‘Silo’ Star Rebecca Ferguson Break Downs Juliette’s ‘Tricky’ Make-Or-Break Dive: ‘It Messed With My Head’
SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from “The Dive,” the seventh episode of “Silo” Season 2, now streaming on Apple TV+.
On the official poster for Season 2 of Apple TV+’s “Silo,” Rebecca Ferguson can barely keep her head above water. That image of Ferguson as mechanic Juliette, partially submerged underwater, has loomed large over this new season like an omen of what has been simmering just below the surface. And this week, it all came to a head.
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Juliette is a strong-willed problem solver who could put MacGyver out of business. But she’s running out of options for how to get back to her own silo after taking refuge in a neighboring one that has been devastated by rebellion. Having walked over the bodies of this silo’s former residents upon arrival, she is now desperate to stop any such rebellion that her mysterious expulsion last season may have inspired among her people. Turns out she doesn’t know how right she is.
There’s one survivor left in this new silo, Solo (Steve Zahn), and he’s making things difficult. Solo is erratic but harmless, until he isn’t — and right now is one of those times. Last week, he purposefully hid Juliette’s oxygen suit — which means she can’t traverse the toxic world outside the silo to get back to hers. He demands that she help him restore power to the pump in his silo before she can leave, but it’s inconveniently submerged under eight stories of rising water. It might as well be on Mars, as this is a generation of subterranean dwellers who don’t even know about the existence of other planets, let alone how to swim on theirs.
But she has no choice. So much like the poster foreshadowed, in this week’s Episode 7, Juliette takes a dive.
While it’s been over a year since she filmed Season 2, Ferguson still struggles to describe filming the underwater sequence. The production built a water tank on its immersive London set specifically for such a scene. But it is only so deep, and certainly not eight stories. That’s why the crew used inventive camera movements and cuts to make it seem as if Juliette is descending further underwater. It meant even more time filming in the water, and Ferguson says she is grateful for the dive team.
But the scene also has to look like the diving experience of two people who pulled together equipment from remnants of a lost world, so there’s nothing high tech or simple about this dive — on screen or off. Even now, Ferguson hestitates before calling the experience “fun,” though she means it. She admits it wasn’t easy to capture Juliette’s intertwined determination and fear while not actually drowning in real life.
“The regulator isn’t a normal regulator breather,” she tells Variety. “It shoots air directly into your lungs, so you have to practice breathing with it before you ever film. It is a really odd device, and a mental fuck-up. It’s like you bite onto something, and when you bite it shoots air.
“But you can’t just breathe in like we are used to breathing, you have to just bite and wait until your lungs have automatically filled up,” she adds. “Sometimes, it messed with my head. Then, when we were underwater, there was a moment where I had to take everything off and just shoot up, which you shouldn’t really do. It was all very tricky.”
That last concept is something called “the bends,” when a diver returns to the surface too quickly and bubbles in the body can create intense joint pain, dizziness and paralysis. Solo actually explains this to Juliette before her dive, having read about the foreign concept of swimming in Jules Verne’s “10,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” Ferguson says this scene, where Solo is trying to caution Juliette about the dangers of swimming, is one of her favorites. Defiant over their strained friendship (he is blackmailing her after all!), Juliette hears his concerns and flat-out refuses to do the dive, saying he should do it on his own. He throws a tantrum, revealing he is desperate for her help because he knows he can’t do it himself.
“I remember acting [this scene], it was just so good,” she says. “Steve did such a brilliant, vulnerable exposè of Solo’s fear and his complete lack of knowledge in that moment. He can’t do it and he understands that she is needed. But she also needs him if she is going to do it. It is like this domino effect. But who is going to start?”
Ferguson and the team behind “Silo,” which was renewed for Season 3 and 4 earlier this month, sought out Zahn specifically for the role of Solo. And moments like this, where Juliette is at the mercy of Solo’s volatility, explain why. “He just makes this show so much better,” Ferguson says.
Despite his child-like wonder and ADHD-stricken attention span, Solo is not unlike Juliette. He is driven toward a purpose, and even in their short amount of time together, they’ve been brutally honest with the other. Also, she knows he’s lying about not actually being the real Solo. And yet, they don’t have time to sit with those secrets, so they put a pin in it for another day.
Zahn tells Variety that he believes moments like this have forged a bond between the two characters, introverts who don’t excel at interpersonal communication.
“When you work through stuff with your friend, when you share stuff, you become closer,” Zahn says. “You can say something like, ‘Hey, this is what I don’t like about you.’ You don’t do that unless you are there to work on it and make it better. They become friends. It is simple and beautiful.”
Ferguson agrees that there is a simplicity to the motivations driving their friendship, which is still only days old. But this dive is a defining moment of whether they can trust each other, and it becomes clear they still have some doubts.
“It is a constant bloody table-tennis relationship between two human beings who just want to survive,” she says. “She just wants to get the heck out of there, and he needs her to stay and help. They are constantly compromising each other’s needs, and this big dive was the last straw that needed to happen for him to get what he wanted and for her to get what she wants. But a third factor that they haven’t taken into consideration just punches them both in the face.”
The third factor she’s referring to is possibly a third person in the silo with them. In the harrowing climatic sequence of the episode, Juliette manages to successfully restart the pump to stop the rising water, before rattling the system of ropes and bells to signal Solo she needs to be pulled back up — and fast. But as she prepares for her ascent, her tethers are severed, leaving her to drown.
This could be read as the unpredictable Solo getting what he wanted from her and cutting her loose. But Juliette manages to make it to the surface in the nick of time, fueled in part by the rage of betrayal. Searching for the apparent Judas in her midst, all Juliette finds is a bloody trail from Solo’s post to an upper level. What happened to Solo? Did he sabotage her, or have they been watched and preyed upon this whole time?
Ferguson is tight-lipped, but she does acknowledge that the final three episodes of the season will rest on whether the strange relationship between Juliette and Solo can withstand what’s ahead.
“If we met in a bar, we would probably never even exchange a hello,” she says with a laugh. “That makes it more interesting, which makes it so lovable as well. I don’t want to spoil what comes next, but it will be a necessity. Their relationship is built on necessity.”
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