The Triangle native who plays Miss Huang shares her stories about her early performances and growing up in North Carolina
by Rachel Simon
The second season of hit TV drama Severance may have left viewers with more questions than answers, but local residents can take comfort in having at least one big mystery solved: the identity of Miss Huang, the enigmatic young employee of Lumon Industries.
The role is played by Sarah Bock, a talented 18-year-old who grew up in both Raleigh and Cary. Today, she’s a student at Northwestern University, where she studies psychology and theater. “I really didn’t appreciate the seasons in North Carolina as much as I should’ve,” Bock says. “The winters here are a lot more intense.”
The actress spent her earliest years in Raleigh’s Bedford neighborhood before moving with her family to Cary. A trip up north to Broadway at age 8 sparked her interest in the performing arts, and so when Bock’s mother — a librarian at Bock’s elementary school — spotted flyers advertising the Durant Road Musical Theatre, she signed her daughter up to audition. (It helped that the children’s company was doing a production of Winnie-the-Pooh, Bock’s then-favorite book.) Bock ended up performing with the theater for the next five years before joining the North Carolina Theatre Conservatory, Moonlight Stage Company and North Carolina Dance Institute for more serious training as a teen.
“Especially in the Triangle, there are so many great opportunities for the arts,” says Bock. For her, that included a regional production of Annie as a 12-year-old, her first professional role. “I remember being so shocked that I booked it,” Bock says, adding that she found out the news (much to her castmates’ awe) while acting in her school’s performance of Shrek Jr. Although fitting in Annie performances alongside her school schedule — along with an impressive side career training as a high-ranking youth tennis player — wasn’t easy, Bock credits the hustle for giving her younger self “a bit more confidence that, you know, maybe I can do this.”
Post-Annie, Bock quit tennis to focus on acting, with jobs ranging from small parts in indie films to voiceover work as “Baby Shark” (parents: you know who to thank). During her sophomore year at Green Level High School, her manager snagged her an audition for Severance, which had just concluded its Emmy-winning first season. “I’d never gotten the opportunity to play with something so interesting before… it was uncharted waters for me,” she says. She doubted she’d earn the part due to her limited on-screen experience, but “something just clicked in the audition.” Not long after, Bock moved to New York to start filming Season 2.
Due to the secrecy surrounding the show’s plot and characters, Bock was instructed not to tell any of her peers that she’d earned a part on the show. “They were all very excited for me, but a lot of them didn’t know what I was doing until a couple of months ago,” says Bock.
Once the show’s second season premiered this January, the actress quickly earned praise for her performance. At Northwestern, she watched the new episodes alongside her college friends while taking part in campus theater productions. While she’s gotten used to being recognized by strangers on her college campus, she’s looking forward to going home for the summer. “I can’t wait to be back in North Carolina where I know a lot of people, it’ll be a bit more normal,” she says.
Just don’t ask Bock if she’ll be back for more Severance: “I genuinely know nothing about Season 3,” she promises.
This article originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of WALTER magazine.
