[Editor’s note: This piece contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Pluribus.]
Toward the end of Pluribus‘ first episode, Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) asks an important question to a mysterious entity over the phone: “What…the fuck…is going on?” Most viewers of Apple TV’s drama, created by Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul vet Vince Gilligan, might relate to that feeling of confusion. In the series opener, a virus (courtesy of “beneficiaries of extraterrestrial technology”) has affected the global population. Anyone still alive has become extremely content, operating together as a hive mind, robbed of their individuality and any emotion except joy. Seemingly immune to this, Carol spends most of “We Is Us” in shock and terror, desperately trying to save her wife, Helen (Miriam Shor), who dies soon after being impacted.
Somehow, everything gets a lot worse for her in episode two. While she’s still mourning her loss and adjusting to the chaos, Carol flies to Spain to meet a few others who are just like her. But these survivors, who are from different parts of the world, are not interested in figuring out how or why this virus descended on Earth and if there’s a way to even reverse or cure it. “Pirate Lady” paints a clearer picture of the solitary battle that lies ahead for her, setting up Carol to be pretty much the only one who is willing to fight back. The A.V. Club spoke to Seehorn about the challenges of getting into Carol’s headspace, what she enjoyed most about Gilligan’s scripts, and how episode two sets up the rest of Pluribus.
The A.V. Club: What was your preparation to play someone like Carol, who experiences all these emotions that no one else around her does?
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Rhea Seehorn: First of all, when Vince Gilligan told me that he wrote something for me, I just said yes. He told me he would send the scripts over, and I could decide after that, but to me, it didn’t matter if he asked me to play a chair. But I had even less information than you guys have had so far. I didn’t even have a tagline or a petri dish with a happy face, which was part of the fun. For Vince, it’s not just a marketing ploy of his to try to keep spoilers out. He really does want people to go on this ride without knowing much. That was my experience reading the script. I was a fan and kept going, “What is happening? This is bonkers.” I liked that I didn’t know how to define this show. He’s spinning tropes on their head on purpose and having this dialogue with his audience because he assumes the intelligence of his fans, which I think they relish. It’s not ever dumbed down. His thinking is along the lines of, “I’m not going to give you a song that tells you exactly what this character is thinking. I’m going to ask you to sit with the messiness of this moment right now.”
The show goes from making you extremely upset in one second and then veering into making you laugh out loud in these darkly comedic moments next, which is a very challenging thing to pull off, and Vince does it so well. It’s challenging to perform that, as well, but I got really excited about that part really fast. But I was also looking at this material and going, “Well, that’s a lot.” It’s a very emotional, psychological, and physical role. To tell you the truth, I start from the beginning every time. The size of the role doesn’t even matter. It’s too daunting to think about how I am ever going to fulfill what the show or Vince needs from me, or how I will be up to the task of telling the story he wants to tell. So building it brick by brick is all I can do. For me, that means old-fashioned script analysis and sitting at home to do my homework, which, thankfully, I love to do.
AVC: How do you view the show’s larger themes of dystopia versus utopia and the commentary it’s trying to make about any other timely topics? Was this something you talked about on set or discovered more as you went along?
RS: My feeling isn’t dissimilar to how I’ve been hearing Vince answer when he’s asked about any commentary he’s making with this theme. I can tell you he’s not being evasive. People have brought up stuff about how it’s a commentary on AI, which existed nine or 10 years ago when Vince started having thoughts about this main character and the concept that he wanted to play with, but it wasn’t the topic or debate that it is now. So he wasn’t writing to that or preaching to a certain political or religious viewpoint. What worked for me and what he wants to do is, first and foremost, write great characters that, if anything, are a commentary on human nature and the messiness of that—and then inspiring questions that you’re going to bring to it. I think great art does that, like when you’re looking at a painting and bringing whatever it is that you are to it. Vince’s scripts read like beautiful novels to me that are heartbreaking, heart-pounding, funny, and suspenseful. So Carol’s not thinking philosophically. She’s in the middle of survival mode, grief, terror, and utter confusion on a level that is beyond anything that I’ve felt. She doesn’t have the luxury to get into the philosophical parts of this, but whenever we’d wrap up on set or hang out and get drinks with the crew members, we’d all talk about the meaning of it and what we would do if something like that happened to us.
