The Joy of Figuring Out the Story with ‘Silo’ Creator, Writer and Showrunner Graham Yost

Silo is set in a ruined and toxic future where a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. There, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them. After its sheriff breaks a cardinal rule and residents die mysteriously, engineer Juliette starts to uncover shocking secrets and the truth about the silo.

Perhaps it's the golden age of book adaptations, as we continue to see an onslaught of beloved novels hitting the silver screen. And no different for streamers alike, where we're introduced to your soon-to-be favorite book read of the year. That brings us to the Silo book series penned by Hugh Howey, which started as a short story "Wool" in 2011. This post-apocalyptic world on the surface seems quite tricky to visually translate for television, but that was a task, and the fun, for television show creator, writer, and showrunner Graham Yost. 

Graham recently spoke with Script about the adaptation process, taking creative liberties when world-building and breaking stories for the first season, building out his writers' room, and the creative conversations he and his key crew were having to set the tone and look of the show. Plus, he shares not only great advice on why should or shouldn't adapt a book, but also an inspirational look into why he truly loves his job.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: How did this book come on your radar and what ultimately drew you into the story?

Graham Yost: It was probably six…eight years ago. I was still at Sony. I had a deal with Sony. That's when I worked on Justified and then Sneaky Pete. And everyone was trying to get the rights to the Silo series. They tried to do it as a feature that hadn't worked out. People understood correctly that it should be a television show. And so, I threw my hat in the ring. And I just read the first - I read all three books, eventually - but I read the first one and put my hand up and said ‘yes.’ And Sony didn't get it. And then my Sony deal ended, and I went to Apple, in large part because Zack [Van Amburg] and Jamie [Erlicht] were running it. And I've worked with them when they were running Sony. And so, part of it was I wanted to work on Slow Horses. And then I also wanted to work on Masters of the Air. And then Jamie said, ‘What about Wool?’ Because that's what we called it at that point until we realized it's a very hard word to say and to hear. [laughs] So I said, ‘Sure, I'd love to.’ And then AMC had the rights and so they teamed up and on we went.

Sadie: What a process.

Graham: Yeah, it's Hollywood. This is the thing about working with people you've worked with for a long time, you know what they're capable of doing and when they want to do something, and how they go about achieving it. And so, they had to make a deal with AMC. And they did. It was basically Jamie saying, ‘We can afford to do this the way we all want to do it. And it'd be tough for you.’

Sadie: Yeah, I'm glad it worked out. What was the process behind breaking down this world of the silo, and really getting to the finite details of these characters and their backstories, and how that feeds into this overall series?

Graham: Well, my first decision, I can't really call it a decision, because if Jamie and Apple had said, ‘No,’ you know, I would have adjusted and adjusted course, but I knew that Jamie probably wouldn't, because, ‘Let's do it the way he wrote it.’ So, Hugh [Howey] wrote a short story about Allison, and her husband, Sheriff Holston. And then it was self-published, viral hit. ‘Please write books,’ he writes books, and now he's got the life of E. Scott. And I just felt that that's how we had to start it. And it was a gamble. Because, you know, by five minutes into the second episode, both of the two leads of the show are dead. [laughs] And I can't tell you how many people said, ‘Are they really dead?’ And I said ‘No, they are dead.’ And then you get Rebecca Ferguson - as long as you see her in the first episode, you got a shot at holding people and they might grumble, ‘It's that Mission Impossible woman. I want to see what happens.’

We did a mini room, which we grumble about in the Writers Guild, but they can be handy for this kind of thing, which was breaking the first episode, and getting an idea of what the first season would be. And just three weeks, January, February, maybe it was a little more, but anyway, it was around that amount of time in 2020. And then we're sitting around the table having lunch, ‘Did you hear about this thing going on in China?’ I mean, it was like that. So it was all of that change of our lives. But I just went home and wrote the pilot. And from that, then we got to do a room. And that started in July of 2020. And a great group of writers, and we were able to figure out what the season was.

Sadie: And when building out that writers' room, what kind of voices or points of view were you looking for to shape up this world? And knowing that you guys wrote this during lockdown it feels so very meta. Did that change over the course of the tone of the story from what you guys had broken prior to going into lockdown?

