Rhea Seehorn on playing the silences in ‘Pluribus’

0:00This episode of KCRW's The Treatment is sponsored by Apple TV. From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:21Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. This year, Ray Sehorne received her first Emmy nomination for Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her role as the Determined Carol in the Apple TV show Pluribus, her newest collaboration with series creator Vince Gilligan. Sehorne received two previous nominations for Best Supporting Actress for AMC's Better Call Saul, where she first worked with Gilligan. and I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Seahorn before a live audience. Join us for that conversation. There's so much going on in the show. It's partially almost like what it's like if you were Joni Mitchell and the world was John Philip Sousa.

1:02Okay. If it's just marches, music with 4-4, and you say, but no, music can be blues and jazz and folk at the same time. It's two different spheres of communication that can't connect to each other. and I even think it's kind of a musical performance for you. First of all, I'm so thrilled to be here. KCRW is literally my best friend and I listen to your show every week and I'm obsessed with it and I started like blushing and freaking out as soon as they told me that I got to do this with you. So thank you.

1:36You can bury me now next to Helen because this is amazing for me. No, it takes too long to bury her. You don't want that. That was hard. almost as hard as it looked um it's an interesting question because I actually do think about the musicality of characters all the time and um it's not about listening to songs um I don't really use that in my prep but like when I would do there's quite a few sitcoms I did that I modeled after one of my heroes Bea Arthur and um she's the best but um she's often the tuba in the orchestra um And so I played a couple of characters where everybody's sort of like, they're doing the flute and they're like, and then my character comes in and goes, and that's the comedy of her.

2:24And so particularly with Carolina Widra playing Zosha, who's so brilliant at a very challenging role, I knew our musicality was completely different and that that was part of the comedy and the drama there. So I do think about that. And I do think Carol is very much marching to her own music. And it's one of the things she's fighting for is that we should not be all in step. And that, you know, that there's, gosh, the passages they have about when they're all excited that I'm going to write something new. It really got me thinking about I'm firmly team Carol as far as this would not be better to just be happy but part of a hive mind.

3:01And one of the reasons is because you'll never read anything new again. like everybody will have written the book together already in their heads you'll never see a painting that you didn't already know about or help create you'll never you'll never laugh because nobody can surprise you with a joke or a weird comment again um so anyway yeah i thought a lot about a lot about her musicality and her individuality within that i hear the music in the in the conversations i was telling you one of my favorite things i think you've ever done is that scene that scene and the third episode where she's finding out after Helen died what she thought of her book.

3:36But the look on her, she's trying to stay in the moment of figuring this thing out, but also it is her worst, her best friend, her partner gone, and this was the last thought. It's like having the person you loved think of you as a mediocrity. And just that she's trying to peer through the hurt to get information. It's an astonishing thing, right? Oh, thanks. And Jeff Hiller is so brilliant. in that scene. He's amazing. Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of people on stage cringing because we're all in the business to find out that, you know, your loved one thought you were a hack. But she is trying to find out if they can lie and to use that to her advantage.

4:16And so for me, in part of the prep for that, I thought about why she chose that question. She had to have deep down, it's like she can't not scratch that itch and she had to have deep down suspected that it's possible that Helen yes because otherwise like I've got to see otherwise I won't be able to find out can they lie if I don't ask a question that I think that they would not want to tell me and watch them try to get out of it and I think that she knows that Helen loved her and loved the life that her writing novels, romance novels, afforded them. And this was another thing that was like, we had late night talks, a lot of late night talks with my amazing crew where we would start to like, our brains would be reeling over things that we're bringing up.

5:04And within that conversation, it wasn't just like how horrible would it be to find that out. But would you be okay with somebody saying, I completely love you. I just don't think you're great at what you do. And like, I don't, I'm not sure I could, I don't know. I mean, like the whole world doesn't have to think I'm great. I mean, I'm trying to be, I hope I die trying to be a better and better actor every time I get a chance to be up at bat. But my partner, Graham Larson, like I care deeply that he thinks I'm great at what I do. Like it would kill me if he didn't. Please don't say you don't, Graham, if you're listening to this.

