Silo’s showrunner Graham Yost has revealed the unexpected reason behind a big change in season 3 of the Apple TV dystopia.
The Rebecca Ferguson series, based on the novels by Hugh Howey, will switch between two timelines in its upcoming season – continuing Juliette’s story in Silo 18, and taking us back to the “Before Times” with journalist Helen Drew (Jessica Henwick) and congressman Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman).
Except, in Howey’s novel, Shift, Daniel isn’t called Daniel. He’s called Donald.
When asked about the change by Radio Times, Yost suggested the change was due to the name being so recognisable as a result of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Yost said: “I didn’t want to name a character Donald in this world, either because I believe in that Donald or not believe [in him]. It’s recognisable, it’s too much of a hot button. Also I love the Elton John song Daniel!”
While Silo seasons 1 and 2 have kept relatively faithful to Howey’s novels, season 3 will diverge from the books more than ever before. It creates a new storyline for Juliette, and will see her suffering from memory loss after quite literally playing with fire in the season 2 finale.
In terms of adapting the story, Yost told us: “The heaviest lifting we had to do was in this season, and then to an extent, in the final season.
“The first two seasons were the first book. The first half of the first book gets Juliette sent out to clean, and the second half is her in Silo 17 and the rebellion in 18. And so we followed that roughly. We did a bunch of switcheroos and stuff, but basically that.
“In Shift, the second book, Juliette doesn’t appear until the final page, and I said, ‘Hugh, we’re not doing that.’ And he’s like, ‘Cool. I wanna see what you do.’
“He was totally on board with [it]. We had to figure out what to do, and we found out there’s this theme of controlling memory. Let’s have that in the origin story, and let’s also have that in Juliette’s story, and that gave us a way to go and a different challenge for Juliette.”
Author Howey, who serves as an executive producer on the show, previously opened up about the challenges – and rewards – of adapting a book to screen, telling Radio Times: “It’s very difficult. You have to figure it out who’s going to carry the story, which characters you’re going to expand and tell more of their story.
“The beauty of doing a TV show is you don’t have to chop as much out. You get to, instead, breathe a little more life and space into the story.”
Silo season 3 starts July 3 on Apple TV – sign up to Apple TV now.
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