VINCE GILLIGAN: If you could be nothing but happy, would that even be a healthy thing for you as an individual? You can’t have light without darkness. You have to have contrasts in life. There has to be such a thing as sadness, misery, depression, whatnot, for happiness to have any meaning, maybe.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Wouldn’t it be great if we could all just get along? It is a comforting platitude, but what happens when it’s pushed to its limits by a viral alien hive mind intent on maintaining peace by converting humanity into extensions of one psychic self? There’s only one person to ask, Vince Gilligan.
Welcome to another episode of We Disrupt This Broadcast. I’m your host, Gabe González, and today we’re talking about a critically acclaimed sci-fi series that isn’t afraid of philosophical questions, embraces the value of introverts, and loves a slow burn. That’s right, today we’re talking about Pluribus.
We are joined by the Vince Gilligan, writer, director, producer, all around TV legend, and creator of the series. And if that weren’t enough, we are also talking to the star of Pluribus. You’ve seen her on Better Call Saul. She’s an award-winning actress, and she is the face screaming on the poster for Pluribus. You’ve got to recognize her. It’s Rhea Seehorn.
To refresh you on the series, Pluribus starts after a signal from space leads to a chain of events that unleash a virus on our planet, one that kills millions but turns those who survive into a pacifist hive mind intent on turning Earth into a non-violent utopia, except for 13 humans.
One of them, played by Rhea Seehorn, is named Carol. She’s one of the most lovable, allegedly cranky characters on TV, bringing complexity, empathy, and understandable rage as her character confronts what can only be described as a series of soul-crushing philosophical crises while the fate of the planet rests in her hands, at least for a while.
So join us as we talk to Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn about making Pluribus, how the series disrupts TV norms, and why unhappiness is pivotal for innovation. Yeah, you heard me right. Maybe we need cranky people! So don’t go anywhere. We’ll be back with Vince Gilligan after the break.
CLIP: Pluribus
Scientists have created this sequence in a lab. It is not a living thing per se. It is more akin to a virus, though it’s not that exactly either. It’s kind of a psychic glue capable of binding us all together.
Okay, so if you’re not aliens, who am I talking to right now? Who are you?
This particular individual, this is Davis Taffler, Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm Production and Conservation. But you are currently talking to every person on earth, including Davis Taffler. We’re all one.
How does that work?
We don’t know exactly. It just does.
Can I talk to the president?
That individual passed away this evening, unfortunately, along with quite a few senior members of the United States government. Davis Taffler happened to be nearby and intact, and he was wearing a suit, so-
So, so you’re in charge now, you, the Under Secretary of-
No. Nobody’s in charge, or everybody’s in charge. Really, there’s no such thing anymore.
But, but there has gotta be others like me.
Your situation is a rare one. There appear to be 11 other individuals like yourself.
In, in Albuquerque?
No, in the world. We have reached out to them. Like you, they are disoriented, understandably. Rest assured, Carol, we will figure out what makes you different.
Figure it out why?
So we can fix it. So you can join us.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Welcome back. We are kicking off today’s episode with the creator and showrunner of Pluribus, Vince Gilligan. He is joined by We Disrupt This Broadcast executive producer and executive director of the Peabodies, Jeffrey Jones.
JEFFREY JONES: Welcome to We Disrupt This Broadcast. I am happy today to announce that we have Vince Gilligan, the writer, producer, and showrunner of Pluribus, but you will also know him from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, both multiple Peabody winners. So Vince, thank you for joining us.
VINCE GILLIGAN: Jeffrey, it’s wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me.
JEFFREY JONES: As we did our research, I saw somewhere that you started out with this show, Pluribus, with philosophical questions you had about life, and that is really clear. I mean, one of the things I adore about the show really is that it’s not about a thing. It’s not a theme. In fact, as the jurors were talking and debating, it’s like, “Well, what’s this show? How do you sum up this show?” And you couldn’t, and I love that, and especially as a professor who is okay with not having rigid conceptions of things. But I will ask you as the showrunner, you know, what were some of the big philosophical questions that you were interested in exploring as you entered into this process?
VINCE GILLIGAN: That’s a great question. I think first and foremost, the idea of happiness. How important is happiness? We chase it. I guess from a very personal point of view, I’m not a particularly happy person myself. I never have been. I think constitutionally, I’m just, I’m wired not to be, and it’s always felt like something I’ve chased my whole life, and it has been surprising to me that as I became, I’ve been very fortunate in my life and in my career to have a lot of good luck professionally and otherwise, and for instance, using my career as an example, the better off I became financially, you know, career-wise sometimes oddly enough, the less happy I was. There was not a direct correlation to happiness, in other words, and success. You’d think the two would be kinda married together. And so I think a lot about happiness from the point of view of someone who doesn’t typically possess it for very long, for very short stretches do I wind up feeling, you know, happy or content or whatnot, and I think when you spend a lot of time thinking about that, and I don’t even know, by the way, that that’s a useful endeavor to be sitting around wondering why you’re not happier. I don’t know if that’s a good use of anyone’s time.