Graham: I mean, not really. What it does is it drums up the fear of are people going to want to watch something where people can't leave a place and they're stuck inside? But it feels to me, like, that's something that's sort of beyond my paygrade, you just got to try and work with these writers. And we all have to work together to figure out how to tell the story in the best possible way. So that didn't really change.

The big change was I don't live in LA. I haven't lived in LA for 25 years. So, I would have to travel to do a writers' room. And now I go to my basement. And people ask, ‘Is it as good as an in-person room?’ It's like, ‘No, it's not.’ There's many things you miss, but it's good enough. And the scripts are as good, I think. I think that some of the process stuff is not as smooth because you don't have side conversations. You don't have lunch; you don't have meetings in the hallway or in the snack room that lead to other things. But we get the job done. And we're all proud of the work.

So, you asked about the writers. I can go down the list, but it was giving a shot to some new people or people I've known. There's Jeff Wang, he was our writers' room assistant on Justified. And I said if you do that in the mini room, you can staff. And so there were certain things like that. There was Jess Blaire who had been an assistant to Fred Golan on Sneaky Pete. And at the same time, there's Fred, who I've been working with since Boomtown, Justified, Sneaky Pete - I'll work with him as long as he wants to keep working and as long as I do. And Remi Aubuchon, an old friend who's also been a showrunner. Ingrid Escajeda worked with us on Justified and Sneaky Pete, she was able to be in the room. And then Aric Avelino is a writer whom I met at Sundance through their episodic lab, and Lekethia Dalcoe as well. And so, I think that rounds it out. It was just a mixed bag, a mixture of men and women and ethnicities and all of that.

But one of the fun things about the Silo, and by the way, we're in 2020, so this is George Floyd, this is John Lewis dying, this is all this huge stuff in the in the Black community in the United States. And we've got Black writers and yet we look at each other and go, ‘Well, Silo is not racist, because they've forgotten what racism is. It's not sexist, because they've forgotten what sexism is.’ And so, it's this weird kind of slightly utopian society that is also really fucked up in its own way. And that's the mystery is what the hell is going on, but a lot of different voices. And that's the fun of it. I mean, at least a third of our time is spent just being silly.

Sadie: I’m curious, what kind of conversations were you having with your other key crew, like production design, your cinematographer, and director on the pilot episode, to really nail the tone and look of the show?

Graham: So, just back to script for a second - in that first mini room, the first big thing was, ‘Let's do the Holston/Allison story as the pilot episode.’ And let's have the season and halfway through the first book, which is when Juliette goes to send out to clean and she walks over the hill, which no one has ever done before. And then she sees that A, it really is a destroyed world out there, and B, that there's a shit ton of other silos. And we knew that was our goal. So, then we had to fill out the story, because in the book, there's not as much, it's pretty straightforward. She gets sent out pretty straightforward after she becomes sheriff. So, we gave her the mystery of finding out what happened to her boyfriend George. Built the season around that. We also delayed the reveal that Bernard played by Tim Robbins, for God's sake, is the bad guy. And so, we made a lot of those big choices early on in that first mini room.

And so I wrote the pilot. Apple says, ‘OK, we will pay for a writers’ room.’ And so ,we started that up in July of 2020. And we had all the scripts by the end of the year, the first 10 scripts. And then it was just a matter of trying to get this off the ground. And it was difficult, because that's 2020. I had been working on Slow Horses, and they started filming end of November 2020. They were one of the first shows up. We were hoping to go in June. But they basically had to build a studio. Because all the studio space in England is booked like Marvel has Pinewood for 30 years or something. I mean, it's crazy. And so, they found these refrigeration warehouses that could turn into studios, and so we had to build the studio.

And then Morten [Tyldum] and I were talking to Gavin Bocquet, the production designer. And he came up with the big stuff, what the central shaft would look like, that was the first thing he's like, ‘How can we create something that allows for some space so that it's not a claustrophobic show, even though they're always inside?’ So that was huge. Mark Patten, he came on once we were heading in closer into production, and he's just a great guy and just has a great eye. Charlotte Morris our costumer, and everyone, all the departments started to come together... oh and set dec, Amanda Bernstein, unbelievable. And I would get 40 emails a day from Gavin, from Amanda, from Philippa Broadhurst - she wrote 20 pages of the pact. So that if anyone opens the pact, and the camera catches it, there is stuff that makes sense as the pact. I would get 40 emails a day, ‘What would this be like? What would that be like?’ And some of the times I would run it by Hugh, and he would have an idea. Or we would just make it up in the room.

