Brian Hiatt
Contact Brian Hiatt on X View all posts by Brian Hiatt March 18, 2026
Rhea Seehorn, center, and Vince Gilligan, right, at the Rolling Stone Studio, Live on March 14 in Austin. Pooneh Ghana for Rolling Stone When Pluribus creator Vince Gilligan and his writers room decided to give Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) her very own nuclear bomb at the end of Season One, they were pretty sure they had a plan for it. “We thought we knew what we were gonna do,” said Gilligan, sitting down with Seehorn for an interview last week at the Rolling Stone Studio, live at SXSW. “And then you get into it and you’re like: Do we? Do we really know?”
He joked that the show might just never mention the weapon again, and Seehorn played along: “Leave the box sitting in the driveway,” she said. “People forget,” Gilligan added, with a laugh. (See the whole interview on Rolling Stone‘s YouTube channel or press play above.)
Gilligan is also uncertain about when the world might see Season Two. The writers room has been at it for months, he told us, with less progress than he’d like. He suggested that a previously floated late-2027 schedule probably isn’t realistic, while admitting to some jealousy over The Pitt‘s production pace. “They’re kicking our butts in every award show,” he said. “They managed to make a great show and bring it in one year later, on the day, for the new season…. How frigging long is this gonna take? I don’t know. We’re doing our best. It takes forever, making this thing. I wish it was faster. We appreciate everybody’s patience very much, more and more as the months drag on. But thank you, anyone who likes the show. We are honest to God doing our best.”
Pluribus became Apple TV’s biggest drama launch in November 2025, and Seehorn won both the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award for her performance, which often finds her alone onscreen for multiple scenes per episode. For Seehorn, being in nearly every frame took its toll. “It was a marathon,” she said. “I was keenly aware that if I got sick, there’s nothing to shoot. I’m only not in, like, five seconds of this thing.”
But she emphasized that even in scenes where she’s the only person on screen, she’s not really alone. “I’m doing a dance with about 250 crew members that believe in the story,” she said. “It’s a dance with the camera. It’s a dance with the lights. It’s a dance with sound… It’s only gonna be better if I am doing it with everybody and everybody’s contributing their best work. You’re only messing up if you ever are thinking, ‘It’s all about me.'”
She recalled a moment near the end of five weeks of night shoots, when she was steeling herself for another take and a camera assistant named Jules tapped her on the ankle: “The sun’s coming up and we’re chasing darkness, not chasing light. And he just said, ‘You know we all got you, right?’ And it meant the world to me. And they do. And I got them.”
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Gilligan is doing his best to relish his ongoing writers room struggles. “I want it to get easy, but it never does,” he said. “And in my heart of hearts, I know that if it ever did get easy, that’s when it’s time to call it a day. That’s the time to retire. Because if it ever got easy, it wouldn’t mean that I had mastered it. It would mean that I was at that point a hack and I was phoning it in. Because if you’re doing it right, it’s never gonna get easy.”
Seehorn nodded. “I feel the same. If I’m ever not terrified, I’m like, what? What?”
Gilligan is emphatic that Pluribus is not a mystery-box show, and that fans expecting a grand reveal should temper their expectations. “If you’re waiting for everyone to pull their faces off and magically it’ll be reptilian evil, don’t hold your breath,” he said. “You might already know everything you need to know.” Then, taking it one step further: “If you’re really into mystery-box shows, watch something else other than Pluribus.”
Gilligan traces his aversion to the form back to his seven years on The X-Files, which he calls the second-greatest job he’ll ever have. “If The X-Files taught me anything, it was to assiduously avoid mystery-box shows,” he says. “You can do a mystery-box movie. It’s damn hard to do a mystery-box TV show.” The problem, as he explains it, is that open-ended series inevitably pile mystery on top of mystery. “With The X-Files, you got the bees and then you got the oil and you got the super soldiers. Every open-ended series falls prey to it.”
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Seehorn offered her own take on what Pluribus is really about. “It’s not a mystery as in, ‘I can’t wait to find out the evil power behind it,'” she said. “The questions it’s raising are more about what it means to be human.” Her character, she noted, is obsessed with stopping the alien threat, but the real drama is internal. “She’s wrestling with questions that are much larger about human nature while she thinks she’s going after the plot.”
Gilligan points to a key difference between Pluribus and other shows about humanity under siege. “I love The Walking Dead. I love The Last of Us,” he said. “Those are shows in which it’s a very binary proposition. You’re either a human or you’re a zombie or a mushroom person. And you don’t wanna be either of those things. There’s nobody who ever wants to be a zombie. But on this show, it’s a legitimate question. Maybe you’d be better off being happy. Maybe you’d be better off being one of ‘them.’ That, to me, is always an important element of this.”
Seehorn and Gilligan at the Rolling Stone Studio at SXSW. Pooneh Ghana for Rolling Stone The pair also address Quentin Tarantino‘s recent claim on The Joe Rogan Experience that TV shows don’t stick with you the way movies do. “Firmly disagree,” Seehorn said. “There’s forgettable films, just like there’s forgettable television, and then there’s ones that stick with you. I’m still thinking about The Leftovers. I’m still thinking about Six Feet Under.”
Gilligan agrees. “I’m still thinking about Twilight Zone,” he said. “I’m still thinking about The Andy Griffith Show. I’m still thinking about M*A*S*H. I’m still thinking about WKRP in Cincinnati. I could go on and on. I don’t know Quentin Tarantino. I met him once for 10 seconds. But I bet he’s telling the truth for him. He’s such a film aficionado. But it’s probably a little overly generalized.”