But because I found myself doing that so much, I think that’s where the idea for Pluribus ultimately came from. It was an examination of that. How important is this really as an ingredient in our lives? A lot of time that I’ve spent thinking about this, one thing I’ve thought about is that, you know, happy people don’t move the needle.
They don’t… I may be misquoting this, but the old Buddhist saying that desire breeds unhappiness. You know, when you want something, it means intrinsically you’re not happy, but on the other hand, if you wanna be warm, you invent clothing. You invent fire. If you wanna be safe from saber-toothed tigers, you invent shelter.
Unhappiness, dissatisfaction led to all the inventions that we have, everything that constitutes modern life. So really, how important is happiness? It was those kind of questions from which Pluribus derived.
JEFFREY JONES: Hopefully everyone has seen it, ’cause it’s hard to sum up the show. But 99.9999%, everybody on the globe except for 13 individuals, have contracted a virus that has led to basically a hive mind, and it’s radically transformed society.
And so I wanted to say all that as precursor to this conception of happiness that plays out between, let’s say, the Rhea Seehorn character, Carol Sturkin, is you, is an artist who is maybe not preternaturally happy in life, a little bit of a misanthrope at times, but also deeply feeling, deeply empathetic. She’s a very multifaceted character, as we see across the season.
And then the others, who, as they are called, the hive mind folks, the others seemingly are happy, but really kind of devoid of emotion. Talk to us about your choices there, and how those became kind of the vehicles for individuality and collectivity, of course, but those are different terms than what constitutes happiness as seen through the lens of a central character who is not preternaturally happy in life.
VINCE GILLIGAN: Right. No, it’s a wonderful thing to have a writer’s room full of brilliant writers because they keep me honest, and they keep me questioning, what is the point of what we’re doing and where should the story go and whatnot? And one thing that my writers always remind me of, they say, “You know, these people are not robots. They’re not computers.” Gordon Smith, one of my excellent writers, has become a bit of a mantra for him because when I pitch something where I’ll say, “You know, they have rules, and they can’t break this rule, and they can’t…” And he will always ground me by saying, “You know, they really aren’t robots. They are human. They do contain the foibles and contradictions that human beings contain. They are not Mr. Spock from Star Trek. They do have emotion, but it’s just the band of emotion that they still feel has been just greatly reduced down to happiness and contentment and sort of this zen peacefulness.”
I think they perhaps are still capable on some level, if you really push them, to feel unhappy. I don’t know if they can feel anger at all anymore, but I think there have been times in Season 1 where Carol clearly made them unhappy. So I think they still possess all those things, and like I said, they’re not robots. But then the question becomes, if you could be nothing but happy, would that even be a healthy thing for you as an individual?
You can’t have light without darkness. You have to have contrasts in life. There has to be such a thing as sadness, misery, depression for happiness to have any meaning, maybe. But then if Carol were to say that to them, I think the others would say, “Well, that’s actually not true. We’re, you know, we’re living very fulfilled lives.”
JEFFREY JONES: Well, I’m glad you brought up emotions because that’s the thing that really jumps off the screen. But in the realm of negative emotions, and you did bring up Buddhism and the conception of suffering and… But again, go back to the, that anger and sadness and grief are largely absent in this world, and Carol is the embodiment, if you will.
She lost her wife and the rest of humanity in her vision of it. And those are the ones that jump off the screen much more so than joy or ecstasy or even the feelings around love, though you do unpack that a little near the end. But talk to me about that, this conception, and maybe you were intentional in your Buddhist thinking about suffering as a necessary ingredient of life, the thing that actually allows for happiness to be manifest because you do go through those things.
VINCE GILLIGAN: I mean, from Carol’s point of view, the world has lost much more than it has gained. And yet, a character like Koumba Diabate, who we meet in episode two, he says, “I’m not convinced the world’s not better off this way.” And he gives a lot of examples. There’s no more… No one’s in prison anymore. No one is being subjugated. No one is enslaved. No one is being murdered. No one’s being raped and, you know, robbed.
And those are all good points. From Carol’s point of view, on the other hand, it’s there’s no more individuality. There’s no more art. There’s no more drive to better oneself. And what are we if we’re not individuals? What’s the point of being just one cell in an organism? And so the fun thing for me about this show is that argument never ceases.
