Pluribus stars Rhea Seehorn as Carol.Anna Kooris/Apple tv
Pluribus has dropped a real bombshell of a season finale.
The popular Apple TV drama stars Rhea Seehorn as Carol, one of a baker’s dozen of humans who survived as an individual after an extraterrestrial virus fused the rest of humanity’s consciousness.
Though it seemed for a moment that the cantankerous romance novelist was on the verge of accepting the new normal, her handler Zosia (Karolina Wydra) admitted in the finale that They - the hive mind, which cannot tell a lie - were still set on having Carol join the Joining and had the means to make it happen whether she liked it or not.
And so Carol headed back to her cul-de-sac in Albuquerque, N.M., to join Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga), the only other person on the planet wanting to reverse matters, and brought an atom bomb with her.
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Ahead of the season finale, The Globe and Mail spoke to Pluribus creator Vince Gilligan and writers Gordon Smith and Alison Tatlock, both long-time collaborators, about how the hive mind in the writers’ room created such a singular sci-fi show.
Vince, you have said that, after Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, you were ready for a hero for a change instead of a villain or an anti-hero. Carol’s got an atom bomb now. Where does she fall on that spectrum at this point?
Gilligan: I think she’s pretty heroic. She can be a pain in the butt, Carol can, sarcastic and snotty sometimes, But I root for her. I have genuine affection for her. She is trying to save the world the best way she can. What do you guys say?
Smith: I see her too that way, especially at this moment at the end of the season. She’s overcome the last temptation. It’s so painful for her, for so many reasons, to say: “I’ve deluded myself into thinking that They were something that They’re not. Ugh, I guess I’m back to saving the world.”
Tatlock: And, in typical Carol fashion, her weapon of choice is extremely complicated, troubling and loaded up with scary associations. So it’s not like she comes in and we are immediately like, “Woo hoo, atom bomb, great!” It’s heroic, and yet it doesn’t exactly feel right.
Creator Vince Gilligan on the set of Pluribus, on the outskirts of Albuquerque, N.M., in October.PETER FISHER/The New York Times News Service
Rhea Seehorn tells me that you have not yet imparted to her why her character has asked for an atom bomb. Do you know why - or are you still working that out?
Gilligan: We have no idea.
Tatlock: We were hoping she would tell us.
Gilligan: No, no, we have some ideas. We have some ideas.
You all sound very much on the same page about the characters - almost as if the writers’ room is a kind of hive mind itself.
Smith: There’s a lot more conflict – not in a bad way. We will have conversations where somebody says, “I think this is the way that the others would operate,” or, “this is the way that Carol sees the world,” and we disagree. It becomes productive, but we have to do the human work of getting to the point where we kind of understand things in a similar way.
Gilligan: They reach consensus in a nanosecond and it takes us hours or days sometimes, but the result is kind of the same.
Tatlock: Our job is to have opinions and of course our opinions don’t always line up – and sometimes that’s where the great work happens.
Gilligan: That’s true. Then you find a third way.
Back when you wrote on The X-Files, Vince, we always knew when we saw your name in the first minute of an episode that, happily, we were in for a Vince Gilligan episode. You had a distinct voice within the show. How does Pluribus come out singular, like an auteur TV show?
Tatlock: So the job of the TV writer on staff is twofold, which is to meet the tone of the showrunner, of the creator of the show, and bring one’s own perspective, voice, special sauce. It’s about melding those two things.
Smith: We talk for long, long periods of time, break the episodes in detail. Then, before we shoot any episode, the last meeting we have is a tone meeting. Some folks in the business do a very brief tone meeting. Ours are usually between seven and 11 hours long. They’re long and they’re intense, and we talk through the beats with the directors.
Gilligan: It’s a lot of talking. I’ve been working with these guys here a long time, a lot of years, and it is a group effort always. I wouldn’t say it’s a singular vision so much as it’s a consistent vision over three shows now because we all create it together and everybody is additive to the process.
In Pluribus, Carol is one of the few humans who survived as an individual after an extraterrestrial virus fused the rest of humanity’s consciousness.Apple tv
What is the special sauce that Gordon and Alison bring to a writers’ room?
Gilligan: Well, Gordon brings the mayonnaise.
Smith: It’s not always good mayonnaise, but ...
Gilligan: He tells me it’s mayonnaise, I don’t know. Anyway, they bring intelligence and good taste and creativity and a shared desire – a desire I share – to create characters who are interesting and novel and create scenes on television that do not always feel familiar, that in fact feel unfamiliar. The best day we ever have in the writer’s room is when we come up with something that we feel like we have never seen before on TV or in a movie theatre.
This interview has been edited and condensed.