5:40But just keep it to yourself. But it's what we love about Vincent Gilligan. And it's funny. It's horrifying. It's also about somebody thinking they have a goal and that goal is pulled, that the rug's pulled from under them. That scene for me sort of encapsulates so much of what he does. But also, I think the reason he's attracted to you as an actor, because I've seen it before we got started. It's the way you play Silences that is so compelling. Thank you. And we were talking about the difference between Kim from Better Call Saul and Carol. Kim was furtive and she was the adult. She had to be the adult.

6:21She was determined to be that. And that great thing that Vince does is somebody is intransigent, even if they're wrong. They are so dogged about that. It's the same kind of persistence for Carol, which I think people read as rage, but it's not that. It's believing this one thing, isn't it? Yes. I mean, I find her polar opposite to Kim. I mean, she's so impulsive and so rash, even though Vince doesn't write two themes. He's never trying to preach anything. I personally found it very interesting that Carol, as a woman, that it's a woman's anger that is so terrifying to a bunch of people, to a civilization, and that it is this thing that can wreak havoc and that people are terrified of.

7:09but it is also somewhat a secret weapon. It like shakes people out of this trance they're in. And so I do think Helen was the adult in the partnership. Absolutely. And I think that Carol is finding out how much Helen was the lubricant, the adult, the facilitator. And having to do those things on her own are very, very challenging in addition to this horrible blanket of grief that she's under. but additionally i i would agree that well you brought it up out there there is this this death of everything that she knew at the beginning of the of the season and she is trying to figure out who she is in this new world i don't particularly find her when a lot of people say like she's so angry i'm like wouldn't you be like what when people are like she's she's very like rude and impolite i'm like i'm sorry would you be perky if they killed your wife your career's over you You have no friends.

8:04People reacting to a woman doing this. But also, I think that this is the amazing thing, too, that it's subtextual is that she's lost her definition as an artist. Absolutely. And what do you do when there's not an artist without an art? I mean, that to me is a real tragedy, the underlying tragedy in this. It is how she was defining herself. There's that great episode where the Hive is super—well, I brought it up a second ago. They're excited that she wrote something new because they have nothing new to read. And Vince does it so brilliant. he brings this up right around when she's starting to really get deep into her research of like what they're doing and trying to figure out how to stop them but her ego her vanity the fact that he keeps her totally real human not superhero she's a real human trying to deal with this so she still has vanity she still has ego but on the positive side of what's going on she still wishes she could still define herself as an artist.

9:00And so that little, that little tickle of like, Oh, I have fans, you want to read something like that when they wave from the other house, they're like, we'd love to read it, Carol, she, she goes back to writing. It was a salvation for her of a different sort before. And now it's the salvation of like, like you said, like, I used to be an artist, I used to have, you know, a reason and I was contributing something, even though I kept pooping on it and pooping on my fans, which Vince and I discussed, I never think she actually thought her work was crap. I don't think she actually hated her fans.

9:34I think it was, we've all been there where you feel like I'm going to beat them to the punch because in her head, a real writer would write this novel, you know, a real genius, a real journalist, a real actor, XYZ filling in. So I'm not that big of a deal. So these people that like me, then they're probably idiots. You know, I think she's just trying to beat them to the punch and it's self-loathing. I don't think she really like hates them. See, I thought it was too this thing. Well, you think this is writing. Wait till you see my real book when it comes out. There's also that, yes. I have to hide my art because you're not ready for it.

10:08But when I give it to you, it's going to really blow the world up. And I mean, I love the way her ego comes out at that moment where the 12 are talking about the plan that she wasn't included. And she goes, well, I write. I'm a writer. I can write that for you. Yes. that great scene with Samba Chuta playing Diabate. Like, it's just brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. And we played it. That was his first scene filming. Oh, my God. Yeah. And they were still trying to figure out who the character was. And he and I chatted. And I said, they're probably going to do some takes where they're exploring the modulation of your performance as far as, you know, they're just looking for, like, these different nuances of...

