Silo: Hugh Howey, Graham Yost, Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Robbins, Common, and Harriet Walter Preview the Spectacular Series
Silo, the new drama series coming to Apple TV+, is based on a series of books by Hugh Howey about a post-apocalyptic world in which the last people on earth are living in an inverted silo, a 144-levels-deep subterranean city.
The citizens of the silo are kept complacent, and questioning the nature of the silo or what is outside is forbidden. Merely uttering the words that you want to go outside gets you thrust from the community altogether to brave the outside and, it seems, to die there.
Silo offers a vast and engaging story that, shockingly, seems to be more relevant today than it was when it was written and which should create vibrant discussions about truth and control.
We had the chance to chat with Howey, series creator Graham Yost, and stars Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Robbins, Common, and Harriet Walter, among others, during a recent press day, and we'll be sharing some of that with you today and some as the series progresses.
For Howey, he has allowed other people into his world to create the series, but it's not the first time opening the doors of the silo to outside influences.
Howey explained, "When I first published them, and it became a bit of an underground hit, not to make too much of a metaphor of that. But I started allowing people to write fan fiction in this world and sell it online and keep all the profits.
And I just enjoyed the communal aspect of storytelling, which goes back to the roots of storytelling and being in a writer's room; having Graham come in with his ideas and each of the writers adding their imagination was a thrill for me. It's better than writing on your own."
Yost laughed, noting that he heard there was a character in some fan fiction named Graham, and as he's always wanted to be in fan fiction and be the head of IT, he did everything he could to be a part of the series.
Graham said, "It's a great world. It's different. It's not something I've felt I'd ever seen before. I like to say that all the people in the silo look like us. They talk like us. They have jobs, and they bitch about things, and they get married and have kids, and they just can't go outside, and there's no elevators and this other weird shit going on.
"I love that sameness and yet different. But most of all two things, I love the mystery because Hugh plays it out just perfectly. You find out what you really need to know when you need to know it. And Juliette, I just love Juliette. I think she's a great central character. I'd follow her anywhere."
Thematically, Silo asks significant questions about truth and governance, and Howey isn't necessarily pleased with how the world is working so hard to fit his created narrative.
"I'd say the unfortunate thing is, some of the ideas that were metaphorical became literal during the last decade. The idea that some nefarious agency was collecting all of our data and using it against us.
"Snowden came out after Wool was published. We had no idea that the CIA was collecting pretty much every electronic communication they could and using that to keep an eye on people, so some of the hypotheticals became real. Not trusting what you see on a screen was very much an allegory when it was written.
"And now it's a literal problem as we have AI creating a picture of the Pope that goes viral that never existed. I wish things would've stayed more metaphorical, but they haven't."
Graham's take is a little more practical when comparing Silo to our world today. "Well, it's this interesting thing. Hugh has talked about the battle between [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau and [Thomas] Hobbes's view of the world.
"Hobbes is saying with the Leviathan that we have to have strict government controls. And Rousseau is like, "Let your freak flag fly." And which is the right way to live? The answer is really practically more in the middle.
"Here we have this silo with this strict pact, and you have to live by these rules, and if you break them, you can get sent outside to die. And so you have other people who want to know the truth. But one of the great things about what Hugh does in the books is you find that there's a cost to the truth. The truth is not free, and the truth is not easy.
"And it was an editor of [Howey's] who came up with this copy line for one of the covers, which was, if the lies don't kill you, the truth will. I love that kind of dynamic, that when we look at our world, we think, 'Oh, it should be this.' And it's like, okay, that's really great utopian thinking, but what is the cost of doing that? What do we give up?"
Howey said, "I think it's been true of a lot of revolutions that it's really easy to see what's wrong with the world and tear things down. It's really difficult to think of what you would replace it with and how to build something up."
