Space Force’s Diana Silvers on lockdown anxiety, her The Office obsession, and working with Steve Carell

In June 2018, President Trump confounded his critics when he ordered the establishment of a space force, a sixth branch of the armed forces dedicated to protecting US interests in outer space. The decision prompted mockery and memes, but it also sowed the seeds for a new workplace comedy from Netflix. Co-created by Steve Carell and The Office’s showrunner Greg Daniels, Space Force casts the former as Mark Naird, a general tasked with getting ‘boots on the moon’ by 2024.

Playing his rebellious daughter Erin—in a cast that also includes John Malkovich and Lisa Kudrow—is rising star Diana Silvers. Despite being a popular student in Washington DC, Erin struggles with her family’s move to the space force base in Colorado and becomes a social outcast. Her strained relationship with her father, a tightly wound perfectionist, is played for laughs, but as his work begins taking precedence over his home life, her isolation worsens.

Coming hot on the heels of her scene-stealing turns in Olivia Wilde’s coming-of-age comedy Booksmart (2019) and Tate Taylor’s psychological horror Ma (2019), the series cements Silvers’ reputation as one to watch and sees her go toe to toe with TV legends.

Ahead of the show’s release on May 29, the 22-year-old actress spoke to us via Zoom from Los Angeles to discuss getting a concussion weeks before her Space Force audition, muting Trump on Twitter, her Animal Crossing addiction and her hopes for the future after COVID-19.

Space Force is being billed as the new The Office. When did you first hear about the project?

“Netflix first announced that they were working on it in early 2019 and I was freaking out because I’m a huge fan of The Office. Then, last summer, my agent called me and said there was a role in it to play Steve Carell’s daughter. Allison Jones was casting and I love her—she was the casting director on Booksmart. I auditioned with Allison first in Los Angeles, came back to audition for Greg [Daniels] and then my final round was with Steve Carell. I told Allison, ‘If I make it to that stage, it will feel like I’ve won. It would be great to share a space with my hero for 10 minutes.’”

Was that process made more difficult by the fact that you got a concussion a few weeks before?

“That was my summer of bed bugs and a concussion in New York [laughs]. I didn’t have air conditioning at the time and then I got bed bugs, so while I was cleaning my apartment to eradicate the bed bugs, I forgot the overhead fan was on. I was on a ladder and I hit my head on the spinning fan. It was very painful and I started bleeding. I went to the emergency room, had to get a CAT scan and found out I had a concussion.

“The next day, I had to fly to Los Angeles to audition for another project with Allison and Amy Poehler. I told them I had a concussion and that I’d have to audition for Space Force later that week, and then it became this ongoing joke. Every time I went in for Space Force, Allison would ask, ‘So, how’s the concussion?’ I’d tell them the story and it was like doing a stand-up routine.”

Considering you’re such a big fan of The Office, what was it like auditioning with Steve Carell?

“Steve [Carell] is the nicest person you will ever meet. It was so much fun and I wasn’t nervous because it felt like game time. We read together and then Paul King, who directed episodes one and four, set up an improv scenario. So, Steve [Carell] and I improvised and it was really funny. After a certain point, we both started cracking up. That was the moment when I thought, ‘I feel like this is in the bag!’”

How excited were you when you got the part?

“When my agent told me, I started crying. It was a dream come true, but also something I could never have imagined. I called my mum, went to my parents’ house and my best friend got me a cake that said ‘Congratulations on Space Force’ and had a bunch of outer space stuff on it.”

Once the show is released, do you think President Trump will be tweeting about it?

“That would be crazy! I don’t doubt it, but I’m not rooting for it. I have him muted on Twitter [laughs]. Also, my birthday falls on the election this year, so I’m just hoping it doesn’t suck.”

So, can we definitely expect a second season of Space Force?

“I hope we get picked up. The state of the world right now means there’s a big question mark over everything. No one really knows what’s going to happen, when we’re all going to get back to work and what productions are going to look like. But, I hope people will want to see more.”

How does it feel to have the show drop now, when everything is so up in the air?

“It makes me very anxious. There are some days when I don’t even leave my house to go for a walk because I feel safer at home, but on other days I feel hopeful and inspired. I think everyone’s in the same boat. Every day is an emotional rollercoaster so you have to take it one day at a time.”

Are you and the cast doing anything virtually to mark the launch of the show?

“We’ve done a couple of happy hour Zoom calls to check in on each other, but I hope we can plan something else exciting. Apparently we’re getting our own Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavour [for the show] and we’re all being sent ice cream! I feel like that’s celebratory enough for me.”

How has lockdown affected your work?

“I was almost done with filming a movie in Budapest earlier this year—a ballet film called Birds of Paradise with Kristine Froseth and our writer-director Sarah Adina Smith. We had six days left when production got shut down. So, there are some rewrites that have to happen and we have to figure out what that last chunk will look like, but I have faith that we’ll finish it and it’ll be great. I put a lot of myself into that film, so it is definitely strange to be reading scripts and self-taping now, when I haven’t quite finished working on that character. Still, I’m glad that people are trying to be proactive and productive. It’s also a good time to catch up on all of the movies you missed.”

What have you been watching and reading while in quarantine?

“I just finished watching The Last Dance [2020] yesterday. It was fantastic! And I saw How to Build a Girl [2019, due to be released 2020] last night with my mum and sister. We loved it and Beanie Feldstein is incredible. The High Fidelity [2020] TV series is great too, and I also just started Dead To Me [2019] on Netflix. I’m reading a ton as well. I read Sally Rooney’s Normal People at the beginning of quarantine, but I haven’t watched the show yet. Then, I read Sex and Rage by Eve Babitz and now I’m reading two books at the same time: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson.”

You’ve been posting on Instagram about Nintendo’s Animal Crossing. Are you obsessed?

“I went through a phase where I was playing every day for three weeks. I dropped off because I started thinking, ‘What are you doing with your life? You’re building a fake island, Diana. This can’t be good.’ [laughs] I’d been putting off so many other things because I was playing Animal Crossing all day, so now I haven’t played in about a week. Having said that, I love it.”

On Instagram, you’ve also been speaking about the importance of getting dressed properly while in lockdown. Does it help you to feel better?

“I’m wearing jeans right now! It feels so much more professional than wearing pyjamas [laughs]. If I don’t get dressed, I feel like I’m much more likely to wallow. If every day becomes Sunday, then no days feel like Sunday. At home, I wear a lot of folksy dresses and sweaters. My old modelling agent used to say that I dress like a grandma, but now those things are in—so this is my moment.”

What do you hope the world will look like when we emerge from this crisis?

“Coming out of this, I hope everyone is more mindful about what we need, what we buy and how much we consume as a society. We overproduce, there’s a lot of excess and I don’t know where that goes. I hope we see real change. Pollution levels, for instance, have come down drastically in some cities while people are at home. If we all did less, the world could be very different.”

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Space Force is streaming on Netflix from May 29

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