10:45Looking for the size of the performance, right? Yeah. And, like, who was Diabate before? And we still don't totally know. But that had to be infused into the scene. And so he was, and he's such a smart, smart, gifted actor. But part of our modulation that we were doing is how bad does he feel for saying this to Carol? To like, to give her the news that like, we've all been hanging out without you. Sorry. And we voted and you were not voted. And he found this wonderful threaded needle where you do see that there is another side to Diabate. And he does care about her feelings. But he also does feel like stop swimming upstream.

11:26Like you can't be old man yelling at the clouds in The Simpsons forever. Like it's this is what's happening. And there is a very good argument to be made for there's no stopping this. So start listening to the music on the Titanic because I don't know what to tell you. We're not stopping this. And that was a really it was a wonderful scene to play. And I knew that they were then going to have her go, you know, go into the bathroom and fall apart and cry. and you see like the loneliness is it's it's getting to her she's broken by that isolation they put her through but i mean for me that's that's the moment and that's what i was telling you about playing the silences like she's waiting to cry she doesn't go in and start crying right away she's trying to just each of these bricks like falling apart falling away from her foundation piece by piece and it's the beauty of the way you play silas i wonder where that comes from for you because each character who's being quiet is quieted in a very different way.

12:22I mean, when it's, Carol, she's trying to hold herself together. I mean, that episode where she's by herself is an extraordinary piece. Thank you. But the fun of it is watching the way you play quiet. I wonder where that comes from for you. Vince had to, we were doing a press chunk and he came out into the whole, we were in separate rooms and he came out and he was like, I'm sorry, you're going to hear something. You're going to hear something. I'm so sorry. I go, what? What did you say about me? And he was like, I told them that the reason I like writing these scenes for you with no dialogue is because you have a face like a billboard.

12:53And I was like, what? He said, he goes, what I meant was he was like, I can read like your thoughts without you, you know, making faces and everything. He was like, it just invites the audience in. And so I was very flattered by that. I'm very flattered by you saying that. But I'll say a couple of things about how I get to that place. And one is being allowed to not telegraph. Vince assumes the intelligence of his audience. And so I am not directed to make sure they know what I'm thinking or how to feel about it. But I hear all the time from fans that like that's one of the things they find so rewarding in Vince's work is the assumption of the intelligence that you are going along on this ride.

13:37And it's for you to interpret and discover and piece together and have the questions are always on purpose. Now, prep wise, in a very practical way, what I'm doing with these long people were like, did you have any idea these episodes were coming where you have no dialogue and are by yourself for the whole time? And I said, no, I got my scripts one at a time. However, I yeah, I never knew what was going to happen. Never. But I said, I had seen Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. I've seen some Mike Ehrman trial sequences where he's just going to look for a tracker on a car for 45 minutes. And so I know I wasn't surprised.

14:16But yeah, your first thought is like, holy crap, nobody's going to want to just look at my stupid face that long. I know you're like, the jig is off. I'm going to be fired. But the second thing I think is, no, this prep is the same as if it was dialogue heavy. because Vince wants just as many story points out of that non-speaking scene as he would from a speaking scene. It's the treatment in my conversation with Best Actress Emmy nominee Ray Sehorne, the star of the Apple TV series Pluribus. KCW sponsors include Apple TV presenting Pluribus, a drama series from Vince Gilligan. Ray Sehorne stars as Carol Sterka, one of the few humans immune to a virus that transforms the world into a single hive mind.

15:01Now nominated for 18 Emmys, including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actress. More at fyc.appletv.com. It's The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. And this is more of my interview with Best Actress Emmy nominee Ray Sehorne, the star of Pluribus. One of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen you do was in this episode we just saw, when you're driving away with all the chaos going on behind you. just, I mean, because I watched that four times in a row, just to watch what you were doing with your hands, because she wants to take her hands off the steering wheel, but she can't. And the world is following around, and you can see your body language just changing as you're trying to hold on.

