Vince Gilligan and crew at SXSW panel onAlbuquerque Aftermath: From Breaking Bad to Pluribus with Rhea Seehorn, Vince Gilligan, and Key Creatives.(Photo by Paul Thanasack).
Gilligan, creator of “Breaking Bad,””Better Call Saul” and, now, “Pluribus” came to SXSW on Saturday, March 14th,with Rhea Seehorn (Pluribus’ Carol and Better Call Saul’s Kim) as well as composer Dave Porter, costume designer Jennifer Bryan, and producer Trina Siopy. The conversation explored the collaborative process, Albequerque’s role as the anchor city, and the close creative partnerships nurtured over more than a decade.
MEANING OF PLURIBUS
A lot of the questions seemed to revolve around, “What is Pluribus about?” It seems to be about an alien virus that threatens to take over the world as we knew it. Everyone is happy, but the inhabitants seem to almost have become as alike as drones in a bee hive…worker bees all. Happy little fellows. Everything is wonderful. Or is it? Carol seems to want to “save” the human race with all of its imperfections. Gilligan mentioned he had helped write that story when he writing for “The X-Files” (“The second best jjob I ever had.”)
GILLIGAN’S EXPLANATION of “PLURIBUS”
Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn at SXSW 2026.
Or is Pluribus about something else? One questioner threw out the idea that the entire series is a metaphor for grief and depression. The answer we got on Saturday, March 14th from Gilligan, himself, referenced a conversation he had many years prior with Director Michael Mann.
Michael Mann asked Gilligan (who was then writing for “The X-Files”): ‘What are we really trying to say here? What’s the message? What’s the theme? What’s the this? What’s that? And he looked at me and I will never forget, he said, ‘We have to tell that story. We have to tell a story about characters and the things they do. They face interesting obstacles, unique obstacles, and the way they surmount them or don’t. That’s what we’re doing here. There’s nothing much more to it than that…It is for other people to tell us sometimes what our shows and movies are about.’”
RHEA’S RESPONSE
The Question: “How long did it take for you to understand what Pluribus was all about, Rhea?” brought this answer, “I’m still trying to figure it out. Here’s the thing. It’s really wonderful that I’m playing a character that doesn’t understand what’s going on. Therefore, I don’t have to. I don’t know.” Seehorn went on to say, “It’s about human nature, but it’s also about what it means to be human and redefining what the pursuit of happiness is. That’s the end-all and be-all. How do you define success and how do you define love and relationships?” After some praise of co-star Carolina Weaver’s acting as character (Zosia) Rhea added, “I don’t know. The answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know what the show is about, and I love it.”
She reminisced about all the press she did for “Breaking Bad’ and added, laughing, “What if it means, for God’s sake, just be more Sphinx-like and that I have to shut up! There’s a lot of other people figuring out what it means.”
TRUST
Vince Gilligan at SXSW. (Photo by Paul Thanasack.)
Seehorn added, “But there’s this thing that Vince does where he trusts the audience. I have to say, it also involves the key trust of the performers. And it isn’t that I don’t take direction. We try it a million different ways and I very much enjoy that process, but I trust his ideas. And one of the great gifts he’s given me is that he trusts mine. But when we trust the audience, he alleviates or rids me of the onus to make sure the audience knows exactly what I’m thinking. I just have to think the thoughts and make sure that I’m being true to the character. But I don’t have to telegraph these things, and it really frees me up to do a much more complex and nuanced performance, which a performer is not always allowed to do.”
RHEA ON “PLURIBUS’” POPULARITY:
“Of course we were all trying to make the best show we could, and it was a show that I would be a fan of and it was so awesomely weird. I have not been able to guess where I was going to go…It’s like, hopefully, obviously, we find an audience that gets it, but is it this very niche thing? Is this going to be a very unique sort of cultish thing? The broad conversation and broad audience reception blew me away. It isn’t that I didn’t expect this, but I am blown away by it really touching some kind of nerve in people to want to really talk about it… the popularity of it and its critical reception. For critics and fans to like the same show. You don’t always win that lottery and that’s been amazing.”’
ONE WOMAN SHOW?
Interviewer, Vince Gilligan, Rhea Seehorn at SXSW. (Photo by Paul Thanasack.)
