[5][7] Six months prior to her Bond audition, Marlohe stated that she had a dream about acting alongside Javier Bardem, and interpreted it as a positive sign that she would get the part.

[9] Following the film's release, Marlohe identified the role as a transition in her career as it led to further acting opportunities, and her decision to hire a Hollywood talent agent.

[10] A fan of James Bond films, Marlohe said that "you can feel a lot of freedom in creation [of a character] because it is a world between reality and imagination".

[5][6] Marlohe also cited Xenia Onatopp in the 1995 film GoldenEye as her favorite Bond girl,[7] and said she was inspired by Famke Janssen for her approach to Sévérine.

[6] Outside of the James Bond series, she found inspiration for her portrayal of the character's psychological instability from Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker in the 2008 film The Dark Knight.

[15] The backless evening gown that Sévérine wears when she first meets Bond was created from black satin and decorated with 60,000 Swarovski crystals.

[14][15] The crystals were applied to tulle in a tattoo design that was inspired by prints from Swarovski's Paris atelier; they appear on the neckline, arms, back, and the sides of the garment.

[21][22][23] In Moviepilot, Jack Carr cited the character as the franchise's representation of women as sex objects, writing that she will "inevitably wind up dead herself the morning after [...] in a cruel demonstration of instant karma".

[23] However, Vanity Fair's Jim Windolf noted that unlike previous Bond girls, Sévérine's name was not constructed from a double entendre.

[25] In contrast, The New Daily's Susannah Guthrie dismissed Sévérine, along with Strawberry Fields and Camille Montes from Quantum of Solace (2008), as less memorable than previous Bond girls such as Goldfinger's Pussy Galore and Dr. No's Honey Ryder.

[28] On the other hand, The Atlantic's Noah Berlatsky found the conversation between Sévérine and Bond about her past as a sex slave to be the film's most successful scene, and praised the performances of both actors.

[23][30] Jade Budowski of The Tribeca Film Institute described the scene as "unpalatable", and wrote that she "sense[d] it in the shifting of some of my neighbors in the theater," specifically after the delivery of Bond's line.

She argued that the sequence returned to the franchise's earlier treatment of women as "expendable figures" viewing them only as "sex objects, eye candy, and plot devices".

[30] Berlatsky argued that Sévérine existed for the sole purpose of "lend[ing] weight to Craig's perspicuity, sexiness, and imperviousness".

[32][33] While HuffPost's Daniel Wood felt that the Sévérine was killed too early in the film, he associated her death with the removal of the "harmless chauvinism" starting from Casino Royale, and better represented Bond as an emotionally deficient character.

interpreted the moment as purposefully unexpected in order to show the audience "how out of sorts Bond has become and that perhaps the greatest threat he faces this time out is his own inertia and ineptitude" and shift the film's focus to M (Judi Dench).

Due to the film's focus on her black evening gown, make-up, and nails, Funnell said Skyfall represents Sévérine as a Dragon Lady to establish an expectation she would be a larger part of the story.

[34] While addressing this set-up, she likened Sévérine to Aki and Kissy Suzuki, both from You Only Live Twice (1967) since they all adhere to the racial stereotype of the "tragic Lotus Blossom", a term that she defined as a "submissive and industrious figure who is eager to please the white male hero".

[34] In comparison to her positive perception of Wai Lin in the 1997 film Tomorrow Never Dies, Lisa Funnell dismissed Sévérine as based on outdated ideas.