15:45It's a profoundly extraordinary thing to see. Thank you for that. Tell me about that moment, because you say the script was given to you. you're not walking on stage doing Shakespeare where you know where the bosses are you know where the laughs are when you played it before even you haven't you know the weight of Shakespeare and comedy versus a melodrama or tragedy this is somebody who's had her world fault everything is happening she because she's trying to not be the 15 year old girl who was sent away to camp in that moment yeah and that was the pilot had I think at least three weeks of just night shoots because it's this night that never ends.

16:25You know, it's a film unto itself almost. And freezing cold, I must tell you. Desert climate for a freezing cold. But that driving sequence, I want to say, there were many parts of it, but the longest one, they put me, and I forget the name of the rig. I'm sure somebody in here knows it, but it was a specialized, I'm on a low like trailer bed connected to, you know, somebody else driving. but then there's also, do they call them volumes? The almost complete surround screen. And so they were projecting what the person in front of me can see that's driving so that I react in real time. Because we've got cameras facing forward and then we've got cameras on me and I need to react when the fire hydrant water goes across.

17:14And when something's happening behind me that I supposedly see in my rear view mirror, which by the way, I don't recommend when they do the reset and they drive back and the video is going in reverse. I have motion sickness problems and I was like, I was dying. It's the worst because your peripheral vision sees a different world going forward and this looks backwards. It was horrible. My life is so hard, guys. But it was, that was a feat of technical efficiency and magic and creativity from my camera ops to uh Marshall Adams filming that one like it it took everybody to figure out how to how to do that um and then because we shot it over multiple nights I would try to keep track and Vince would talk to me about plotting where is she because if we come back to Wednesday to finish something that we were doing Monday you know um and we also knew like it can't just be one note you can't just be like screaming in sheer terror for 50 minutes nobody wants to watch that so I tried to drill down on and he would bring this up to me all the time and we knew the best drama and the best comedy was going to come from me trying to figure out what would an actual regular person with her assets and faults like she's different than I am um I probably wouldn't have gotten up off the floor for at least two more weeks if I if this happened to me.

18:44But what would a real person, not somebody who's in a superhero movie do? And so there's so much shock involved and so much like layering and also still trying to get my wife some help. Why are these people all talking at the same time and all of this? And so that's what I tried to drill down on when we were doing the driving sequences is like, what am I looking at? And what would I actually be thinking? And it's also, it's so irrational that she thinks getting home is going to help anything. But in her mind, we kept saying, like, that is a safe spot. I just want to get in my house and shut the door and pretend this never happened.

19:22There's so many astonishing things in this show. Her watching herself during the heroin bit is kind of amazing to me. Thank you. Zetna Fuentes directed that. That was a lot of fun. And Allison Tatlock wrote that. There's so much footage that didn't make it on screen. yeah um so if you haven't seen this I'm trying to figure out if a if a truth serum would work on one of these people and so I steal some and I want to see uh if it works so I decided to film myself on it and fall asleep and I think nothing happened but when I wake up I realize my recorder has run out of tape so I must have filmed something so I watch it and Allison had written in like five things that might happen and they're all disjointed they're non sequiturs and then it said and let that know the director and Ray um add in if they have any ideas so I wrote maybe like 10 more they said we were going to film it for the whole day so I wrote maybe like 10 more things that seem like they would uh be some somewhat natural to something she would do in that room and then a couple of days before we were filming it in my head these disjointed things would be cuts like oh now she's on the couch and she's doing that oh now she's in the other room or now she's dancing and now she's sitting over here and they're like well no because we want to preserve the camera angle that is the camera that she's filming herself with which wouldn't have cuts in it so when you see it is when carol sees it and the only things you don't see she's fast forwarding through a couple of times they cut back to my face but whenever you're on what she is watching, it's skipping forward and you're fast forwarding, meaning it wouldn't have go to block, which means I have to be doing things between them.

