While speaking with actress and producer Rebecca Ferguson ahead of the Season 1 finale for Apple TV’s Silo, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to dig into the dystopian sci-fi with the star and find out what it’s like to portray her character, Juliette Nichols, on screen. Though the show’s first season has officially come to a close, Ferguson’s nowhere near resting on her laurels. They also discuss another massive project the Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One co-star has coming up with filmmaker Denis Villeneuve’s sequel adaptation, Dune: Part Two.

Ferguson is a busy lady. In her words, while juggling co-starring roles in summer blockbusters and hit series on top of producing, she tells us, “I think two, three years ahead.” Aside from being in the throes of promotion for Dead Reckoning’s theatrical premiere and filming Silo Season 2, we also know she’s in talks for yet another book series adaptation with Deadpool’s Tim Miller in Best Served Cold. Despite this hectic schedule, Ferguson is clearly not harried, nor does she temper her joy for the exciting workload. In fact, she’s quite candid, telling Weintraub the highly-anticipated Dune 2 is “a fucking gut punch.”

In this one-on-one with Collider, which you can read below, Ferguson speaks on her working relationship with Silo creator and showrunner Graham Yost and what it’s like for her to tap into the extreme emotions the series requires. We glean a little insight into the production status of Season 2 and why she gets emotional talking about Dune 2 and its roster full of the “crème de la fucking crème of actors.”

COLLIDER: With a lot of movies recently dealing with the Multiverse and alternate realities and all that, is Silo an alternate universe or somehow related to The Red Tent since Iain Glen is your father in both projects?

REBECCA FERGUSON: Cheeky, funny. We’ve laughed at that a lot. We were thinking we should put it in the contract, him and me. Actually, when he was cast, it was so weird because I didn’t put two and two together. I was like, “I’ve worked… who was he? Was he my brother? No… He was my fucking father!” We laughed so much. So definitely, it’s in all my contracts from now on, Iain Glen is to be my father, grandfather, cousin, or uncle.

Of the 10-episode first season, which one is your favorite?

FERGUSON: Do you know something? I have a thing for Patrick Kennedy (Rick Gomez), so I would say whatever episode we go running. We basically become a sort of comrades in arms that episode.

Image via Apple TV

I have not read the books, so no spoilers, please, but how far ahead have you read in the book series, or are you taking it season by season?

FERGUSON: I have read Dust, Shift and Wool. I’ve read all three books if that answers your question, and I shall not say anything else.

When you started filming Season 1, how many of the scripts were actually done?

FERGUSON: All 10.

So you had all 10 scripts?

FERGUSON: Yes, I want to say that I had all 10 scripts. Now that you question me with such a question… No, of course we had all 10. That’s how Graham (Yost) works. That’s what we have now for Season 2. You lock them in, you work with them. Yeah, all 10. And also, I believe as an EP I think I wanted to have the control over the character prior to signing on to things.

Totally. And by the way, this is the reason why the show is so good because your showrunner, your writer is not writing while things are shooting. You’re only making it better.

FERGUSON: Yeah. To be honest, watching Graham work with his team– I mean, people put that EP hat on my head, and obviously I enjoy it, but it means nothing compared to the role of just studying Graham when he comes to set. He’s a fantastic showrunner and also a team leader the way that he runs the writers’ room. It’s magic what they do and how they convert this book into the TV show, the way that we can adapt it because it’s so big. It’s so huge, and he’s managed to create this fantastic storyline that pulled me through. I mean, he’s phenomenal. He’s the most incredible mentor I’ve ever had in producing.

I love the final shot of Season 1. What was your reaction when you read the script or when you saw the shot in the episode of Juliette outside having discovered the truth?

FERGUSON: I mean, obviously it doesn’t come as a shock. I knew it was coming. It was more, how are they going to set it up and how we were going to shoot it, and how do you sell everything that’s happening? You know, the lie within the lie, what she sees, the fact that we were walking on one spot. They put a camera in my helmet, and I was kind of walking on a treadmill kind of thing. But, it’s so grand, it’s so huge.