There’s no end to that argument, really. I think we’d just be playing wrong if we ever settled the argument definitively. I think it’s for the audience to decide for themselves whether or not Carol’s right, or Diabate’s right, or the others are right.
CLIP: Pluribus
Guys, I’m not looking for a fight here. I’m just trying to make a point that this whole thing–. We have to do something.
Do what?
I am not convinced things are as bad as you say. As we speak, no one is being robbed or murdered. No one is in prison. The color of one’s skin, by all accounts, now meaningless. All zoos are empty. All dogs are off their chains. Peace on Earth.
Assuming that’s even true, ask yourselves, what’s been lost?
JEFFREY JONES: In the academy, we talk about this word dialogic or dialogical, and that through debate emerges collectively, the right thing to do emerges by disagreement, by collectively working out what is going to be the path we choose, and it’s through that that you arrive at something. And there’s not debate in the hive mind.
So that’s point one I want you to address. Point two I want you to address is there’s also not a debate necessarily going on between Carol and the others. She kind of is exasperated, but they don’t have, like, in a traditional sense, “Let’s sit down and debate this through this episode.” They don’t. So talk to me about those two choices of, A, the hive mind and their lack of dialogical imagination, and then the fact that in the show itself, you’re not debating those terms.
VINCE GILLIGAN: First of all, I love that word, dialogic, dialogical. I gotta bring that to the writers’ room. That’s a great word. You’re 100% right, Jeffrey. The others do not seem to be debating amongst themselves. They are of one mind, and I think you’ve identified that correctly. And because of that, sometimes I like to think of this show as a two-hander. Technically speaking, it’s a 14-hander. There’s 14 different brains–
JEFFREY JONES: Right.
VINCE GILLIGAN: …on Earth in our series. There’s Carol Sturcha, and then there’s the other old-schoolers, as we like to refer to them, and then there’s the seven billion and some people that constitute the hive mind. But when it’s just Carol and Sosha talking, it’s a two-hander. It really is, even though it’s, you know, seven billion to one.
But I think they have had their moments of discussion. Argument is a tricky thing for the others because the idea of having an argument is, at its core, you know, it’s a disagreement, and the others are so chill and so zen. They don’t wanna disagree with Carol too much because it feels adversarial perhaps. But when push comes to shove, they will gently define and defend their point of view. So that’s where it gets mildly dialogical, I suppose,
JEFFREY JONES: Yeah, that’s true
VINCE GILLIGAN: … the, the show. But also at a certain point, as much as we love those dialogical moments, they tend to recede into the rear view mirror after a certain number of episodes pass because both sides, although they could continue to be dialogical, they really are aware of each other’s point of view, and they’re also pretty aware that the other point of view is not gonna be changed through argument, through dialogic, I guess.
JEFFREY JONES: Yeah. But it’s interesting how you interestingly, it seems to me, carefully avoid any kind of deeply ingrained ideological justifications that we have, to justify inequality or war or competition. I mean, that’s not the language Carol speaks. It’s not the language that the others speak. And I wondered of you guys as writers in the writers’ room thinking about, how are we going to not bring in the language that permeates modern society about collectivism versus individualism, and do it through a different, a little more neutral, if you will, way of kind of being? Did y’all have those types of discussions?
VINCE GILLIGAN: I guess when you get right down to it, Carol’s point of view is that individuality beats everything else. She’d probably, if you put her feet to the fire, she’d say, “Yeah, okay. All right, fine. There’s no more Russia trying to take over Ukraine. There’s no more war in the Middle East. You know, there’s no more injustice.” There’s perfect theoretical communism, which is something that in real life has never, far as I can tell, has never been attained, and, you know, it’s everybody gets their equal share. Everybody is at peace. The world is one. Yeah, okay, I get it, but it doesn’t matter because individuality has been lost, and because, and a very important point, as Carol would probably say, no one got to vote on this.
You know, you guys keep talking about, “I have agency.” This is Carol talking. You know, “Yeah, I have agency. I have agency,” but none of us got to vote on this. You just basically, in the very first episode of the series, you see people spreading this virus through kissing people. They don’t ask if the person wants to be kissed. They just do it. They spread the virus without asking anyone’s permission, and she can’t get her brain around that. No one got to vote on this. If everybody voted on this- And everybody said, “Yes, I want endless peace and happiness,” then all right, I’ll grudgingly learn to accept it. But first of all, I don’t even know what’s in your hearts.
