Rebecca Ferguson sits across from me before her photo shoot with The Envelope. Her sandy blonde hair is loose back and she is wearing a comfortable oversized flannel shirt with dark pants. Between us, two laptops, a virtual set, but the accomplished actor makes you feel like you're in the room with her. The same can be said for Juliette Nichols, the emotionally conflicted character she plays in the gripping Apple TV+ dystopian drama “Silo,” where civilization has migrated to a massive underground bunker.
“His vulnerability was the most important moment for me because the character's strengths aren't interesting; they're already formed,” he says. “What I found interesting is why she feels uncomfortable around people, why she is afraid when people are too close.”
Ferguson, who also serves as executive producer of “Silo,” found the answer in Juliette’s heartbreaking childhood. At 13, she loses her mother and her younger brother before fleeing her father (Iain Glen) into the depths of the bunker to become an apprentice in the mechanics department. “I studied grief and trauma a lot because she loses her mother at a young age. When we understand this character, we realize that she feels very alone,” says the Swede. “Her trauma from her is almost claustrophobic and overwhelming, which I tried to embody in her when people get too close. “It’s like this injection of fear.”
Juliette's discomfort with others is highlighted when the powers that be choose her to play the role of sheriff following the death of the former top officer (David Oyelowo). She agrees, on the condition that she can fix the faulty generator before something catastrophic happens. The sequence that unfolds in the third episode, directed by Morten Tyldum, is a masterclass in edge-of-your-seat drama, culminating in a character-defining moment: one in which Juliette is seen alone, pensive. , after successful repair. “There are many layers to that moment. All these juxtapositions of “I need to fix this, but if I fix it, it means I'll have to leave my people too, and if I hadn't fixed it, everyone could have died.” And all the trauma she's been through is compartmentalized into a moment of what now?
Sheriff Juliette intervenes with a desire to find the truth behind the death of her boyfriend, George Wilkins, an unauthorized anthropologist of ancient artifacts, such as a Pez dispenser. “It was very important to find contrast,” Ferguson says of the series showing them in happy moments in flashbacks. “It was important for me to find the quirks and the fear. She worries that he will go on his extravagant trips because he is afraid of losing him. There is a child in her, a vulnerability; Her hair is different, her clothes are different, there is a softness. The dynamic is very real: we practice it a lot. “Those scenes are the moments that defibrillate another feeling where you can slow your heart rate and you can fall in love with two people.”
“It was important to me to find the quirks and the fear,” says Rebecca Ferguson of her “Silo” character.
(Shayan Asgharnia / For The Times)
As Juliette investigates George's death, ruled a suicide although she suspects otherwise, she begins to uncover larger mysteries within the silo and its leadership. “What I love about this show is that the audience is figuring things out with the character,” Ferguson says. “There are secrets and astronomical complexities in this world, but you will have to unravel them one by one with a character trying to solve a murder that leads to bigger questions and lies. “That's what's so exciting.”
As the pressure of the new uniform begins to increase, Juliette contemplates returning home to the depths of mechanics. But her old friend Walker (Harriet Walter) convinces her otherwise, telling her, “Love made you do the right thing and now anger makes you give up.” Ferguson remembers reading the scene for the first time and thinking she was too sentimental. “Something may read differently on the page, but then we sat down and someone said this is one of the most crucial and important moments of Juliette's journey. It's her change in realizing that this isn't a story just for her selfish needs. This is a time when it's about the bigger picture. It's about doing the right thing. “It’s really a beautiful and powerful moment for her.”
Asked if he thinks of Juliette as a savior, Ferguson demurs, saying, “I don't think I was supposed to look at her that way. He would have made her a hero in her journey and that's not interesting. She doesn't start out as a hero. She's powerful and a little tough, but she has vulnerabilities, pain and fear. That's what's interesting. Juliette constantly faces obstacles, and every time she solves something, another obstacle, it's like building a bridge and it falls down and you have to build another one and another. “She doesn't give up.”
