Rebecca Ferguson sits across from me before her photo shoot with The Envelope. Her sandy blond hair is loosely tied back and she’s wearing an oversize comfy flannel shirt with dark trousers. Between us, two laptops — a virtual setting — but the accomplished actor makes it feel as though you are in the room with her.
The same can be said for Juliette Nichols, the emotionally conflicted character she portrays in the gripping Apple TV+ dystopian drama “Silo,” where civilization has migrated to a massive underground bunker. “Her vulnerability was the most important moments for me because the strengths of the character are uninteresting — they are already shaped,” she says. “What I found interesting is why she is uncomfortable with people, why is she scared when people are too close.
” Ferguson, who also serves as an executive producer of “Silo,” found her answer in Juliette’s heartbreaking childhood. At 13, she loses her mother and younger brother before running away from her father (Iain Glen) to the down deep of the bunker to apprentice in the mechanical department. “I studied a lot of grief and trauma because she loses her mom at an early age.
When we understand this character, she is very lonely,” says the Swedish native. “Her trauma, it’s nearly claustrophobic and weighs you down, which I tried to embody in her when people get too close. It’s like this injection of fear.
” Juliette’s discomfort around others is put in the spotlight when .