Much of the show centers on Seehorn, sometimes solely on her, by herself. Rhea answered, “I only got just one at a time, which is always the way we do it, so it wasn’t like I saw the breadth of the whole thing and understood, ‘Oh, I’ll be doing an episode with almost no dialogue. Oh, I’ll be doing episodes almost by myself.” She added, “I’m not as excited about that, because, for me, it’s the same work as if there was dialogue. I’m still feeling out what is happening in the story. What’s the character thinking?..And there are days where I would read something that’s tomorrow’s and think, ‘Oh, today’s the day they find out that I am not very good or that I was not very good.”
SOUND & MUSIC
(From composer Dave Porter)
“All those years that we’ve been together, this was a mandate to be different and to make this show distinct from the others that we’ve done. So, to break all those rules, to take our creative process and really re-analyze al the lessons we learned, the ways that we use music. Coming out the other side gave us a freedom to do exactly that and to take all of our favorite lessons and really explore new territory…I think the most important role for the score is to be an assistant in storytelling. Whatever I can do, I’ll do, which includes making things more powerful and more emotional, but, at the same time, open to interpretation as much as possible to lead. To open those doors for everyone to have their own viewpoints is a gift that you don’t get to work on for so many shows.”
Dave Porter on the music: “You can feel the human touch. You can feel that. There’s no comparison between something that a computer can do or something sound-wise or performance wise…The orchestra is another thing we had never done before. So it was a learning experience for us to work on that. And part of that is mentioned is that before you go and spend large sums of money on recording, you do demo versions, which is a new experience for Vince…Everybody took a leap of faith with me to know that the power of orchestra, especially on a show like this, is going to be value added many times over and be progress. And for anyone who hasn’t had the experience going to the symphony or standing in front of an orchestra as composer and people playing the music you wrote. It is inspiring and a blessing that we get to do that.”
Downtown Austin during SXSW 2026.
Costume designer Jennifer Bryan went on at great lengths about how she came up with the clothes for the show (brown was the color) and talked at great length about the yellow jacket and ordering the yellow leather pelts from France and having the jacket made. I watch the show. I never noticed the yellow jacket, so make what you will of her remarks. For me, the rather lengthy analysis of “the Albuquerque jacket look” versus whatever look the show currently has was much like a novelist who inserts massive amounts of description when what you really want is dialogue and action. Essentially, the message seemed to be that the clothing is essentially for protection from the elements and the costume designer also had to give some thought to the specific action in a scene, such as when Carol has to lift Helen’s corpse into the car.
WHY ALBUQUERQUE AGAIN?
The answer to this question essentially came down to the clouds, the collaborative crew, and the expense.
CAROL’S LIKABILITY
The question was asked, “What’s the secret to have an audience root for an unlikable character?” Seehorn answered this with a feminist slant: “The term likable I think has gotten misused or overused concerning female characters, because how people have been defining what’s likable in a woman is very, very restrictive. I think it’s more important that a character be accessible in some way, especially if I am the conduit to take the audience’s hand and take them down this rabbit hole. And for me, behaving truthfully and honestly in a moment when people would say, ‘Wow! She’s really not polite when they (the aliens) bring her things.’ They killed my wife. My career is gone. I might die alone watching Golden Girls. I’m sorry I wasn’t chirpy…Also, I’m going to suppress my anger until eczema comes out all over my body? I very much enjoyed exploring that Carol’s anger over her wife was her entire way of even behaving halfway normal out in the world…She’s allowed to display the full spectrum of human behavior and now she’s being asked to suppress that? It was really fun trying to figure out what are her other tools. She’s just grasping at straws. I find her complex and difficult and challenging, but I find her honest and truthful and real..”
CAROL AND GRIEF
Downtown Austin during SXSW 2026.
Seehorn further commented on Carol’s loss of her wife and the grief and depression she felt. “No, I’ve never had an alien virus take over the planet. But as you do, as actors, what is something I can draw from? What kind of tool do you lose in those moments.? And, for any of us and most of us this happens through grief. Terrible grief. Getting up off the floor the next morning is heroic by itself. And so I just felt like, really, all bets are off. She’s allowed to be as upset and angry as anybody would be. I hope that ultimately that makes her accessible and watchable instead of likable….She’s holding nothing back.”