21:11And so about three days before, I started having a heart attack because memorizing lines that are complete non sequiturs, like if I say, good to see you, and you say, I'm pretty sure the bus is going to be late, it's harder to memorize because it's not off of what I said. So you have to give yourself a reason to say it. Memorizing non sequitur actions like I'm singing and now I'm putting on a knit hat and talking to the camera and I knew they wanted to do like eight minute takes where I never consult like what's the next thing I do. So I wrote down, I wrote down all of the bridges between things because I thought, you know, what's funny slash sad when somebody really is wasted is they make sense to themselves.

21:51Like they don't think it's weird that they just started doing an English accent and reading out of their own book. So I would like add things like it's cut, but like Like whatever I was doing right before, I decided that I put on my sweater that's there and that in my head it has elbow patches and I'm a professor. And so that's what would make me sit down and read to my class in a weird British accent. But they just they cut out what I was doing between. But you see it when you fast forward. But anyway, that's my little inside scoop. That was hours and hours and hours. It's amazing to watch the gospel watching her fascination and shame because clearly she thought, oh, I'm nothing.

22:30I'm in control of this. I'm sure I didn't say anything weird. But that's also another moment about this continuous sort of deaths of her character. That's the moment she's sort of watching and says, oh, that's what I'm like. That's extraordinary. And just this weird sigh that she does at one point that they cut in. That's what I'm like and that's what people see. Yeah. That's extraordinary. And admitting that I'm attracted to Zosia. And they also cut to me when Vincent said he was happily surprised that I also chose to do like the along with Zetna's consultation as well. The I miss you. I miss you.

23:11I miss you. That was just written. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I decided let's make it about Helen. And then I also thought, yeah, drunk cry. We've all seen that like it can be funny, but it's also real and it's so real. And she's when we see her, for the most part, after the pilot, she will not let that out. So I liked just for story wise, not because I like to look at my stupid face that they cut back to me when I see myself crying and saying, I miss you, I miss you, I miss you, because that's terrifying to her. That's like we're keeping that we're keeping that way down. That is the burning feeling in the esophagus every day that she has to swallow.

23:53It all leads up to the last episode. And by that episode, she's the grown-up. Although she did ask for an atomic bomb. A little bit of rashness. Until the end. But also that's her idea. I should say she's being her idea of a grown-up. And she's thinking, well, this is what it's going to take. Because, again, she still has issues with impulse control. That's why I think it's the difference between anger and being a teenager. I think the fascinating thing about her is that she has almost no impulse control. Right. That's why it makes it so interesting because she's this artist who's also incredibly childlike, wants to preserve that because she thinks also that's her art.

24:30And if she lets that go, then she'll be just like everybody else anyway. I think that's the deep-seated fear. Right. If she stops being this person, she's one of them without the drugs anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Vince would remind me. it was another like layer of an obstacle in scenes that not only as an actor once I care that because Carol does care if she's harming people she cares deeply that all these people were killed because of her uh behavior um and then once she starts caring about Zosia in particular we'd have those scenes where um where I get very angry that the that the diner was all a manipulative fabrication um and what does that mean about any care you're showing me in general is is nothing here real and then also in this in the in the finale when I discover what she's done that for any actor to have raising your volume or getting too angry just taken away um is like oh that's a whole pink color I can't use but then for Carol that that was her go-to it was interesting We would do scenes quite a few times where I would just start to get, not raising my volume, but the anger of like how upset or pissed off I am.

25:43And we would play with like, she's got to suppress that. What else could she do? And I'd have to like swallow and figure out like, can I say this in a calmer tone? Which, I mean, we've all been there when you're like, okay, I got to get a hold of myself. But I think for Carol, it's extra hard. It is extra hard because, but she also wants people to see the effort. I mean, she wants people to see, because by that last episode, she's not being performative anymore. This part of her is that she doesn't have an audience anymore. Right. It's very canny the way it's staged at the very beginning. We see an audience around her.