She’d probably say this as well. She’d say, “On the face of it, you seem very placid and very happy, very untroubled. I don’t know what’s going on deep inside. For all I know, there’s the former individual I’m standing face to face with, talking with, maybe they’re trapped inside this very serene body, screaming to be let out.”
JEFFREY JONES: Well, you brought up Carol.
VINCE GILLIGAN: Mm-hmm.
JEFFREY JONES: Talk to me about how did you arrive at Carol as the character to carry so much of the weight of this event, this cataclysmic event, and the story in general?
VINCE GILLIGAN: Well, it was an evolution. I started to conceive of this show probably easily 10 years ago, when we were working on Better Call Saul, and my first idea for the protagonist for this show was a male character.
I just had this idea for a character to whom suddenly everyone on Earth was inexplicably… They were just inexplicably wonderful to this one guy. They were just, couldn’t be nicer, couldn’t be more solicitous. That was the seed of the idea. That’s where it all sprang from. I didn’t know what the mechanism was yet that would cause such a thing.
But, you know, you just, you put these things together bit by bit. It’s just like you’re walking along, finding little jigsaw puzzle pieces on your walk, on, on your daily travels. In hindsight, I probably thought to myself, “If everyone on Earth is happy, then our main character probably should not be.” I mean, that’s just Drama 101.
If the main person’s deliriously happy, and everyone else is, too, you don’t really have a show. Rhea’s not that unhappy, miserable curmudgeon, not at all, but she is a really great actor. I know she can pull it off. Okay, she’s really unhappy. Who’s unhappy? Writers. Writers are unhappy. That’s probably where it came from.
And again, it’s funny, it, you kinda chip away at the stone day by day, and you, you’re hoping for the Pietà, you might just get a big lump of misshapen stone at the end of the day. But I would have thought that the other old-schoolers, as we call them, would have by this point been more actively involved in the show.
But as we break episode by episode, and we got to episode two of season one I guess the first thought was, “Okay, how are these people gonna be involved and help save the world?” And then it dawned on us, maybe they don’t need to. It’s the flip side of everybody, all the joined people in the world getting along and effortlessly without friction, working with one another, helping one another.
The folks who are unjoined, they’re the same old folks who don’t speak each other’s language and don’t get along and are perhaps quick to offense, and it’s gonna be really hard. Carol’s really got this arrayed against her, this idea of how do I create a consensus? How do I maintain a consensus? It kinda shines a light, and now that I think of it, in a sense it shines a light on what Diabate says when he says, “I’m not convinced things aren’t better now.” Because when the old schoolers are together, it’s, things are not necessarily better between them.
JEFFREY JONES: Let’s talk about the allegory of AI. You know, this conception comes up in 2016 or so. AI’s not really on the tips of our tongues at that time. Is it a lot of the popular press or people trying to wrestle with the show and its meanings have obviously talked about the show maybe as a metaphor, allegory, whatever the, you wanna use of AI? Is that a part of what you’re doing here, you and the writers, or not so much?
VINCE GILLIGAN: I want the audience to tell me what the show’s about, and so therefore, if a big chunk of the audience says, “This is an allegory about AI,” I would not argue that. Strictly speaking, I was not thinking of AI as embodied by ChatGPT and Gemini and all that kind of stuff. I wasn’t thinking about that at all. But if people wanna call it that, if they wanna say that’s what this is about, I would never argue the point.
I don’t wanna limit it to being a show just about AI because me personally, I’m hoping AI is a, a passing fancy, which probably if someone listens to this years from now, that it’ll be like hearing- somebody say, “Gee, horseless carriages, they’re not gonna last.” You know, I’m, I am that guy. I am that curmudgeon. But it is not for me. I could do a whole other podcast or series of podcasts about my feelings about AI. But I, it seems to be a, uh, a solution in search of a problem. It seems to be designed first and foremost to excite captains of industry about making billions and trillions of dollars, and it seems like a way to ensure that people stop talking to each other, that human beings stop being employed and employable.
I don’t see the point to any of it. So yeah, if people wanna watch Pluribus and say, “Yeah, this is that guy Gilligan dinging on AI,” you know, have at it. If that’s what you wanna think, I got no problem with that.
JEFFREY JONES: I wanna come back to audiences ’cause I love to ask showrunners this question about audience. But let’s… You used this phrase, captains of industry. You know, one of the things the show does well is we internally were using the word optimization with them sleeping together, the HDP, the human-derived protein that they consume. Humans aren’t necessarily optimizing creatures, but capitalism is. Corporate capitalism is all about the optimization process.
