It seems to tickleGraham Yostwhen people refer toSiloas a sci-fi drama.
And there are certainly no lasers.
For me, its fantasy, its whatever.
Dave Benett/Getty Images for Apple
Its alternate reality, all that stuff.
But the key is to make it feel real and lived-in.
I mean honestly, if you pick at the science too much, it falls apart.
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(The drama has already been renewed for a second season.)
The thing that got me was, wait a second, what happened?
Why are they there?
When can they go out?
says Yost, who also EPs Apples other sleeper hit,Slow Horses.
As a reader of the books, I kept turning the pages.
So thats been our guiding star in the writers room.
Lets never forget this is a mystery.
But its still about a big hole in the ground.
Is it an easy adaptation?
No, but I dont really know anything that really is, when you get right down to it.
DEADLINE:You havent really done anything high concept, or apocalyptic in your past, right?
YOST:My brother and I wrote a pilot for NBC that didnt go forward.
But no, Ive never worked on anything thats gone into production.
As a kid, I got into sci-fi by becoming a Lord of the Rings fanatic.
I mean, I read it five times this past year.
DEADLINE:Why didnt you call the seriesWool, which is the name of the first book?
YOST:Ill use this an example.
When we told Rebecca it was going to be calledSilo, she said, Oh, thank goodness.
She said every time shed tell people what its called, they would automatically pull at her shirt.
Wool is a hard word to hear, and its actually a hard word to say.
It looks fantastic graphically.
Jamie said, No, the first book is calledWool.
And then they got a new head of marketing in, and he said, Its got to beSilo.
DEADLINE:You said at its heart, Silo is a mystery.
Have you already decided when youre going to reveal that mystery?
Weve sort of planned on a certain number of seasons.
The tolerance that an audience has for a big mystery is a certain number of seasons.
Its not eight, its not six.
Youve got to wrap it up in a relatively timely fashion.
So were trying to be realistic with what we can sustain.
The illustration starts to come alive, which frankly I thought was very cool.
There are ways those artists imagined the silo, the cleaning suits, stuff like that.
I had in my mind that the walkways from the stairs over to the side would be covered.
He came up with the idea of these open bridges, which are just so elegant and beautiful.
He also came up with the whole notion that there was a circular plan to the whole thing.
The cafeteria is a circle.
It couldnt just be straight lines.
YOST:That was the biggest, hardest decision of the whole deal.
He wrote that as a story.
It was a standalone story through Amazon, and it just took off.
It just became this viral sensation.
People said they wanted more.
Well, he killed off the two main characters!
So then he came up with the character Juliette and then had her take over the story.
Also, shes the face on the poster.
Because I was going, Wait a second, now what?
DEADLINE:You dropped an apocalyptic drama during the pandemic.
Did you wonder whether people would want to watch this because of the hell theyve already been through?
YOST:All the time.
when youre stuck inside for so long, you start wondering, Whats it really like out there?
So we hope more for that.
But that was part of the thing, which islets not make this dystopian.
Lets not make life in the silo to be something that is horrific.
Their lives are OK, everyones got a job.
They got food, they got family, they got friends, theyve got something to do.
So we wanted to confirm that it wasnt too depressing.
We think of that central part of the silo was being sort of the cathedral of the place.
DEADLINE:Have you run up those steps yourself?
YOST:I will say this.
Its all well and good to imagine it.
And then its like, Oh my God, this lot of work.
But heres one of the things, its an indoor show.
We start at eight oclock in the morning and go to five or six and were done.
Theres no worry about weather.
Youre protected and it’s possible for you to get the work done.
People start to think like, So Im a mole now.