AVC: You said earlier that this is a physically demanding role. That’s clear in the pilot when Carol is single-handedly trying to get her wife to the hospital. How did you navigate that aspect of the show?
RS: The whole pilot was physically very demanding, in a great way. It was wonderful to have that because sometimes you’re playing very, very emotional and quiet scenes, and you do see that in the show, too. But in that parking-lot scene in the premiere, there’s just so much being thrown at Carol while she’s trying to see if she can still save her wife. That sandwich board that she gets to put her wife’s body on and load in the car is because she’s afraid that Helen’s neck or back may have been broken: The team had to construct [the board] with a steel reinforcement to make sure that it’s safe for Miriam Shor, who’s a wisp of a gal and weighs nothing. But the board had to be heavy and well constructed so it wouldn’t break or bend. I had this incredible stuntwoman, Heather Bonomo, who’s an artist in her own right. Many of Vince’s shots and most of what you’re seeing in the episode, I’m doing that because he frames things with my face in it. We didn’t do any CGI or full-face replacement, but Heather is so good at watching my body language. She’ll watch me do a scene for hours and hours and hours, see how Carol is holding the tension, whether it’s in her hands or when she’s stooping, or if her shoulders slip when something’s upset her. And then she seamlessly comes in for a few scenes.
There were other really funny anecdotes from that episode, too, especially when Vince and I were discovering the show’s tone shifts, like when the kids come up and Carol’s trying to break into her own house. I didn’t mean it at the moment when I shooed them away like rodents or something. Vince was dying laughing, but I wasn’t thinking about it that way, or it wasn’t born out of me trying to be funny. It was born out of trying to put myself in the position of this woman who is grasping at straws, and she doesn’t know if she should talk to them as children or as monsters. I’m also positive that Helen knows the names of people who stay in the neighborhood. I don’t think Carol could tell you those kids’ names or who they belong to. But in that moment, she doesn’t know what’s taken over them and if they’re zombies who are about to eat her brains; and her dead wife is on the ground. So that scene was born out of me thinking, “I don’t have the tools to do anything, and maybe if I treat you like mosquitoes, it will help.” So amongst the exhaustion of filming and the physical demands, we had a lot of fun navigating those types of scenes too.
AVC: In episode two, Carol realizes that despite there being more survivors of this virus, she’s the only one willing to fix the world while the rest of them abandon her. What does being alienated like that mean for Carol for the rest of season one?
RS: It’s a crushing twist. It’s crushing as Carol realizes that nobody’s on her side. Vince and I had a lot of fun playing with that scene when she lands at the airport and walks up to the others and is just so relieved to not be fully alone in this world, as she thought. And then they introduce their family members and chaperones, and I had this little moment that Vince loved and asked me to do it again, which is when she does the full 360. I just kept turning around. We filmed those scenes much later, at the end of the season, like we did with anything that took place in Spain. But I was acutely aware that at this stage, Carol is hoping that everyone is going to think exactly what she thinks and will be on the same page as her, even to the degree of “I know you’re saying that’s your son, but can we all agree that it’s super weird that he just introduced himself that way, and how weird was that?” And no one’s responding, and she’s trying to navigate that. “Wait, do you guys not see it?”
It was one of the most fun scenes, as was the whole luncheon and the stuff on Air Force One. All of those actors were so great, and it was such a different energy coming at me as Carol, of these people with different points of view. The way Vince writes it, you, as an audience, can understand the other person’s point of view as well, even if Carol doesn’t. She sees everything happening to her as a black-and-white issue, right? She has a slow recognition in episode two that she’s really alone in this fight, no one is going to help her, and everybody thinks she’s crazy. She’s also perfectly aware that the example she’s setting is that she’s a giant hot mess, but she wants people to follow her, and they’re not going to. I feel like we’ve all been there at some point thinking, “I know I sound crazy, but I’m telling you that this barn is on fire.” So yes, Carol’s isolation from everyone sets up the rest of the season really well, and I can’t wait for people to watch how it plays out.
