Silo Boss Graham Yost Explains That Season-Opening Cameo: ‘I Owe Him One!’ — Plus, Grade the Premiere
The following contains spoilers from the Silo Season 2 premiere, now streaming on Apple TV+.
Rebecca Ferguson's Juliette Nichols discovered another silo — and the devastating remnants of a rebellion/ill-fated mass exodus — in the Season 2 premiere of Apple TV+'s adaptation of Hugh Howey's Wool/Shift/Dust trilogy.
The new season literally opened with the launch of a rebellion, as a mob of disenchanted Silo 18 residents, convinced they'd been lied to about the toxic outdoors, used a makeshift bridge to cross an exploded walkway and fight there way past an armed resistance.
The leader of this rebellion was played by Ross McCall , the Scottish actor whose TV credits include Band of Brothers, Crash, 24: Live Another Day and Apple TV+'s own Suspicion.
McCall's stealth casting in what amounted to a five-minute role was not touted ahead of the season, until the recent release of the premiere's first five minutes.
"I asked him a favor to do this part," Silo showrunner Graham Yost, who was a writer on the 2001 Band of Brothers miniseries, shared with TVLine.
"He said, 'It's not a big part, Graham.' I said, 'I know, Ross, but I want people to say, 'It's that guy! I love that guy!' And then be surprised when the story takes a hard turn," Yost recalled. "He was very game, but I owe him one, let's put it that way. Anything else I do, I'll have to put in a bigger spot for him."
Indeed, the valiant march out of Silo 18 that McCall's character led some 30 years prior, with no one in a protective suit, was ill-fated, we came to realize, as Juliette stepped through scores of skeletons that littered the perimeter of the silo door. Juliette made her way inside — thanks to bodies blocking one door, and her ability to pry open the second — and then quickly and violently got to smashing her visor with the same crowbar, to let in air.
Juliette descended the spiral stairs of Silo 18, which was quite dark — save for a faint glow she saw spilling out of one level. Arriving at that level, she found an exploded bridge between her and its source. First, Juliette tried to jerry rig a swing to traverse the gap, but her leap off fell short and she plummeted down the chasm to— SPLASH! Hey, this silo is flooded, quite high up! Good for her. Jules rethought her approach and lashed a series of pipes and beams into a precarious "bridge" which juuuuuust barely got her across, aided by her valiant grabbing of the far ledge as the structure fell out from beneath her.
Finding nothing than a desk fan to which she ascribed the noise she'd heard, Juliette wrote off the hard-to-access space, and then spotted and made use of the far sturdier bridge that the long-ago rebellion used to go from down deep to up top. But just as she went to retrace her steps, she heard a noise coming whence she came. Juliette returned to the section by the fan, and found a sealed vault door, and heard louder music (namely, "Moon River"). A man inside said vault, only his eyes visible through a slat in the door, called out to his most unexpected visitor, explaining his affinity for the song.
He then made clear that if Jules tries again to open the vault, he'll have no option but to kill her.