So I guess I’m interested here, again, that seems to be a sublimated or a, an aspect these humans have maybe embodied that this is just the ways of efficiency, even though their dictate or their morals are such that they will make themselves extinct. Their optimization and their, I guess, moral code will make them go extinct. I guess I’ll say there’s not so much a question here as you can see the optimization. This is the rational, logical way of doing it, but that’s not necessarily a human instinct. It’s very much a corporate capital instinct for efficiencies purposes.
VINCE GILLIGAN: I love the way you put that. I hadn’t really thought of it that way. Again, this is why I want people to tell me what my show is about. They are always smarter about it than I am. I can’t see the forest for the trees most of the time. On the other hand, if you are of a mind to watch the show and say the world would be better this way, as evidence, you could say to yourself, “Look at the way they save electricity. Look at the way they recycle. Look at the way they are such wonderful stewards of the world.” They won’t even… Not only won’t they kill a cow and eat it, they won’t even kill a blade of grass if they can help it.
I am delighted every day when I hear about new ways of interpreting this show. I don’t want for a minute anyone thinking, “Yeah, we knew all this before we even started. We mean to apply all these things simultaneously.” It really is… This show in particular, more so than Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, this show is really meant to be open for interpretation. I’ve said probably in a couple other interviews, but it bears repeating. This is kinda our version, our more humorous version of a post-apocalyptic story.
And in our particular apocalypse- It interests us, the writers, the actors, everyone making the show, it interests us… Well, I can’t speak for everyone, I’ll speak for myself. What interests me is to let the audience decide whether this is indeed good or bad. When you watch The Walking Dead or The Last of Us, excellent shows, you watch those shows, there’s no doubt that you don’t wanna be a zombie. There’s no doubt that you wanna be infected with this fungal disease.
In our show, a great outcome for me would be a bunch of people getting together, fans of Pluribus, and arguing over it. The world would be better compared to what this madness we’ve got going on in America right now, this balkanization, this tribalism, this zero-sum game we got going on. And don’t even get me started on that. But it’s like, of course this world of Pluribus is better.
But then I would want someone to take a big sip of their beer and then say, “Here’s why you’re wrong.” And then individualism, growth, creativity. I think of that great speech that Orson Welles gives in probably my favorite movie of all time, The Third Man, when Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles are at the Riesenrad in Vienna, the Ferris wheel. And I’m gonna misquote it, but that great speech that Welles gives about Italy under the Borgias. They had 500 years of murder, poisoning one another, and machinations, but that gave us the Renaissance. And then in Switzerland, 500 years of peace, and what did they develop? The cuckoo clock. You know, it’s… but, you know, I like the idea of people hashing this stuff out, arguing over it.
JEFFREY JONES: Well, as you were articulating, people are looking for meaning. Yeah. And again, the wonderful paradoxes of this show is its openness. So you have the hive collective mind, but the paradox of the show, it seems to me, is it’s not that. It is the opposite, which is it’s open. So many avenues for many meanings to be made, and as you say, debates and conversations to be had about it. And I think that television can and should do so much more of that, and you’ve, you guys have just done a fantastic job and are to be congratulated, even if you don’t know where it’s gonna end.
Which, we know that where you started is asking the right questions. So I, again, congratulations to you and the team for such a brilliant exploration. And Vince, thank you for being with us today. I’ve enjoyed the conversation, and wish you the best of success as you guys embark on season two.
VINCE GILLIGAN: Thank you so much, Jeffrey. I gotta say that the Peabody, you folks have been so wonderful to us over the years. It is just an absolute… It’s right up there with the, just my thing I’m most proud of is my Peabody Award, or awards plural. You guys have been so good to us. Thank you so much, and I just appreciate it very much.
JEFFREY JONES: You make great television. You just keep doing that.
VINCE GILLIGAN: Ah, thank you. Thank you, Jeffrey. Appreciate it.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: What does happiness even mean without a little depression? As a standup comedian, it is a question I’m confronted with often. Thanks again to Vince Gilligan for joining us in the first half of this episode. It was great to hear him and Jeff dive into some of the themes and questions that drive the show.
As tempting as it might be to get prescriptive about Pluribus as viewers, “Oh, it’s about AI. It’s about cults. It’s about COVID,” the show refuses to cede ground to that framing. Its questions feel deeper, darker, and in some ways more exciting. What does it mean to be yourself? What is the value of unhappiness? Is an optimized or frictionless life one being fully lived?
I cannot answer those questions without melting, so I’m thankful again for Vince Gilligan joining us today. Next up, we’ve got the star of Pluribus, Rhea Seehorn, joining us. She’ll be talking to Caty Borum. We’ll be right back.
