Looking over the past two years of Rebecca Ferguson\u2019s resum\u00e9 is almost enough to give you whiplash.<\/p>\n
Since 2024, the versatile Swedish actor has veered between genres, playing the witchy mother of the messiah in Dune: Part Two, an army officer trying to prevent the end of the world in political thriller<\/p>\n
A House Of Dynamite, an emotionless AI judge in sci-fi-action movie Mercy, twin sisters in the film finale of crime drama Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man and terrifying headmistress Dame Snap in the recent big-screen adaptation of the beloved children\u2019s book The Magic Faraway Tree.<\/p>\n
In between all those projects, she also found time to film the final two seasons of Silo, the post-apocalyptic drama set in a huge underground bunker. Ferguson stars as a plucky engineer who discovers a massive cover-up and she also serves as the show\u2019s executive producer. <\/p>\n
So why the flurry of activity and the wildly eclectic choices?<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought maybe my career was coming to an end, so I just grabbed anything that came my way,\u201d the charmingly self-deprecating Ferguson jokes to Stellar over a Zoom call from Los Angeles, sitting alongside series creator Graham Yost. \u201cYou know, make a bit of<\/p>\n
dosh and hope for the best, really. I bought my mum a house and paid off a couple of mortgages.\u201d<\/p>\n
But when pressed, Ferguson admits there are many reasons she chooses projects. Sometimes it\u2019s because she\u2019s desperate to work with an actor, as was the case for Peaky Blinders and its Oscar-winning star Cillian Murphy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have the same agent and it was a standing joke where I was kind of \u2018I\u2019ll be a tea cup \u2026 anything \u2026 I just want to be on the receiving end\u2019 because I think Cillian is a fantastic actor,\u201d she explains. \u201cAnd then he called and asked if I wanted to be in Peaky with him, which was great. It was an honour because it\u2019s a big show for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other times there\u2019s a personal connection, as with this year\u2019s family adventure The Magic Faraway Tree, which she chose thanks to Saga, the eight-year-old daughter she shares with her businessman husband Rory St Clair Gainer. (Ferguson, 42, also has a 19-year-old son, Isac, from a previous relationship.)<\/p>\n
\u201cMy daughter had finished reading Enid Blyton\u2019s The Magic Faraway Tree. We were in LA to do Silo press and she threw it on the bed and went, \u2018I\u2019ve read it \u2013 I\u2019m done.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u201cAn hour later, I got an email offering me Dame Snap. So then I was like, \u2018Of course I\u2019m doing it.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you just do roles because of your kid reading a book.\u201d<\/p>\n
And sometimes, Ferguson admits, \u201cwe just do jobs because it\u2019s a job\u201d \u2013 though she declines to name names, and adds that she\u2019s become pickier in recent years.<\/p>\n
Indeed, she initially needed some convincing before she signed on to the critically acclaimed Silo. <\/p>\n
Adapted from Hugh Howey\u2019s book trilogy of the same name, the dystopian drama is set hundreds of years after an environmental catastrophe, and follows the fortunes and misfortunes of a heavily regulated community living in a giant underground silo that extends 144 levels into the earth.<\/p>\n
Show creator and writer Yost had been impressed by Ferguson\u2019s performance alongside Tom Cruise in the fifth Mission: Impossible film, 2015\u2019s Rogue Nation. He knew he\u2019d found the right person to play Juliette Nichols, the steely and driven engineer who questions the silo\u2019s strict hierarchy and inviolable rules \u2013 and eventually becomes its reluctant leader.<\/p>\n
Although Ferguson had already made inroads in Hollywood thanks to her Golden Globe-nominated role in the 2013 British historical drama series The White Queen and the 2014 sword-and-sandals action-adventure Hercules, it was her dramatic Mission: Impossible entrance as the ambiguous MI6 agent Ilsa Faust, resplendent in a yellow evening gown and somehow making a sniper\u2019s rifle look sexy, that made the world sit up and take notice. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018Who the f*** is that?\u2019\u201d Yost recalls to Stellar. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe was so compelling. Then I read she was Swedish. That\u2019s why I didn\u2019t know her. And I\u2019d never seen The White Queen. So I\u2019d been a huge fan for years and then we got a shot and she said no. But [she] was intrigued enough [for us] to keep on asking.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had another Zoom and I said \u2018Don\u2019t worry about that script you\u2019re not fond of \u2013 we\u2019ll fix it.\u2019 And we just hit it off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Season three of Silo opens with Ferguson\u2019s character Juliette dealing with memory loss while also being manipulated by mysterious and shadowy forces at the top of the hierarchy she\u2019s meant to be leading.<\/p>\n
With its references to Iran, misinformation and artificial intelligence, the plot also feels strangely prescient for scripts that were written three years ago and adapted from a book that was written 15 years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou always like to find resemblances,\u201d says Ferguson of the real-world parallels. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut lack of information and controlling people through narrative and media has been going on, I think, for centuries and centuries and centuries. And through religion, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
And while Silo paints a bleak vision of the future with its blasted, irradiated landscapes, authoritarian rule and underground civilisation, Ferguson says she doesn\u2019t lose sleep over the prospect of the world going to hell in a handbasket. She\u2019d rather focus on the things she cares about and can control than catastrophise about the things she can\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t read a lot of news and I feel privileged to be in a position where I feel safe,\u201d she adds. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit like bubbling yourself because I can. I think it\u2019s important to also educate yourself \u2013 but I find it tears me apart.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look after my community a lot and that\u2019s about how we raise our kids, our friends\u2019 kids. It\u2019s kind of the micro rather than the macro,\u201d she tells Stellar. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very controlling when it comes to my kids, who have no social media. I love communes. My home is a commune for friends and family who need homes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silo is streaming on Apple TV, with new episodes dropping each Friday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Looking over the past two years of Rebecca Ferguson\u2019s resum\u00e9 is almost enough to give you whiplash. Since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":786640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,30338,134,160034],"class_list":["post-786639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dune","tag-entertainment","tag-silo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/786640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}