Years ago, Markham resident Emily Powell-Heaton tagged the motion picture academy in a Twitter post showing her dressed up as an Oscar statuette. It responded by inviting her to attend the event.
Recently, she’s been obsessed with Apple TV Plus’s “Severance,” arguably TV’s buzziest show. “I have a film background, so I like watching things that are visually interesting,” Powell-Heaton told the Star. “With ‘Severance,’ I can tell how much work has gone into it; it’s such an original story and characters.”
In early March, she wondered what would happen if she reached out to Ben Stiller, the show’s primary director and an executive producer, and asked to meet some of the cast and crew. She thought he might be receptive, given that Powell-Heaton has metastatic breast cancer, a condition with a median survival rate of three years, according to the Fred Hutch Cancer Centre. Why not, she thought. What did she have to lose?
“Hi @BenStiller!” she typed on March 1. “Severance is the best show my husband and I have ever seen. I have stage 4 cancer. A great bucket list item to check off would be to meet you and any of the cast and crew from the show. We can fly anywhere. We live near Toronto, Canada. Would this be possible? Thanks for your help!”
She posted it, then promoted the post on X. Immediately people began liking and retweeting it — along with voicing the usual complaints. “There were also all the trolls saying, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t do this, it’s rude,’ and ‘I want to do this, but I would never actually ask,’ because they were jealous,” she said. “But you’re not a terminal cancer patient! And maybe I want a bucket list dream to come true.”
By the time she got home from dinner with a friend, it had. The post had blown up, eventually getting 4.8 million views — and a response from Stiller himself. “Please DM me,” he wrote.
Powell-Heaton also was encouraged to get in touch with Apple’s public relations team to potentially wrangle an invite to a “Severance” screening on March 6 at the TIFF Lightbox, with actors Tramell Tillman and Zach Cherry, along with Canadian cinematographer and director Jessica Lee Gagné in attendance.
On March 6, Powell-Heaton met Tillman and Cherry at the event but, given her own interest in filmmaking, was most excited to chat with Gagné, who directed the popular seventh episode of Season 2, “Chikhai Bardo,” detailing Mark and Gemma’s past.
“I gravitated toward Jessica because we were both film students, so we chatted about how we had that in common,” Powell-Heaton said. She also ran into an old friend at the screening, adding to the magic of the moment.
Her favourite part? “I think it was just being there and being able to take it all in,” she said. “It felt like it was a night made for me and I got to see a friend I haven’t seen in years. It felt like it’s all supposed to be coming together this way.”
This wasn’t the only “Severance” screening she’d attend, either: those Stiller DMs resulted in an invitation to a screening of the season finale in Los Angeles, including a meet and greet with folks from the show. DMing with Stiller felt incredible, she said. “He is a very kind, loving and caring person.”
She also remembered a few days after she posted that they had something in common. “He has gone public with his cancer battle as well, so that’s something we share,” she said.
Powell-Heaton and her husband flew to L.A. to attend the season finale screening at the Paleyfest TV festival on March 21. Before heading into the event, they took a moment to acknowledge the pinch-me moment. “My husband and I looked at each other and were like, ‘We can’t believe we’re actually here and doing this!’ We were very excited and a little bit nervous, but it was a a good kind of surreal: I was sitting in my home three weeks ago and now I’m here!”
At the event she got the chance to hang out with Stiller and star Patricia Arquette in person. “Meeting Ben and (show creator) Dan (Erickson) was the most meaningful, as they set this whole thing in motion, and that was so genuine and kind-hearted. I was so thrilled that he reached out to me, so the most important thing was thanking them.”
The couple then got to watch the finale with a raucous audience, “everyone screaming and laughing” at the twists and turns. Afterward, Powell-Heaton enjoyed the Q&A with many of the cast members, with a special bonus: comedian Ben Schwartz, a household favourite, hosted the Q&A.
That wasn’t the last surprise the event had in store for the couple: Stiller presented the two with passes to the after-party, where they got to chat with series stars Adam Scott and Britt Lower as well.
Powell-Heaton hopes that the attention her story has received can help raise awareness of metastatic breast cancer, as research on it is less funded than it is for other cancers, she said. It has also been heartening, she added, to see so many people cheering her on.
“Not only were people saying, ‘This is so great that it’s happening for you,’ but they also would say, ‘We truly wish you well on your cancer journey’ and were paying attention to why I am doing this: how I don’t know how long I have left, whether it’s years or just a couple years,” she said. “It felt amazing that so many people were so loving and so happy this was happening for me.”