GABE GONZÁLEZ:Welcome back. We’re here with Rhea Seehorn, star of the series Pluribus, who is sitting down with We Disrupt This Broadcast executive producer and director of the Center for Media and Social Impact, Caty Borum.
CATY BORUM: Today on We Disrupt This Broadcast here to talk about the incredible show Pluribus and her amazing work on it, we’re talking to actress Rhea Seehorn, who it’s important to note, has won several huge awards for her role as the lead character, Carol Sturka, in the Apple TV+ series Pluribus, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, TV Series Drama, the Critic’s Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series. So welcome to the podcast, Rhea.
RHEA SEEHORN: Thank you. Thanks for that intro.
CATY BORUM: There’s so much that’s really, like, mold-breaking about Pluribus as a show, but centrally what we talked about a lot in our writer’s room for this podcast is that most of the time it’s like a one-woman play, and you as Carol Sturka are kind of performing in a stage of your own in so many different scenes. So I think we, the first thing we’re just dying to know as a group of people who watched the whole season is we wanna know about your experience as an actor in this role.
RHEA SEEHORN: That all reminded me of theater a lot, and in these scenes where I’m alone, well, first of all, I never feel totally alone, from the very real practical of the fact that there’s 150 people on the other side of the camera helping me make this scene. Sometimes I’m doing a dance with Eli, my dolly grip. You know, sometimes it’s the lights, it’s the sound, it’s, you know, Phil Palmer figuring out how I could have an ear wig so that that pilot scene where I’m, towards the end where I’m speaking into the television to the Secretary of Agriculture, they figured out a way for us to film that live.
But number one, it does feel like theater in there’s these wonderful moments where I call it holding the stage, and when you have a relationship with the audience and you just need to be, you just need to think the thoughts and stand there, and you don’t need to telegraph what you’re thinking, but they’re just breathing with you, and you have to just settle into that and trust that relationship.
That’s what it feels like to me when I’m doing those scenes by myself, is- The audience– There’s a part in my brain while I’m in character that’s still aware that I am– that my audience is ultimately the viewer, right? I’m taking them down the rabbit hole, and I’m inviting them into this story. And then the last part of it is I go through these scenes, and I know that Vince wants as many story beats and as much dense storytelling from a scene with no lines where I’m by myself as he does from a dialogue-heavy or action sequence, right?
So I’m going through, and I’m making decisions, or at least finding a foundation to make decisions with him on the day of what Carol might be thinking. You know, starting with things like, okay, it says in the script that she’s, you know, waking up on the couch with a bottle of booze almost empty. So that tells me: not able to sleep in the bed where my wife used to be yet, and so probably fell asleep in a lot of anguish, and alcohol, and physically not comfortable.
So that’s gonna affect how you wake up, you know. And also those– You just start thinking about every tiny beat that would happen in that story. When I wake up, am I hoping that this all was a nightmare for a second, and when do I realize it’s not? And we had that wonderful scene where he staged it, Vince staged it so that when I turn my head, I immediately see my, my wife’s body, and the reality comes crashing in.
And then from there, you’re deciding the decisions of, like, what am I gonna do? What do you do in this new world? And Vince and I constantly would drill down on one of the most important parts of the story and of playing this role was that she stay an “every man.” She is a very reluctant hero; And really trying to drill down, like, what would you do if you woke up to this the next day?
Like, where do you even begin? And for Carol, sometimes it’s the smallest things that are actually monumental, of like, what am I gonna do with my wife’s body? Like, do I cover it? Do I drag it out? She does not want any help from these people. She’s not even sure that they don’t eat people yet. Right. So she’s like, gotta do, I gotta get rid of this body, you know?
Meanwhile, you’re sort of living in a delusional world where at that moment she doesn’t even know if they can kill her with lasers. I mean, she partially believes what the guy on the TV said, but she also kind of absurdly thinks being in her house is safe. It kinda made me laugh the whole time we were doing the pilot that she’s so desperate to get home as though that’s some kind of fortress.
Like it can still, it’s just a house. But yeah, I just, we get our scripts one at a time. Ah. So I take each one as its own film, as its own play, but I’m obviously doing the connected tissue as she grows because Vince does allow us to, he allows characters to evolve, which is extraordinary and really fun to play.
CATY BORUM: So one of the things that’s so interesting about this show, and I wonder if you all hear this from fans who manage to get in touch with you, but no one can quite agree on what ultimately is this show about? What is the central metaphor? What is your sort of interpretation about what this is? I mean, you had to embody it, so there must be something that you, it could be several things, but what do you ultimately think the show is saying to us?
