The beast it’s such a complicated show that even its producer gets confused sometimes. While filming the final seasons of the Apple TV thriller, Graham Yost remembers two times where he messed up details: one was an actor who realized that a speech they were about to shoot should have already happened, the other involved a Japanese location crew who pointed out that the subtitles didn’t match what was happening on the screen. In both cases, the problem was eventually fixed, but Yost’s reaction was the same: “Oh shit, you’re right.”
Keeping everything straight is one of the biggest challenges of working on such a complex series, too The beast entering its final two seasons, the challenge just got bigger. So it’s a good thing Yost has a team working with him to look for those flaws. “There’s a lot to follow,” he says, “but everyone’s pitching in, and I love this sense of collaboration.”
Season 3 of The beast goes live on July 3rd, and expands the scope of the story quite a bit. The series follows the lives of the inhabitants of an underground mansion hundreds of years in the future. This monster is home to 10,000 people living in a vertical city, one divided into sections where each person has their own jobs and traditions, from the mines at the bottom to the government at the top. The only way to navigate the cell is to walk up a large spiral staircase that goes from top to bottom, creating a visual sort of class divide.
At first it seemed that the villagers were the last remnants of humanity living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. But over the course of the first two seasons, it became clear that they lived in one of many cells, each living in their own communities while being isolated from the others. Season 3 adds a new wrinkle: showing how the world came to be this way in the first place, a process that begins on a world like ours.
The season 3 preview jumps back and forth between the dark future where we spent the last two seasons and our present day, where decisions are made that lead to everyone being trapped inside the dungeons. Things have already gotten weird since the show started last season — main character/silo mayor/reluctant convert Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) just became the first person to go inside the silos and now she’s suffering from memory loss — and the multiple timelines just mess that up.
“There are a lot of pieces you’re trying to put together.”
The cast of The beast they all have different strategies for dealing with this challenge, which is made even more difficult given that the scenes are rarely shot in chronological order. For others, daily group meetings with supervisors can be an invaluable tool. “Most days, we would start the day in story time, and the director would go through where we are, where we just came from, what’s next,” explained Alexandria Riley, who plays newly promoted manager Camille Sims on the show. “It’s become a complicated matter, but when the shooting is not organized, you have a fog.” Ferguson notes that the hair and makeup team can be especially helpful in tracking the story, as they need to be on top of things like scars and burns to maintain consistency. Every detail is important. He says: “Small changes you make have big consequences going forward.
“There’s a lot of pieces you’re trying to put together,” added Common, who plays Camille’s husband Robert on the show. “It is our job to know where we are, but we thank God that we also had support, there are times when I talk to Alex about something just to remind him.” The two actors even had separate rehearsals together to make sure everything was down.
Others take a different approach. Jessica Henwick, for example, joined the main cast as the modern-day investigative reporter Helen in season 3, and says “I didn’t read any of the scenes except mine. Because I’m a fan of the show, I wanted to preserve what was done. I’m going to watch season 3 as a fan and see what happens. I don’t know what’s happening outside of our story.” (Henwick is such a fan that, right after the shows aired, he had one goal in mind: “I went to the set and checked out the stairs.”)
Image: An apple
One thing that doesn’t help much, however, is examining the source material. The beast based on a trilogy of books by author Hugh Howey; the first two seasons explore the first book, and the last two will conclude the entire story. But a lot has changed in the adaptation as the TV show tries both to make Juliette a more recognizable character at the center of the story and to address some of today’s show concerns like AI.
“I started reading books and I quickly realized that that wasn’t going to help me, because books are so different,” explains Ashley Zukerman, who plays a congresswoman in the current news series. He says that keeping the novels and the TV show on his mind at the same time will not help, instead he has to “read all the scripts and find a way to forget.” [what his character wouldn’t know] it was helpful.”
With two seasons left, The beast it rushes to the end as it tries to put everything together. Yost says four seasons was always the plan, so the process was always finding a way to fit everything into a set number of episodes. But since the last two seasons were filmed back to back, it also means The beast the team no longer has to worry about keeping all those complex systems straight. And as much as he says he’ll miss the experience of working on the show, there’s one thing Ferguson enjoys doing beyond memorizing stories.
“I hated going up and down those stairs,” he says.
