It wasn’t just Rhea Seehorn’s Pluribus character who was thrust into unknown territory when she’s one of the last free-willed humans left following an alien viral invasion of Earth: the actress was so eager to re-team with Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan again she committed to the series with almost zero knowledge of the concept.
“I knew very little [of what he had planned],” Seehorn explained at Deadline’s Contenders TV panel Saturday for the series. “We had wrapped the final season of Saul, but I don’t think it had aired. And I was just calling all of my writers and producers and saying, ‘Please keep me in mind because as everybody up here knows, not only is this genius writing, it’s a very special family that he creates and just enables you to just challenge yourself and get better and better and better at what you do. And you’re surrounded by the best in the business all the time.’”
Seehorn revealed Gilligan told her he had written something for her, if she was interested.
“And I was like, ‘I am interested.’ But he said, ‘It has a sci-fi element. It has nothing to do with Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, but I’m not ready to share the script with you and I don’t want to pitch it to you. So you could just wait and tell me later.’ And I said, ‘That’s OK – I’ll just do it.’ Yes. I mean, who wouldn’t just say yes? It’s not like it was going to be bad, but I didn’t know anything.”
And then the script came.
“It was a couple months later that I got that first script and I think I had the experience that I presume a lot of the audience members did, which is like an insane rollercoaster ride,” the actress explained. “It’s incredible, but you could immediately see the, as you guys all saw, the tropes he was playing with of like every time you think like, ‘Oh, it’s a zombie movie. Oh no, it’s not.’ And he was playing with all these different tropes, but also genres and then tone, which I already knew from doing Better Call Saul, that he likes to push the boundaries of tone shifts and genre shifts sometimes within the same scene.”
“I could see him really pushing it even harder,” Seehorn added. “And then I was thrilled and I was very, very excited. And then I became terrified because I was like, ‘Oh, I’m doing this. I’m not just reading this. I’m going to do this.’ And then I got the second two only because of the strikes I ended up being able to have. Usually we get them one at a time, but I did get three before we started.”
Executive producer Alison Tatlock, who joined Seehorn on stage, kept mum on any details regarding the upcoming second season but noted “We are in the thick of it of season two. I of course cannot talk about it all, but we are very excited about it and we’re deep in it right now. So hang in there, because eventually it will be born.”
Apple TV‘s Pluribus is described as a genre-bending original in which the most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness. In addition to Seehorn, the series stars Karolina Wydra and Carlos-Manuel Vesga and guest stars Miriam Shor and Samba Schutte.
Check back Monday for the panel video.