The fact that these people have been locked up and underground for 200 years, not knowing what an option is, and to act that, the vast ongoing view of the sky, of the horizon, there’s so much in that. You know, a lot of people say, “How does she react to what she sees?” I don’t think she understands what she sees. At this point, it’s so overwhelming, and the stress of wondering if the tape is going to hold, I think that’s enough.

Image via Apple TV

I actually agree because you can also see Juliette’s—well, your—reaction when she basically is in the room seeing the playback of the video and not even realizing that that exists.

FERGUSON: Yeah. Yes, exactly. It’s also, what is the truth? You know, you look at our world, and you sometimes think things that we see– I don’t want to compare it in that sense. I want to believe that I’m much more astute in what’s happening in the world than what they are, sadly enough, with the whispers and the spies in the walls. But I sometimes think, what’s gonna happen in 50 years in the future, and we look at ourselves now and think, “How were we so dumb? Why did we believe that?”

Yes.

FERGUSON: What are we believing now as a reality, you know?

Completely.

FERGUSON: I’m fully a believer in questioning everything.

I completely concur. How much air do you think Juliette has in the tank on her back?

FERGUSON: Enough to take us to Season 2, maybe.

[Laughs] Exactly. So how much does the water that Juliette almost swam in connect to Season 2?

FERGUSON: Oh, buddy, you’re gonna have to see. That is such a good question. If I tell you, I’m gonna have to kill you. So, you know, we’re stuck in that.

Well, that’s clearly connective tissue to possibly the other silo and stuff like that. I’m just using common sense.

FERGUSON: There’s a big door down there. I know we haven’t activated the door without wanting to explore what the door might be. I’m just gonna leave it right there.

Yeah, absolutely. How much did you and Graham discuss behind the scenes your ideal situation for how many seasons you would like Silo to last? Or is it one of these things where you don’t know how long the plan is?

FERGUSON: No, I’m a businesswoman. I go in with my head screwed on. I sign a contract and make a deal. I’m not gonna tell you what that deal is. [Laughs] I very much know what I want. It’s down to my wonderful team at Apple, as well, to see what they wanna do. You know, we all save our backs. We see what works for the future. At my age and with what I’ve done, you don’t get to a point where you go, “Let’s see what happens,” you know? I’m already blocking off November for another shoot. I think two, three years ahead.

Image via Apple TV+

No, totally. This could easily be a show that does three seasons, and this could also be a show that’s a five-season show. Is it kind of one of these things?

FERGUSON: [Laughs] You’re like, “I’m just throwing it out there!” Right now, sir, it’s one fantastic fucking show, and we’ve green-lit number two. Apple is extremely happy, and I’m happier. That’s where I’m gonna leave it.

I see what’s ranking with Apple, and Silo is one of their top shows. I know that the ratings are really big on it. I’m very happy. You guys are filming Season 2, which leads me to the question of, where in the production of Season 2 are you? I actually don’t know when you started filming.

FERGUSON: We started filming quite recently, so we are chockablock, smack back in the beginning of the shoot.

Okay, so you’re doing this for the next many months, assuming the strike does not happen?

FERGUSON: I am doing this for some time in the future. Yes, sir.

So how would you actually compare Season 2 to the first?

FERGUSON: I like you. “This doesn’t give anything away, but what happens in the end?”

No, I’m a really big fan of this show, and I don’t wanna know spoilers at all.

FERGUSON: I’m like a politician right now.

I am curious, though, because when you make the first season of any show you are learning how to make it, what works, and what you can lean into, and in the second season, you learn so much from the first. So how would you compare what you’ve learned making the first season—and this goes to everything—before Season 2?

FERGUSON: It’s a really good question. So we work with different units and different directors, and it’s something I really love because everyone has their style and their technique. So what we’ve seen in Season 1 is not a smash of what worked and what didn’t work, it’s an ongoing change because we have new directors dedicated to new episodes. And they will, themselves, see what they like or didn’t like, or where they want to take it and what feeling they want. Do they want, you know, Wes Anderson? Do they want David Lynch? Where do they want to take it? And that’s what I love. It’s the creative individual, right for their episodes. And then, obviously there is a thread going through. You can’t sort of wing it in every direction, but there is a lot to be learned. But we all learn different things, and we all love different things.

