Mystery box shows are complicated for everyone, even the actors

silo It is such a complex show that even the show director sometimes gets confused. While filming the final seasons of the Apple TV sci-fi thriller, Graham Yost recalls two instances where he messed up details: one time it was the actor who realized that the conversation they were about to film should have already happened, and the other involved the Japanese translation team pointing out that the subtitles didn’t match what was happening on screen. Either way, the problem was eventually resolved, but Yost’s reaction was the same: “Oh my God, you’re right.”

Keeping everything straight is one of the big challenges of working on such a complex series like silo Entering his final two seasonsThe challenge has only increased. So it’s good that Yost has a team working alongside him to look for those bugs. “There’s a lot to keep track of, but everyone is on board, and I love that feeling of collaboration,” he says.

Season 3 of silo It begins airing on July 3rd, and expands the story a bit. 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 live essentially in a vertical city, divided into classes each with their own functions and cultures, from the mines at the bottom to the government at the top. The only way to navigate the silo is via a massive spiral staircase that runs from top to bottom, creating a very physical form of stratification.

At first the inhabitants appear to be the last remnants of humanity living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. But over the course of the first two seasons, it becomes clear that they live in just one silo among many, each housing its own communities while isolated from the rest. Season 3 adds a new problem: it explains how the world got this way in the first place, a process that begins in a world that looks a lot like our own.

The Season 3 premiere constantly switches back and forth between the bleak future we’ve spent the last two seasons in and the present day, when decisions were made that led to everyone being trapped inside underground bunkers. Things are already complicated as the show picks up from last season — protagonist/silo mayor/reluctant revolutionary Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) became the first person to venture between the silos and now suffers from amnesia — and the multiple timelines add to that.

Cast silo They each have different techniques for dealing with this challenge, which becomes more difficult since scenes are rarely shot in chronological order. For some, daily team meetings with managers can be an invaluable tool. “A lot of days, we would start the day with story time, and the director would explain where we were, where we had just come from, and what would happen next,” explains Alexandria Reilly, who plays newly promoted authority figure Camille Sims on the show. “It’s already a complicated story anyway, but when you shoot out of order, it gets a little blurry.” Ferguson points out that the hair and makeup team can be especially helpful in keeping track of the story, as they must be aware of things like scars and burns to maintain consistency. Every detail is important. “The small changes you make have huge ripple effects down the road,” she says.

“It’s a lot of pieces that you’re trying to put together,” adds Common, who plays Camille’s husband Robert on the show. “Our job is to know where we are, but thank God we have support as well. There are times when I have to talk to Alex about something just to remind me.” The actors even had separate rehearsals together to make sure everything got it right.

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

The only thing that doesn’t help much is delving into the source material. silo Based on a trilogy of books by Hugh Howey; The first two seasons explored the first book, while the final two seasons 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 prominent character in the central part of the story and updates some of the plot lines to reflect present-day concerns such as artificial intelligence.

“I started reading the books and I realized very quickly 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 keeping the novels and the TV series in mind at the same time would not be helpful, and instead found that “reading the entire scripts and then finding a way to forget (what his character didn’t know) was helpful.”

With two seasons remaining, silo He races towards the end trying to finish everything. Four seasons was always the plan, so the process was figuring out how to fit everything into a specific number of episodes, Yost says. But since the last two seasons were filmed back-to-back, this also means that the last two seasons were filmed back-to-back silo The team is done worrying about keeping all those complicated lines straight. As much as she says she’ll miss the experience of working on the show, there’s one thing Ferguson is excited to do beyond memorizing storylines.

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