Mystery box shows are complicated for everyone — even the actors

silo It is such a complex show that even its listeners get confused sometimes. While filming the final season of the Apple TV sci-fi thriller, Graham Yost remembers two instances where he messed up details: once it was an actor realizing that the conversation they were about to shoot should have already happened, the other involved the Japanese localization team pointing out that a subtitle didn’t match what was going on onscreen. In both cases, the problem was eventually fixed, but Yoast’s response was the same: “Oh shit, you’re right.”

One of the big challenges of working on such a complex series is keeping everything straight. silo Entering its final two seasons, the challenge has only increased. So it’s a good thing Yoast has a team working on finding those mistakes. “It’s a lot to keep track of, but everyone is contributing, and I love that feeling of collaboration,” he says.

season 3 of silo Starts streaming on July 3, and expands the scope of the story considerably. The series follows the lives of the inhabitants of a massive underground bunker hundreds of years in the future. The Silo is home to 10,000 people who essentially live in a vertical city, divided into layers, each with their own jobs and cultures, from the mines below to the government above. The only way to navigate the silo is via a giant spiral staircase that leads from top to bottom, creating a very physical form of square division.

Initially it seemed that the inhabitants were the last remnants of humanity living in a postapocalyptic wasteland. But over the course of the first two seasons, it became clear that they were just one of many people living in a silo, each with their own community while being isolated from the rest. Season 3 adds a new complication: it reveals how the world came to be this way in the first place, a process that begins in a world that looks exactly like ours.

The Season 3 premiere constantly switches back and forth between the bleak future where we’ve spent the past two seasons and our present day, when decisions were made that left everyone trapped inside underground bunkers. Things are already complicated as the show picks up from last season – protagonist/silo mayor/reluctant revolutionary Juliet (Rebecca Ferguson) has become the first person to venture between the silos and is now suffering from memory loss – and the multiple timelines only exacerbate this.

cast of silo Everyone has different techniques for dealing with this challenge, which is made even more difficult because scenes are rarely shot in chronological order. For some people, daily team meetings with directors can be an invaluable tool. “A lot of days, we start the day with story time, and the director breaks down where we are, where we just came from, what happens next,” explains Alexandria Riley, who plays newly promoted authority figure Camille Sims on the show. “It’s already a complicated story anyway, but then when the shooting goes out of sequence, you get a bit of a blur.” Ferguson says the hair and makeup team can be especially helpful in tracking the story, as they need to pay attention to things like scars and burns to maintain continuity. Every detail matters. “Small changes you make can have a big impact in the long run,” she says.

“It’s a lot of pieces you’re trying to put together,” says Common, who plays Camille’s husband Robert on the show. “It’s our job to know where we are, but thank God we also had support. There were times when I had to talk to Alex about something to remind me.” The two actors even did separate rehearsals together to make sure they got everything right.

Others took a different approach. Jessica Henwick, for example, joined the main cast in season 3 as current investigative reporter Helen, and says “I didn’t read any scenes other than my own. Because I’m a fan of the show, I wanted to preserve that experience. I’ll watch season 3 as a fan and see what happens. I don’t know what happens other than our story.” (Henwick is such a fan that, immediately after being cast, she had only one goal in mind: “I went to the set and explored the stairs.”)

However, one thing that doesn’t help much is digging into the source material. silo Based on a trilogy of books by author Hugh Howey; The first two seasons explore the first book, while the final two will wrap up the rest of the story. But a lot has changed in the adaptation as the TV show attempts to make Juliet a more visible figure in the central part of the story and update some of the plot to reflect current concerns like AI.

“I started reading the books and very quickly realized that wasn’t going to help, because the books are so different,” explains Ashley Zuckerman, who plays a congressman in the current story. He says that it would not be helpful to have both the novel and the TV show in his mind at the same time and instead he found it easier to “read the entire script and then find a way to forget”. [what his character wouldn’t know] Was useful.”

There are still two seasons left, silo Rushing towards a conclusion as it tries to wrap everything up. Yost says that four seasons was always the plan, so the process is figuring out how to fit everything into a set number of episodes. But since the last two seasons were filmed back to back, that also means silo The team doesn’t have to worry about keeping all those complicated storylines straight. And as much as she says she’ll miss the experience of working on the show, Ferguson is excited for something that goes beyond memorable stories.

“I absolutely hate running up and down those stairs,” she says.