‘Pluribus’: Rhea Seehorn On Carol’s “Passionate Rage” & Her “Completely Normal” A-Bomb Response To Her Breakup With Zosia

Spoiler alert: The following article contains details about the Season 1 finale of Pluribus.

Similar to her character in Vince Gilligan’s sci-fi series Pluribus, star Rhea Seehorn ventured into the uncanny valley of the Others — most of the world’s population, now a mass collective of humans conjoined mentally via an extraterrestrial signal — with a distinct lack of information. However, unlike her fictional stand-in, the grouchy romantasy author Carol Sturka, she did so without fear.

Gilligan has been forthright during the press rounds for the popular Apple TV show, now the streamer’s most-watched in history, that he penned the sprawling series with Better Call Saul’s shrewd Kim Wexler in mind. For Seehorn, it was equally a no-brainer.

“I think especially as women, we sometimes want to know exactly where you’re going to take the character, because what if we’re not going to really be used? What if the character won’t be allowed to evolve in any way? I already know he’s not going to do that,” she tells Deadline of the role.

Carol is abrasive, challenging and deeply relatable. Despite being “extremely impulsive and extremely reactive,” her decisions are propelled by a deep sense of loss, righteous anger and, as Seehorn describes it, “passionate rage.” What drew the three-time Emmy nominee to the part even further wasn’t just the character’s “challenging” complexity, but also the content of the show, which makes legible philosophical queries that have plagued our species since inception.

Below, Seehorn chats about Carol’s intractable grief, the joys of creativity and why her character’s Season 1 finale decision is a “completely normal response to a breakup.”

DEADLINE: First off, congratulations on the Golden Globe nomination — so well deserved. Creator Vince Gilligan has said he wrote this part for you, but aside from working with him again, what drew you to this character?

RHEA SEEHORN: It literally just was Vince. Even if he didn’t write it for me, Vince just saying, ‘I have a project for you’ — because of his style of collaboration, the sets he creates, the department heads he surrounds himself with, the civility he conducts his sets with and then the writing itself is just the best foundation you’ll ever have to try to build a character. And I didn’t have any fear about it. He didn’t even tell me what it was going to be about. I had no idea. And I said, ‘It’s fine, just yes.’ And he said, ‘Well, no, you can wait and read it first.’ I said, ‘I don’t need to.’

I think especially as women, we sometimes want to know exactly where you’re going to take the character, because what if we’re not going to really be used? What if the character won’t be allowed to evolve in any way? I already know he’s not going to do that. Then, once I got the script, I would imagine I had a similar reaction to many people who watched the pilot, which is, ‘This is bananas. What is happening, and where are we going from here?’ His scripts … have pace and tone in them, so you have that breathless journey as you do when you’re watching them; they’re really fun reads. 

And I also could see all these genres that he was playing with and then turning them on their ear. I could also see these tone shifts that then got even wilder in swings once we’re working on performing them. I was like, ‘Was that comedy that just happened in the middle of that horribly dark moment?’ I was like, ‘Wow, this is going to be challenging, and so much fun.’ And I just got really excited. And my first thought was, ‘Oh, this would be a show for me as a watcher.’ I’d be so excited about this show, plot-wise and character-wise, but then also the profound questions it brings up about what it means to be human.

As a creative person, probably the most horrifying idea is that you can’t create something new in this world. In the show, you have to balance the overwhelming loss that is catapulting all of Carol’s decisions, and the tightrope she walks between wanting answers, wanting to fix things, and inadvertently contributing to suffering in a world that is now devoid of it. Were those discussions something that you were exploring as you stepped into this world?

Vince wasn’t writing to a particular theme or a topic. Many people have felt like: Is this commentary on AI? Is this commentary on the pandemic lockdown, divisiveness in our country, zealotry of any kind, community versus the individual? And he wasn’t writing to any of those themes; he was writing about human nature, but he does live in the world we’re living in. 

I, too, believe that when I’m playing the part, Carol is not viewing this as a theoretical debate topic. She does not have the luxury of thinking about this philosophically. It’s only when it comes up practically as far as wrestling with the debate of, ‘Am I allowed to believe that these people really care about me? Do I really think these people are a threat? What kind of threat are they?’ So I wasn’t really looking at it in an ideological way either, but I certainly had some really fun late-night conversations with my crew on weekends, of just the questions it brings up. Not only what would you do, but how do you redefine the idea of love? Is true love only when it’s unique to you? And is there something wrong with me that I might appraise some art as high art and some art as low art, or real writing versus not real? What is that? As long as it makes one person happy, isn’t it all the same? Is there something wrong with me that I actually love to be competitive with myself, and that I always want to get better at every scene I do? I hope I become a better and better actor, but would I be OK if everybody was brilliant? I don’t know. 

And to your point, one of the biggest things for me, is the joy of being surprised by what others have created, whether it’s a book or a song or a play or someone else’s performance or art, a joke — to ever have a real belly gut laugh at something, again, necessitates surprise. But I suppose the others would argue: But they are in awe of everything; everything is beautiful. 

I don’t think it’s for me, though.

Manousos is both a parallel and a foil of sorts to Carol. They are driven by similar things, are stubborn and angry — very relatably so. But the way Carlos-Manuel Vesga put it was that Carol has everything but no purpose, and he has purpose but has nothing. I’m curious how you view that, or if you view it similarly.

