Rhea Seehorn Recalls Filming Carol’s “Technically And Physically Challenging” Bar And ER Scenes With The Others

When the end credits roll on the pilot of Vince Gilligan’s new Apple TV series, Pluribus, you’ll struggle to recall the last time you were so awestruck by a single episode of television.

The concept behind the genre-bending series, which finds nearly all humans infected with happiness after an extraterrestrial event, is inherently sci-fi. When the most miserable person on Earth, Carol (Rhea Seehorn), sets out to save the world from joy, the show strikes a remarkable balance between drama and comedy. But the majority of Episode 1? Pure white-knuckle horror, palpable discomfort, and molar-cracking terror.

From massive, meticulously-choreographed group scenes and an ambitious oner to Seehorn’s heart-wrenching performance through it all, Pluribus‘ pilot is one of the year’s most impressive episodes. When chatting with Decider ahead of the premiere, Seehorn reflected on the “technically and physically challenging” experience of filming that elaborate, apocalyptic evening.

Spoilers for Pluribus Episode 1 ahead.

After astronomers discover a radio signal hundreds of lightyears away, they realize it’s a recipe for a nucleotide sequence, create it in a lab, and like a virus, it infects people with happiness. The lab scenes, which show patient zero and the initial spread, are utterly chilling — especially following the COVID pandemic. But Pluribus dials the dread up to 11 when everyone on Earth (aside from Carol) is simultaneously afflicted, freezes up, and starts convulsing. When the virus goes wide, Carol finds her wife Helen (Miriam Shor) and a tavern full of people fully unresponsive. She races Helen to the emergency room, and when the seizing people there finally break free from their trance, they’re not only happy, but connected through a shared consciousness.

“If you notice, it’s exteriors, and it’s nighttime all the time. So those are night shoots, and you have to shoot a lot of them to get all the coverage we need to establish this crazy world for people to understand,” Seehorn explained. “It’s very breathless, and Vince is really great at helping me understand — I try to keep track of myself, but when you’re doing this whole apocalyptic evening, you’ve got to know where you are in that arc. If we’re coming back two days later to go back to the ER, or to go back to the car when she’s driving, or whatever, where was she in her panic state at that time? And making sure that panic and that fear has its own different variations and colors, because we can’t just watch you at nine the whole time. That’s boring. So what is the journey she’s going through as well?”

While Seehorn had several demanding solo scenes throughout Episode 1’s mini horror movie, she stressed that achieving the outstanding final product was a true collective effort. “I have to give a huge shoutout to the Albuquerque and outlying areas of New Mexico, as well as the background actors, because they’re doing these motions for our choreographer, Nito Larioza, and had to have separate rehearsals to come up with the convulsions, or seizures, or spasming that’s happening to them,” she said.

A great deal of thought and attention to detail went into each individual movement, in hopes that the team would craft not only an eerie viewing experience, but an authentic vision of how the “others” might appear in that scenario. And they succeeded in spades.

“What do they look like? What does this contentment look like? Because it can’t be too smiley. It can’t be evil. It’s not robotic. What is it?” Seehorn recalled. “Part of what I think is unsettling is they are individual humans, not what would happen if you CGI’d it and they all had exactly the same convulsion. The fact that there’s idiosyncrasies within, it’s almost more disturbing. Even the choice to not sync voices completely, which we could have done.”

Pluribus creator Vince Gilligan chimed in to reveal that those personalized movements weren’t his initial desire, but after seeing the final result, he’s thankful things didn’t work out as planned.

“I wanted it to be a little more the same all across, but there’s no way to do that with real human beings,” Gilligan explained. “So I’m glad.” 

During the first episode of the Pluribus companion podcast, the team revealed they had open auditions for background actors and uses hundreds throughout Season 1’s big group scenes. Before each of them, Seehorn would give a speech to the actors to thank them for their work and stress how crucial their involvement was to the show.

“Those guys were all doing night after night with me, take after take. In that tavern bar. In the ER. And it’s difficult. It was taxing on them as well,” Seehorn told Decider. “I thank them tremendously for doing such a great job for the show, but also doing such a tremendous service to me. I was reacting to it in real time. I didn’t have to be told, ‘This is what it will be later, and right now it’s seven people on a curb staring at you.’ They were really doing these things.”

With Episode 3, “Grenade,” set to premiere on Friday, November 14, we can’t wait to see what other impressive scenes Pluribus has in store for Carol, Zosia, and the others.

New episodes of Pluribus premiere Fridays on Apple TV.