26:13The first 10 minutes of that first episode, she's constantly surrounded by people who love her and are telling her how great she is. No, you're not. I'm not great at all. Right. No, no, no, no, no. Please. I'm not great. Please. Right. But she doesn't have an audience anymore. Well, that's why for me the real tragedy is it's an artist who's lost her art. Yeah. And also an artist who's lost her definition. Because I would say to some extent Jimmy's an artist. I think he is an artist with words in the same way that she is. But he's constantly got an audience around. He just, he hates it. That's the difference.

26:48He hates his audience. She does not. Right. And so when she's been saying she hates them and she doesn't have them anymore, she realizes how much she needed them too. That to me is so subtextual in his performance. Yeah. I think one thing that I did think was similar between Kim Wexler and Carol Sterka is an internal compass that they cannot let go of, of like whatever they think is right to fight for, they're going to go down swinging. Like in very different ways they go about it. But I think I believe that Kim Wexler wanted to be a hero in the world. I think Carol would like nothing like that I think she Vince reminded me when when we did the scene where I fly out to go talk to the others that are like me and at first I was working with Jennifer Bryan doing costumes and Sherry Montesano doing makeup Trish Almeida doing hair and we thought she probably puts herself together she's done I've done publishing meetings before she probably wants to look strong and try to tell these people like we got to do this guys let's let's let's lead the revolution and Vince said no no no no she's hoping that someone else will lead the revolution Carol does not want to be the hero or the leader she was hoping to just be assigned to bring cups and plates to the revolution not not lead it in any way which is why this and it informed that scene where I do where I could walk around going like anybody got science science anybody read American Journal nothing math math he was like she has to remain the world's most reluctant hero so even at the end there's like a resignation of like anger of like god damn it it has to be me i don't want to do this no it takes a whole internal compass is still like you have to fight you have to fight but because she's human it takes her being threatened individually and personally one more time because the whole rest of the world is saying it's fine i can't keep saying this is my favorite because there's so many things i love about this but it's really about watching all the preparation and none of it's showing.

28:50You know, because it's a series of obstacles, really. You have to try to communicate to people who are listening but can't hear what you're saying. And it's really evident in that scene with him where you don't have a language in common, but at least you have the translator on the phone. When you're talking to the rest of the hive, you have a language in common, but they still don't get what you're saying. Yeah, which I think Carol feels, misinterpreted in general. And so it was very fun, like to bring that into it. Those scenes where we're letting the phone translate us were really hard because Carlos Manuel speaks better English than I do.

29:33We just did a panel discussion recently and he was talking, he was like, sagacious, is that the right word? And I was like, dude, I don't, I was like, sure, sagacious is the right where he's um he's a very very intelligent man and um so he completely understood the english but he's playing that he doesn't and i because i've studied the script i absolutely know what he's saying because it has the translations in the script but i need to play that i can't and so waiting till the end of the translator's line to not react and to also choose but then vince was like yeah but there's some and gordon smith directing that one there's moments where the words are similar enough or the cursing is something you've heard before or his expression makes me go like okay you're calling them you know evil again I can tell even though it's a different word so we really had to play with like because it also would become way too stilted if we sat stone-faced and waited for the translator to speak every time there had to be interaction um and yeah we played that scene so many times trying to figure out what is what is the right balance there and it also was funny and also i'm lying and he's the first person that's completely calling me on it oh really you don't know why they came back i'm like i don't know it has nothing to do with me sleeping with her i can't thank you enough for this conversation let's give her a hand please this is cool thank you dream come true

31:03After working with her on Better Call Saul, its creator, Vince Gilligan, saw what Ray Sehorne was capable of and built the new Apple TV series Pluribus around her. It resulted in her first Emmy nomination for Best Actress. Previous conversations with those keeping the tradition of the paranoid thriller alive, They're at the archive, kcrw.com slash thetreatment. Our other archive is kcrw.com slash thetreat. It's our ongoing segment in which creators talk about the inspirational moments in their lives that kept them going. We keep going here most weeks. The show is produced and edited by Rebecca Mooney and mixed by Katie Gilchrist.