And we tried to find the logic of what had to come into the silo when they built the silo. What could they make in the silo? It was Morten who figured that over time they wouldn't bother with white clothing because it's a lot of dyeing, a lot of chemicals to get, so that we would just go into these more earthy tones, that we would save white for the suit techs and for the cleaning suits. Within about three months of that, that dwindled down to a couple of emails a day. Everyone got into the sense of what fit in the silo and what didn't. And I love that when they showed me, I'd asked for a harmonium that, spoiler alert, will be used in Season Two, but was not used in Season One. And it would look like it had been cobbled together in Dr. Frankenstein's Workshop, it was all bits and pieces and stuff. And it's like, ‘That's the silo.’

Sadie: Amazing attention to detail. In terms of storytelling devices and using nonlinear storytelling, you’re planting seeds for character motivation with backstory, and giving glimpses of relics, what was the decision behind making those choices, without going overboard on backstory and flashbacks?

Graham: There were very few rules. We were open to flashbacks. I know some people hate them, but I don't, if they work, if they help the story, if they can be entertaining and gripping in their own right, let's do them. Sometimes they can feel like, my brother is also a writer in what he calls ‘medicine.’ ‘OK, we're getting our medicine now.’ We really wanted to avoid too much of a world-building dump at the beginning. We wanted stuff to come out of story.

I learned a lesson way back working with two producers on Speed. They called it 'angry exposition.' So, if two people who both know that they lived in Paris together when they were students, how does that come up? Well, it comes up when one says, ‘When we lived in Paris, and we were students you said to me…!’ It's a cheap trick, but it works. And so that's one of our jokes is angry exposition, but half the stuff comes out in conflict and when you needed to find it out.

That said, when Apple saw the first episode, we had to drop in the opening narration because they said they wanted to know right off the top, what's going on? We're in a silo we don't know when it was built. We don't know when it will be safe to go outside, we just know that that day is not this day. And my insistence was let's just use the dialogue that's been written for them in the pact, which is what you say during when someone's being sent out to clean so that at the end of the episode we go, ‘Oh, that's why we heard that before, it’s on his mind because his wife is gone.’

And then it was when are we going to see that there are cameras? When are we going to see the Juliette figures out there's cameras? Then we have to do writer math, which is if she's behind the story, more than an episode, we're gonna get frustrated. So, we find out at the end of Episode Six that there are cameras, she needed to figure it out by the end of Episode Seven. And then what does that do to the story? Well, she better find out that Bernard’s the bad guy by the end of eight, and it just went on like that. How many episodes do we need of her as Sheriff before shit starts to really amp up? And we figured two, four, she's, you know, looking for an ally and her allies dead by the end of that episode, and then five, she pulls a trick. And she's setting everyone up to accept her. And now you can embark on the second half of the season and find out what happened to George.

So, figuring those big markers out was the important thing. How does the episode end? How does the next one begin? But it's really what's the end? Because this is streaming, we want people to let it roll. That's part of the metric is how many people just let it go into the next episode.

Sadie: What piqued your interest in wanting to become a filmmaker?

Graham: I grew up in Toronto. My dad had a TV show in Toronto all about movies. So, I grew up in a house where all we talked about were movies and books. My joke is that if I told my parents I wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer that they would have said, ‘Are you sure you don't want to be a writer?’ So, nothing but support and enthusiasm for the whole enterprise. And I lived in New York for a few years, but always working on scripts. And I knew I'd be in LA eventually - moved out there and actually got work with a company I'd worked with in New York, which was Nickelodeon and got my first job. So, it was something I wanted to do from probably the age of 18 or so. Unlike Joe Weisberg, who created The Americans and had not written a script before - there was a previous project that he and I worked on together, and out of the box was a brilliant writer. I mean, just brilliant. It took me a long time to become mediocre. And then, hopefully at times better than that.