Was he speaking about Carol before [the Joining]?

No, after.

I deeply disagree then. 

How great is Carlos-Manuel though? We’re all a bunch of complete nerds that sit around talking about deep-dive script analysis of characters. It would bore anybody else to tears but Carlos-Manuel has definitive opinions about what the other characters are or think or are doing that sometimes we do not, and we have a very good time and a good laugh about debating him sometimes. He has not told me that one. 

Carol absolutely has purpose. He may have gone through the Darién Gap because of his purpose, but Carol, thinking that she needs to save the world, lifted a 500-pound gorilla called grief off her chest every single morning, and every glance out that window by the back kitchen sink, and every paver she put down, and no matter how exhausted she was [while] digging the grave for [her] own wife, gets back up; gets back up when she sees a barcode on the bag. 

She is addicted to having a purpose, in my opinion. Sure, it’s a distraction from the overwhelming feeling of being bereft and having lost everything but even her stuff with Zosia, when she capitulates to this relationship — someone had asked me earlier: Is the act of beginning to write another novel another distraction of playing house? I said, ‘No, to me, that’s the whole other love of her life, was her career and being a writer,’ and to have it completely taken away from you — there’s no one to write for anymore. When these people come and say, ‘Actually, no, you’re the only person in the whole world that could write a new book for us, and we are eagerly awaiting.’ And her little ego of, ‘I could have fans again,’ and the part of her that’s like, ‘There’s a reason for me to get out of bed and put pants on tomorrow?’ Even amidst this new love affair, she’s up and out of that bed. I know that feeling of having the 4:30 a.m. call, and no matter how early it is, you’re so happy to have the call. 

She’s lacking [in] ways to get to her purpose, and is very, very impulsive and is very, very reactive, but yeah, he’s without purpose, that guy! Come on, you’re just gonna obliterate everybody? How’s that gonna save mankind?

They do both take the paths of most resistance — digging the grave, refusing to take a plane — so that does show persistence in going after something.

They’ve definitely met each other’s match in the department of being a stubborn ass.

You said Carol’s impulsive, which she totally is, but I also find that she is somewhat deliberate in that impulsivity. I read in an interview that you’re constantly thinking about why she’s doing what she’s doing, like, ‘Why is she choosing to sleep on the couch when she can sleep on the bed?’ There’s just so much going on in her brain, and she’s at war with herself. How do you view that, and how do you bring that to your performance?

The script analysis work I’m doing as an actor is where the ‘why’ comes in, so I’ve thought about: ‘Why did she fall asleep on the couch and fall asleep drinking?’ But Carol, in the moment, did it instinctively; it’s like hot coals to go up that staircase that early — ‘I couldn’t possibly look at her side of the bed.’ So when I’m playing her, and she’s very deliberate at times, I find her extremely impulsive and extremely reactive with a lot of passionate rage. And all of these things at times can be her superpower, but at times the biggest thing in our way is this behavior. 

So even though I, as the actor, may try to think about what’s the ‘why’ that she did it, if I’m trying to play somebody who keeps acting impulsively and reactively, you then take out that transition. So even in our lives, when we have an impulsive reaction to something, if you were to go back and go like, ‘Why did I bark at that family member way too loudly when they commented on my dress?’ And then you go home and you realize, like, ‘Because there was someone else at the table that [is] always remarking on my clothes, and I picked this dress up specifically, and I had already gotten insulted that morning.’ And there was a ‘why,’ but you didn’t think about it at that moment; you just screamed at your cousin.

One of the things I wanted to wrap up with was, Carol almost goes on this circular journey from pilot to finale, where she comes back to her purpose, as we discussed. And there’s the atom bomb that she requests, which I loved so much. 

[Laughs] Completely normal response to a breakup, don’t you think?

Yeah, I wish I could do that. But if you could expand on or describe what’s going on in her head at that moment. Is it a bargaining chip? Is it a threat? Is it a sign of despair? Is it all of these things or none of these things?

I’m not trying to be evasive, I actually think you nailed it. It is all of these things and none of these things. I went and asked Vince, like, ‘Do you know exactly what her plan is with it?’ And he said, ‘No.’ And I think he was being honest; I know they’re in the writers’ room now writing Season 2. 

Normally, I do supply my own reason, just so that my acting will have specificity to it. This was one of the rare cases where I thought: It is an impulsive, highly reactionary, highly angry, highly hurt decision. ‘I’m going to ask for the largest, most destructive, horrible thing I could, and I’ll figure out the rest later.’ I think it’s even more rash that she doesn’t have a plan. That’s my opinion. 

I think it’s just [that] she wanted to make a huge statement. And she’s so hurt and so angry and doesn’t know what to do and is so overwhelmed by the choices she’s been left [with]. I mean, for one, she’s got to go pair up with Machete Dude? I mean, seriously, that’s my only teammate now? Maybe Diabaté [played by Samba Schutte], if he stops having sex with them; at least I know he doesn’t want to be changed. She’s not super happy about the picks for her team for kickball, I could say that, so she gets an atom bomb! I kind of had fun with the delivery of that last line, too. Just kind of like: ‘I don’t need to explain to you why I got it; it’s an atom bomb, whatever.’

This conversation has been edited and condensed for concision and clarity.