Rhea Seehorn says Vince Gilligan greeted her in the hallway at Sony Pictures Studios with, “Thank you so much for coming,” and the moment took the edge off her audition. That same working relationship later pushed Pluribus from a male-led sci-fi project into an Apple TV series built around her.
“I will never forget it. It eased me because it sounded totally sincere. It did not sound like jibber-jabber,” Seehorn said of that first hallway exchange. She and Gilligan first worked together in 2015 on Better Call Saul, where she played Kim Wexler.
2015 at Sony Pictures Studios
During the Better Call Saul audition process at Sony Pictures Studios, Gilligan and Peter Gould introduced themselves to Seehorn and told her, “We’re going to work on it, we’re going to work on it together, you’re going to have some time to get to know Bob Odenkirk.” That promise now sits behind Pluribus, where Gilligan changed the long-gestating sci-fi project from a male lead to a role shaped especially for her. Gilligan changed Pluribus to fit Rhea Seehorn by rewriting the lead as the character Carol Sturka.
Carol Sturka is the irascible author who finds herself excluded from the show’s “happiness apocalypse,” which gives the series a sharper center than the original version would have had. Gilligan said both he and Seehorn are from Virginia, a small detail that fits the larger pattern here: this was not a generic recast, but a role altered for a performer he already trusted after Better Call Saul in 2015.
Memory and fact
Seehorn added a wrinkle that feels very Gilligan: “Memory’s not fact.” He answered, “You can trust her.” The back-and-forth matters because it shows how much of this project grew out of long familiarity, even as the two remembered the same audition era a little differently.
She also recalled Gilligan and his team asking, “Can we please make it more comfortable for the actors?” That fits the practical difference between a routine casting process and one that keeps the actor’s experience in view while a series is still being built.
Season 2 update
Gilligan and Seehorn also talk about a Season 2 update, which keeps Pluribus from being read as a one-off creative reset. For viewers, the key takeaway is simple: this is not just Gilligan returning to TV, but Gilligan carrying a proven partnership into a new series and giving Seehorn the kind of lead role that usually gets written first and cast later.