I think about it, sometimes it's like, you know, why do magicians become magicians? They love magic, but then you're gonna go inside it and you're gonna see how the trick is done. And you have to enjoy that. And then be able to step back and watch someone else and enjoy the trick. And if it's not working, you can pick it apart, or you can see where the sleight of hand is or whatever. And so, I have that feeling when I'm watching something where the greatest thing is where I forget that I'm a writer, and I just enjoy it. Flanagan, I can hear his writing sometimes. And I fucking love it. I don't know, if you watched Usher but the three-minute lemons speech is just Bruce Greenwood knocking it out of the park. But, I mean, stuff like that. I enjoy being part of it. It's fun.

I got a job writing for Full House, I thought I was gonna be fired. But I'd already written a script ad that was Speed. And that sold. That changed my life. And then got back into TV with From the Earth to the Moon. And that then changed my life because I got to direct. And then out of that, had an idea for a TV show, which was Boomtown and then I became a showrunner and I love being in a writers' room. And I love the yellow pad. I love sitting down with the yellow pad on an airplane, anywhere at my desk. And I love typing up the script for the first time. And then going at it again and then getting back in the writers' room. Lawrence O’Donnell before he became a pundit on MSNBC was a writer on West Wing and then ran his own show called Mister Sterling. And he and I met and he said, ‘Oh, it's the worst job in the world being a showrunner,’ and I said, ‘It's really difficult.’ And inside I'm thinking, ‘Are you kidding? It's the best job I've ever had.’ As Michelle Ashford would say to me at times, we're working on Boomtown, ‘It's fun to be king, isn't it?’ ‘Yeah, it is.’

But I think that the joy for me is working with really smart people and figuring out the story. There's two things in a writers' room; one is when someone makes a really funny joke and you just can't stop laughing; and the other time is when someone says, ‘Hey, what if this happens?’ And something catches fire, and you can just feel it in the whole room, and even on Zoom, you can see it in the eyes, it's like, ‘Oh, here we go. This is a great idea.’ I love it when writers do a little bit of homework because I do a lot of homework. It's not homework. It's just sort of just thinking, ‘What if we did this?’ and then they bring that into the room. I love that. Yeah, I feel incredibly lucky. I don't go to the set that much, especially when it's 1,000 miles away, although our daughter lives there. So, we get there as much as we can. But I love being in the room. I love being in editing. And yeah, I don't mind doing this part either.

Sadie: Any advice for writers who are looking to adapt a book?

Graham: There have been times when I took a rewrite back when I was a feature writer, and I didn't love the original script. That was not good. That didn't work well. Only get involved with something if you really like the script. David Scarpa wrote a really good script that became The Last Castle, that was fun to work on. There are other things that I worked on, that I'm not proud of, because I never quite cracked it. And we never cracked it, the whole ensemble, the whole enterprise. So first, like the project. I think that the reason Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films are so fantastic, in my feeling, is because he is a Tolkien fanatic. I mean, he loves Tolkien. And I'm a big fan of Hugh's books, it was like, ‘I want to get in that world. I think there's stories to tell.’ So, that's the first thing.

And then, it's just sort of what is it that speaks to you about it? Fred asked me that, because when I told him I was doing this, and would he want to be involved? He said, ‘Let me look at it, let me think.’ And then he said, ‘Sure.’ And then we were a couple of weeks into the room, and he said, ‘Oh, now I see why you want to do this.’ I want to find out what's going on. I think that's a human - just that curiosity tinged with anger. It's just I want to know what's going on. What is it that gets you? And can that carry you through into a series? Or is it just a movie? Or should it just stay as a book? But you know, looking down on your shelf, I see Dune. Denis Villeneuve, he loves those books. Particularly that first one, so you're in there with someone who loves it. I don't know if David Lynch loved the book, but he did great shit. There's amazing stuff in that movie. But that's all Lynch. It's not Herbert's world.

Sadie: I’m excited to see what you guys do in the Second Season.

Graham: Have you read the books?

Sadie: I haven't.

Graham: OK, don't. Not until the series is over. When Hugh and I were doing promotional interviews before the launch, I would say right to his face, ‘You should tell everyone to buy the books, but don't read them until the show's over. So that we get to be the ones that solve the mysteries and write.’ Let the audience go through that. There's a Reddit and in the Reddit, it says ‘This is for followers of the TV show. If you have read the books, you are not allowed to post.’ I love that.

Silo is now streaming on AppleTV+