« Silo », the dystopian series on environmental catastrophe based on Hugh Howey’s best sellers – Corriere.it

He is a Nigerian prince born in England, naturalized American and turned actor: he is David Oyelowo (“my grandfather was king of a small region, in Nigeria there are more sovereigns than ordinary people”) who is on Apple TV+ in the dystopian series «Silo”, adaptation of Hugh Howey’s best-selling trilogy of novels for the small screen. And the critics are unanimous: it’s a gripping thriller that in ten episodes tells of a gloomy and frightening world, in which life on planet earth is only possible inside an underground silo where individual freedoms are nil.

Oyelowo is the protagonist of the first part of the story. He plays Sheriff Holston who will see his wife Allison (Rashida Jones) expelled from the community. In the silo, in fact, just expressing the desire to leave aloud entails capital punishment: expulsion from that protected environment. Also starring Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Robbins and Common.

“It’s the story of a place where there is a police state draconian – begins Oyelowo -. During the development of the story you will understand what the imposition of this form of government entails. People, human society, are not cut out to live without freedom, subject to a control that I would define in the Stasi style”. However outside you die, ultimately there is no choice: «I really hope that the public will ask these questions, if it happens we would have done our job well. What is certain is that no one has returned to the silo to tell about it. That place is an environmentalist warning: if we continue to do to our planet what we are doing, we will end up in situations very similar to those experienced by the protagonists of this story». Which is «incredibly intriguing and I understand why various attempts have been made to adapt this tale to the screen. I think the only possible way is with a TV series. It is too multifaceted a story to be limited to a two-hour story».

The social composition in the silo is more or less that of Western society today. And at the top there is still a white majority… «On the sets in Hollywood, however, things are changing and I believe that the main reason for this change has to do with the takeover of streaming. When television was less global, the excuse was good not to represent diversity. Now the public is asking for it.”

Yet Oyelowo has been an exception for twenty years. In 2000 he set a record: he was the first black actor to play an English monarch, Henry VI at the Royal Shakespeare Company in London: «Then he was truly an exception. Was it better if certain changes had come earlier? Sure, but I’m glad they’re here now.”