But what’s really amazing is—and once again, I can throw it back to Apple, but I am one of their biggest fans—their trust in this process, their trust in Graham and in the directors and in us, gives us such freedom to actually feel free to create. It’s not a common thing for studios to be like that as a buff. So it’s a playground. It’s a fantastic playground.

Image via Apple TV+

I’m a big fan of the Apple ecosystem of what they’re producing.

FERGUSON: I feel like a sponsor for them, but I really love them. And take away the fact that we’re doing Silo, the shows are so meticulously thought through of what they make, why they make it. You can see a thread of the quality that they make, so I feel so bloody honored that we are making it for Apple.

Listen, I’ll go to bat for Apple too. Like I said, they’re making shows that I want to watch. One of the things about Silo is that it does a really good job of setting up things and then paying it off. But I am curious, do you feel like ultimately the show has to answer all the big questions, or is it okay if some things are never explained or revealed?

FERGUSON: What I feel with the writers—and I’m referring to Season 2, seeing it further on—things that I have questioned before and things that I was wondering about really ties up. If Graham is very good at something, it is tying knots together. It might not give you a complete answer to things, but enough to satisfy your urge of the huge questions. Then you have emotional feelings, or why or how did that happen? And you know, we might not want to answer all of those questions, down to character, as well, and our own little secrets we sit on as actors. But the way things are linked together, it’s brilliantly written. Absolutely brilliant.

I will agree. What aspect of Juliette was actually the hardest for you to portray?

FERGUSON: I think I was having so much fun… For me, Rebecca, I am a person, I’m curious, I lean in. I’m so sure in work or interviews or promotions. I speak a lot. I’m not loud, but I’m not scared of making a fool out of myself. Privately at home, I’m quite quiet and I’m very calm. I have two very separate identities.

Juliette is awkward, and I am not socially awkward. I mean, I am maybe because I’m very blunt [laughs], and people might find it uncomfortable, but I’m not Juliette in the sense that she’s very socially awkward and she doesn’t like people. She doesn’t like being close to them, she doesn’t like their energy. She walks around people. And sometimes, when I was comfortable in the scene, I forgot about it, and I moved into my own character. So I had little tricks that I had to do for myself to kick myself into Juliette. The way that she holds herself and the shrug or she leans back when people lean forward, and I found that quite hard.

So, I’m friendly with Greig Fraser, and he keeps on telling me how amazing the sequel is, and everyone I know who’s been involved with it has been raving to me about the sequel. The first Dune was my favorite film of that year. I cannot express how much I’m looking forward to this one. What can you tease people about the movie?

REBECCA FERGUSON: I’m smiling so much right now. It’s so fucking good. I get emotional talking about it because I love Denny [Villeneuve] and I love Greig and I love the team. But dude, number one is phenomenal and big and grandiose, and then you go close-ups and the imagery and the acting. Yeah, it’s all great. It’s fucking nothing compared to number two. Number two, it’s like a fucking gut punch. It’s unreal.

I haven’t seen the film. I’ve read the script. I’ve seen the footage. I’ve come onto set when I’m not filming, which by the way I don’t do because I’m too busy, tired, and I don’t really care. I’m done. I wanted to see the setups. I wanted to see Austin Butler do what he was doing. It’s unbelievable. There are no words. The costumes, [Jacqueline West’s] costumes, what Austin’s bringing to that character, what Christopher Walken does. I mean, it’s unreal.

Image via Warner Bros.

Like I said, people that I trust have told me.

FERGUSON: Completely, I mean, I’m in contact with these people. I keep on writing to Denny. I was doing some ADR for the film the other day and I got to go into Twickenham Studios and see it on the big screen, just this bit, and I was in tears.

Did you get to have any scenes with any of the new cast members? And you touched on Austin, but what do the new people bring to the film? You know what I mean? Because that’s new energy.

FERGUSON: Their characters are huge and important, and they are emperors, and they are princesses, and they are brutal killers, and they are gory. They are fully and utterly needed to make the spectacle that it is, and it’s the crème de la fucking crème of actors. That’s what it brings.

Silo Season 1 is available to stream on Apple TV+. Check out Collider’s interview with Ferguson on the red carpet in Rome for the world premiere of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One below.