RHEA SEEHORN: Well, I hate to spoil it, but I beg to differ, that I actually think it is my job to not… Carol isn’t thinking about what this thematically means. I will say, in the moment, sometimes we’d have late night discussions, you know, with the crew, whether it’s that great scene with Jeff Hiller when he, I find out that my wife thought my work was a hack.
You know, and we’re all people in the arts, so we’re all cringing. You know, so we would have discussions about what this brings up. Like, why does it matter if somebody loves your work the same as they love all work? As long as they love it, why do you need to… And, like, how much do you think ambition to be better and better at what you do is an artistic and valuable pursuit versus utterly ego-driven and completely arbitrary?
What’s the difference if it’s better than someone else’s? But it’s bugging the shit out of her in that moment, and she thinks it completely voids the compliment at all if you love my work the same as crap, you know? And so we would have some real deep dive conversations about that stuff. But as far as, like, the larger meaning, I honestly did not really go there of, like, I really didn’t even think about its relationship to the pandemic until after, when we were being asked by journalists about that.
Of course, now when I think about it, like, oh, sure, like, being isolated and personally, I’m very 50/50 extrovert/introvert, and if one is upset, the other suffers. Like, I have to have that time. So I’m always like, “I need some alone time. I need to be by myself,” and man, did the lockdown test me of, like, be careful what you wish for.
So, you know, Carol’s going through, oh, she’s a total misanthrope, and that’s getting tested. But Jen started writing it 10 years before The pandemic, you know, and before AI was the debate topic it is now. And sure there’s … You could draw comparisons to religious zealotry and evangelical stuff, cult stuff, politics, anywhere you find binary thinking, which is almost everywhere now of, like, things are not black and white.
And for me, if I thought about anything thematically, it was what does it actually mean to be a human, and what do I celebrate as far as, like, the pursuit of happiness? Not living in happiness as a stasis, as a place where you just rest, but, like, the pursuit of it. So I thought about things like that. I will admit to definitely thinking about the ramifications of saying, in a good way actually, I mean, that it’s a woman’s anger that is actually so terrifying to the whole world.
CATY BORUM: Oh my God, Rhea, we talked about that.
RHEA SEEHORN: And Vince was like, “What?” And I was like “come on.” So that’s one that I, I did think- consciously about.
CATY BORUM: Can I just tell you, I’m sorry to interrupt, but that is so wild because our writer’s room, which is primarily women, we spoke about how interesting it is that the world cannot handle a woman’s anger and rage.
RHEA SEEHORN: And that it’s also her secret weapon. It literally shakes these people out of their place for a minute.
CATY BORUM: And Vince did not see it that way?
RHEA SEEHORN: Well, if he did, he’s not admitting it to me. I just was like, I immediately recoiled because he doesn’t wanna think about things in a thematic, preachy way, and so I didn’t wanna put it in his head. I just got excited by it. I just really liked that it’s just, it’s there. It’s not hitting you over the head with it, but it’s just there. And, um, I’m somebody that suppresses my anger, and I’ve said this before publicly, until I’m literally covered in eczema because it wants out so badly. So it was interesting for me to navigate this person who’s very impulsive, very quick to anger, and then have that taken away from her.
Like, even in the scenes where I’m very upset, ’cause you see from the beginning, as upset as she is, and as furious, even when she feels absolutely that these people murdered my wife, as a fact, she still is so upset that she vomits when she’s told that she has hurt one of them, one of the others, that she has caused any physical pain to anybody.
She cares, which is a distinct difference between Manousos and her. But then, through the season, I mean, she starts to see them more and more as human, and more and more as they need to be saved rather than punished, and then obviously develops feelings specifically for Zosia. But even then, when she- so by the time she gets angry at her for creating the diner and making her feel manipulated, for stealing her eggs, Vince would have to remind me, or whoever was dir- Melissa Bernstein was directing me in the one where I come home from them making the diner, and you have to be very careful about where the lid is that I have to keep on, that my voice can’t get too intense. I can’t get too angry, or I could cause physical harm. So then it was really interesting as an actor, having that taken away, like I can’t ever go all the way there.
CATY BORUM: It’s a pretty interesting metaphorical thread. Obviously, it’s not totally what the show is about, but I think many, many women watched the show and thought, “Oh, she’s not allowed to be angry. None of us really are,” which is interesting to talk about, you know, with your other lady friends.
RHEA SEEHORN: Well, and let’s face it, even to the degree with you saying she’s grumpy and other people saying, like, she’s so not likable or why is she so angry? Let’s face it, I don’t think they’d be saying that if it was a male character.
