Severance star Britt Lower takes a new job as a Toronto librarian

Fresh from captivating audiences with her performance in the successful series Severance, American actress Britt Lower ignites the Canadian Film Festival with her lead role in the Darkest Miriam. The Canadian drama opened the Toronto festival earlier this week and hits theatres today. For the actress, it's a plunge into the quiet storm of Miriam, a character Lower sculpted from raw emotion and lived-in physicality.

Directed by Naomi Jaye and adapted from Martha Baillie's novel The Incident Report, the film follows Miriam Gordon (played by Lower), who is grief-stricken after the death of her father and lives a quiet life as a librarian at the Allan Gardens branch of the Toronto Public Library. Her life is disrupted when she begins to receive oddly threatening letters addressed to her, coinciding with a new romantic relationship with a young cab driver.

Finding the right Miriam was a journey for Jaye. But as soon as she saw Lower's first scene in Severance, she knew she'd found her Miriam. The director penned a letter to the actress, who was touched by it. 

"On our first Zoom, we were just immediately kindred," Lower says in an interview with CBC Arts. "I think we were both in tears by the end of the Zoom. It felt like such kismet, like we were coming together and meant to tell this story together."

Her connection to Miriam was immediate, she explains, noting it might sound sort of magical. "Sometimes, roles just come and tap on my shoulder and I can't look away," she says while enacting the gesture. "It's almost like they're choosing me." 

"I admire [Miriam's] bravery and the courage to kind of come out of her shell when life really takes her to her knees," Lower says. She was drawn to Miriam's ability to find strength in vulnerability.

There is a quiet intensity Lower brings to Miriam that's rooted in meticulous character work and a profound understanding of human behaviour, allowing for remarkable authenticity. Her work in the film has led to a Canadian Screen Award nomination for best performance in a lead role. The film also earned a best picture nomination and best director nod for Jaye. 

Lower has a uniquely artistic understanding of her craft; she thinks of acting as making a sculpture, she says. "I'm building the inner life of the character that then informs how they move through the world."  

This approach extends to her collaborators. "It felt like the three of us were building Miriam's world together," she says, referring to her work with Jaye and Baillie. 

To ground the portrayal in reality, Lower focused on the physical aspects of Miriam's world. "Moving through the library with Martha, the writer of the book, she took me through a sort of librarian school of sorts," the actress says. "I got to move a lot of the books through collections and circulation, the actual day-to-day [tasks]." This immersive experience helped Lower understand the daily routines and physical movements shaping Miriam's existence.

Toronto is baked into the DNA of the film, which features recognizable landmarks like Allan Gardens Conservatory as well as the city's bike lanes — something Lower enjoyed while filming on location. "I went biking through the city and got to feel the commuter culture in Toronto, " she says. "You have to have a kind of toughness and a protectiveness to be on a bicycle. But also the culture of biking in the city of Toronto, I think, is really respectful…. I loved biking around Toronto." 

Like her character, Lower herself knows the liberating feeling of stepping out of one's comfort zone. "I feel like every day is like a little leap of faith," she says.  

During the hiatus between filming seasons one and two of Severance, the actress joined the circus. It's something she's been obsessed with her whole life (which is perhaps unsurprising considering her mother's face-painting career and the 2020 short film Circus Person she wrote and directed). 

"I feel really at home at a circus, and the backlot of a circus is quite similar to the backlot of a film or a TV set. There's this kind of mobile art family that comes together to build something. But each time I do that, each new project, it's, 'Oh, I'm going to meet all these new people and make all these new friends and step into that unknown space.'" 

Whether she's navigating the mysteries of the severed mind, the emotional journey of a low-spirited librarian or the chaos of a circus ring, Lower eagerly ventures into new territories in pursuit of artistic growth. Her work signals a performer who's deeply invested in the art of human connection and vulnerability — be it on big-budget studio projects or this small Canadian indie film. 

Darkest Miriam opens in select theatres today.