And Yost responded, "I was just reading a book that's set in the post-Thomas Cromwell, not Thomas Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell, England after the Civil War, and Oliver came in with 'We're going to... Freedom of religion.' By the end, he was totally crushing any other religions that weren't the Puritan faith.
"That's like this, here meet the new boss, same as the old boss, kind of thing that happens in human history. And I think that this is the quest for truth. Yes, great, but watch it. And I think that that's the thing that appealed to me is, it's not absolutely pick up the flag and charge. It's like, we got to consider everything here."
There's more to this conversation, but we're saving some of the story-specific related material for later.
Their discussion should give you a very good foundation for the philosophical nature of Silo, and with the conversations below, you should get a feel for how it comes across in the story.
Here, we talk with Harriet Walter about her role as Martha Walker, who works in recycling, which is an incredibly important area of responsibility in the silo, as they can only utilize what's already underground.
Martha's a mysterious character, and Harriet teases Martha's origin and what it was like working in such a confined space, getting totally absorbed in filming, which offered her a feel of what silo living might be like.
She talks about the plusses and minuses of the silo society putting away what happened outside of the silo, even if it's quite recognizable, even in light of our world today.
She gives an excellent philosophical view of life in the silo that you absolutely must hear. Take a look.
Common plays Sims, and he explains his character as a "by any means necessary" guy filled with a profound love for his responsibility and family.
Sims is undeniably one of the most fashionable residents of the silo, and we chatted about how and why Sims might have that characteristic.
Common chalked it up to Sims's special privileges in the silo, which he has with his role of maintaining order in the silo with regard to crime and uprising. He's a peacekeeper who keeps the wool over citizen's eyes, a total contradiction to Common himself.
Sims works to keep everyone safe by keeping everyone in the dark, and Common shares his thoughts on the inherent dangers involved with that mindset.
Tim Robbins plays the head of Silo IT, Bernard, and he's excited to play the character after long wondering what it takes to be in a position with that kind of responsibility.
He was most interested in the "rationalizations that one must make in order to operate in that way and what that does to a person personally" when you go against your moral compass.
He also discusses how Bernard uses the Pact, the "essential rules of the society laid down by the founders 300 years before," as his guide. He goes into detail about how that pact affects every level of society in the silo in their search for truth.
Take a look at the video below to see what he says about that and how all of applies to the world we live in today.
Rebecca Ferguson leads the ensemble cast as an engineer named Juliette, but she's so much more than that.
She is also an executive producer, which allowed her a breadth of responsibility not only for her character but the show as a whole.
She talks about the importance of worldbuilding to the production and the painstaking process of creating a claustrophobic yet resourceful world working together in the hierarchal structure of the silo.
Rebecca puts a cap on the discussion about the inherent dangers of becoming complacent to the world around you and how Juliette's desire for truth gets her asking the important questions, which drives the show forward.
Back to Howey and Yost, who also shared with us what it was like bringing this incredible world to life, including how much of it should be tactile and how much CGI.
Yost said, "That was the production designer and our director, Morten Tyldum, who did the first three episodes, and our VFX guy, Daniel, just figuring out what's the balance. And it all comes down to money. Is it cheaper to build? Is it cheaper to do blue screen at times? And just figuring that out."
Howey is amazed at how much of the silo was actually built.
"The entire breadth of the silo exists just an hour north of here and three floors of it, and you can get lost. It's breathtaking, and it's just one, the generator room set is almost equally as ambitious, and there are lots of others; the wall screen is an actual thing that was built that's not a blue screen.
"There was one day I got to be an extra, and you stand in front of the wall screen, and you're supposed to react to what's on it, and you don't have to pretend it's not a blue screen you're watching what's taking place on the outside. And it's really stunning what they've made."
I'm not sure we could possibly make a better case for why you should make watching Silo an important part of your weekly journey for the next nine weeks.
You will be mystified and on the edge of your seat as the story unfolds. That's a guarantee.
Silo premieres with two episodes on Friday, May 5, only on Apple TV+.