CATY BORUM: I agree, totally. Yeah, it’s justified …
RHEA SEEHORN: I just don’t! I’m like, I’m sorry she wasn’t perky enough after they killed my wife- … and my whole career is gone, and the whole world is gone, and I’m gonna die alone watching, you know, Golden Girls? Like, I should’ve been more polite about it? I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Vince even said that in one of the panels. He’s like, “It’s so funny, I was never asked about Walter White’s likability.”
CATY BORUM: Yeah. So you know, if there’s one thing that maybe many people could agree on, I won’t say everyone, is that, you know, anyone who watches the whole season of this show does take away, like, ah, the quirkiness of humans. We like that at some level, right? Like, maybe not all of us, but, and this is what Carol misses, right? Like, you’re not all the same. What are you talking about? Why do you think a show like this is important now, or interesting now for people to talk about?
RHEA SEEHORN: I’m so grateful that it did strike people as important, and it did so at a magnitude that Vince and I didn’t see coming, which we’re very grateful for. I knew it was a super weird show. I knew it was a show that I would wanna watch, and I knew that it made me think so hard about so many complex things, and that I couldn’t wait till people saw it so that I could actually just talk to people about it. But we didn’t know if, like, does that mean it will be, like, a niche audience?
And instead, it struck a chord somehow in a much larger way than we anticipated that we’re so, so thankful for. I actually think that’s one of the secret sauces in what he does, is he was writing what he wanted to think about, the challenges and the things that are going through his mind, the questions he’s wrestling with in life, and they are big, messy questions, and he stayed true to that and then wrote this story about an extremely reluctant hero trying to save the world when the world is not sure it wants to be saved.
And out of that, it ended up striking a chord, I think because, and I’ve spoken to a lot of people that have-, a huge age range, gender, non-binary, people from all walks of life that I’ve talked to, people from different political sides, and I think people were really ready to have some more nuanced conversations about the gray areas that are so much more vast between all of us than what’s black and white.
CATY BORUM: That’s so perfectly said. That’s exactly right. Rhea Seehorn, we are so grateful that you stopped by the old podcast, and we wanna ask you about season two, but we will not. But we’re excited about it.
RHEA SEEHORN: I know nothing, so that’s an easy answer.
CATY BORUM: That’s perfect.
RHEA SEEHORN: I don’t have a clue.
CATY BORUM: But thank you so much. We appreciate your time, and your work is incredible, and we are full of congratulations for all the awards that you will continue to get.
RHEA SEEHORN: Thank you so much for that.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Thank you again to Rhea Seehorn for joining us this episode. I really appreciate hearing her describe from an actor’s perspective how honing in on Carol and making this high-concept sci-fi series feel almost like a one-woman theatrical production helps build a relationship of trust with the audience. It makes Pluribus feel more intimate, more personal.
We feel for Carol despite her very human flaws. And as was mentioned earlier, Carol gets called grumpy a lot, perhaps unfairly. She’s a misanthrope, an introvert, sure, but I feel like most people would have a meltdown and lock themselves away if everyone on Earth was the same person and constantly trying to get you to smile. It sounds suffocating and creepy and really existential. Maybe, as Rhea said, it takes a woman’s anger to shake the world or save it.
I cannot wait for Season 2 to continue this journey with Carol and Manousos and the rest of the hive mind, including former We Disrupt This Broadcast guest Jeff Hiller, who’s been lauded for his role on the series. So thank you again to Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn for joining us, and thank you all for listening.
This is our last episode of the season, so if you liked what you’ve heard, please share this podcast with your friends, leave a comment wherever you listen to us, and let us know your thoughts. We hope to join you again next season for more disruptive conversations.
But before we wrap this whole thing up, you all know we’ve got one segment left.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: Because the Peabody’s are decided unanimously, every episode we’ll bring you the quote that we chose unanimously as our most disruptive moment.
VINCE GILLIGAN: Who’s unhappy? Writers. Writers are unhappy.
GABE GONZÁLEZ: We Disrupt This Broadcast is a Peabody and Center for Media and Social Impact production hosted by me, Gabe González, with on air contributions from Caty Borum and Jeffrey Jones. The show is brought to you by executive producers, Caty Borum and Jeffrey Jones. Managing producer Jordana Jason. Writers: Sasha Stewart, Jordana Jason, Bethany Hall, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, and myself, Gabe González. Consulting producers Jennifer Keishin Armstrong and Bethany Hall. Researcher, Riley McLaughlin. Graphic designer: Olivia Klaus. Operations producer: Varsha Ramani. The marketing and communications team: Christine Drayer and Tunishia Singleton. From PRX: the team is Terrence Bernardo, Jennie Cataldo, Edwin Ochoa and Amber Walker. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.