In Apple TV’s “Silo” season 3, we lunge back 352 years to the Before Times to see how the greatest engineering project in the history of the world began… and would end.
Center stage in this dark sci-fi drama are ambitious Congressman Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman) and journalist Helen Drew (Jessica Henwick), the pre-apocalypse duo we were first introduced to in Season 2’s final episode.
In that scene, the handsome couple met on a first date in a Washington, D.C. restaurant in the aftermath of a dirty bomb that had irradiated the city.
Daniel and Helen play pivotal roles in “Silo’s” elaborate conspiracy to save humanity, helping to orchestrate a colossal project in Georgia to build a controlled network of survival bunkers that will last centuries until the Earth somehow becomes habitable again after a mysterious calamity. Wait, that sounds familiar…
Zukerman and Henwick create a completely believable relationship as they’re reluctantly drawn into this mind-boggling plot to save the human race. We connected with them to learn details about cultivating their chemistry and intimacy on the show.
“It’s nothing we worked to generate; it was really just there from the beginning,” Zukerman tells Space. “We hung out, and we certainly didn’t hang out for the purpose of building that chemistry. I think we got very lucky to find a teammate to be able to do that with.”
“We share the same taste and work ethic,” elaborates Zuckerman. “When you go on a journey that’s this big with someone, and we shot every day for four months together, we just always had each other’s backs, and there was an immense amount of unconditional respect and excitement. I’m not the kind of actor that could fake it.”
Henwick discussed the complexities of her resourceful character and her expanded role in season 3 by exploring what she drew from to compose a layered Helen.
“It was my memory of working on the school newspaper when I was 14,” she explains. “And also my natural inclination to ‘Spanish Inquisition’ everyone. I do feel quite an affinity to journalists. I always love to ask questions, and I want to know why and want to understand things. I’m really curious about the world. I didn’t feel like I had to generate much for Helen. I actually felt like she was very close to me.”
“Silo”‘s impressive set design certainly helped the cast immerse themselves in the doomsday world of author Hugh Howey’s dystopian novels and in this lavish Apple TV adaptation.
“I’m sort of a terrible guest to sets, especially if I’m a part of the production,” Zukerman adds. “I have to remember to sit in wonder for a second at the scale of the operation. Usually I just try to live as the characters live. Then I’m so thankful that you actually get to live in a real space, especially in a sci-fi, which is not our real world.
“Where the drawers open and when you’re looking at something, you’re not looking at a blue screen or a green screen, you’re actually able to experience life as close as you can within this alternate reality.”
Likewise, Henwick absorbed “Silo’s” immense scope and scale right from the start.
“I’ve done a lot of fantasy and sci-fi where I’m stuck in front of a green screen, or there’s a tennis ball on a stick, and you have to follow it, and that’s the spaceship,” she shares. “It was nice to be on a show where so much of it was done practically. I remember the first day going to visit the stairs, and that blew my mind. It is a massive set, one of the biggest sets I’ve been on.”
Executive produced by Graham Yost, “Silo” Season 3 is now streaming on Apple TV.