Employees: How to Navigate Work As One of the Youngest People at Your Job
In a world where the innies are treated like children, introducing an actual child as their superior does take Lumon’s eerie corporate culture to chilling new heights. And Miss Huang is certainly no pushover. As teased in an Apple TV+ Instagram preview, Bock describes her as “opinionated and strong-willed.” Bock says she meticulously studied both Mr. Milchick and Ms. Cobel, given their stern and commanding presences. “I studied Cobel because I imagine they come up in a similar environment, being trained to enter this corporate role,” she explains. “I mirrored some of the same mannerisms, how they stood, their tenseness, and that menacing stare [Laughs].”
Bock also curated a character playlist to help her embody Miss Huang. Packed with MARINA anthems like “Fear and Loathing” and I Monster’s “Who is She” combined with tracks from the show’s original score by Theodore Shapiro and spooky Clara Rockmore instrumentals, the playlist exudes bold, unapologetic energy and just the right hint of menace. It’s clear that while Miss Huang may be the youngest, you shouldn’t let that fool you. Considering she’s technically older than the innies she’s bossing around, her authority is all the more striking.
While Bock can’t reveal much more, one of her favorite moments was filming episode 4 and trading stories with the cast on set. “That one’s a bit different from the vibe of the other episodes. It was super fun to shoot,” Sarah tells Teen Vogue. “I got to hang out with everyone [John Turturro, Tramell Tillman, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, and Adam Scott] in between takes, tell stories, and bond.”
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Severance has picked up its fair share of celebrity fans since season 1 aired. Bock laughs as she recounts the moment SZA’s infamous tweet about Severance made its way to Ben Stiller. “When we saw the tweet we freaked out and I told [Stiller], ‘Did you see SZA tweeted about the show?’ and he was like, ‘Yeah [I did], who’s SZA?’ So I lectured him about SZA for a minute there. I just think it's so funny that he's in one of her videos now.” (A few weeks ago, Stiller starred in SZA’s “Drive” music video.)
Trading stories with her castmates also inspired Bock to attend Northwestern University, where she’s now a first-year drama student, double majoring in psychology. Britt Lower (Helly R.), who is a Northwestern drama alumni herself, encouraged her to attend. “Being the only kid on set could be isolating, but it gave me a different appreciation for regular high school. It made me want to go to college," Bock says. This past semester, she performed in a production of Seussical with her classmates for local children of the community.
From managing an entire team to keeping the innies in line at just 14 years old, Miss Huang has her work cut out for her. As we learned from Mr. Milchick in Season 1, that role is anything but easy. Her youth feels ironic in a show like Severance, where individuality is severed from the soul. But maybe that’s the point. Her age represents hope in a system designed to suppress it — or serves as a chilling reminder that no one, not even the youngest, is immune to Lumon’s control. One thing’s for sure: Miss Huang is about to make Lumon Industries a whole lot weirder, and we’re absolutely here for it.
