‘Bob Odenkirk called to check on me after he saw it’: Rhea Seehorn on the intensity of making hit show Pluribus

Rhea Seehorn has had a hell of a year. For years she had garnered a reputation as a great underappreciated talent, but that has all changed now thanks to Pluribus. A series about one of the only people on Earth not to have their minds taken over by an alien virus, Pluribus is not only critically adored, but recently became Apple TV’s most-watched show. And Seehorn is front and centre through it all. However, today she has bigger things on her mind. ‘I’m too much of a scaredy cat to look online’ … Rhea Seehorn.Photograph: Corey Nickols/Getty Images for IMDb Rhea Seehorn in Pluribus.Photograph: Anna Kooris/Apple Seehorn with Bob Odenkirk in Better Call Saul.Photograph: Robert Trachtenberg/AP “You gotta tell me how to crack the code,” she pleads before we’ve even said hello. “I’m an avid crossword puzzler, but I cannot beat the Guardian crossword. I cannot crack it, and I need to figure out what the problem is.” If you’ve seen Pluribus, in which she plays a grouch forced to save the world against her will, the delightfulness of Seehorn in person might come as a surprise. She is bright-eyed and alert, sitting forward in her seat and fully engaged. “I love making the show,” she says. “It has been the most challenging thing I’ve ever done, and the most rewarding. People are coming up to me and they want to talk about what the show is bringing up in them, and the thoughts it’s making them have. That’s been absolutely beyond satisfying.” But perhaps not surprising. Pluribus is the sort of show that deliberately takes its time unfolding the grand mystery at its core. Seehorn plays Carol Sturka, who finds herself unaffected by the alien virus that has affected the rest of the global population. While they all operate as a mass hive mind - existing peacefully, if creepily, in a state of unquestioning happiness - she finds herself tasked with restoring individuality to the world. To complicate matters further, everyone seems especially attuned to her behaviour ... perhaps because millions of people die whenever she loses her temper. While creator Vince Gilligan has claimed that it’s partially autobiographical (it’s hard to see it as anything other than a reaction to his post-Breaking Bad celebrity, and all the sycophancy that goes with it) it’s also strangely universal. It’s the kind of high-concept show that has inspired a fervent obsession online of a level not seen since Lost. This obsession is something Seehorn respectfully prefers not to investigate. “I’m too much of a scaredy-cat to look online,” she reveals. “My friends tell me, even on social media, to never scroll down. I know eventually there’s going to be a comment that’s just like, ‘She is an ugly idiot who should never be on screen again,’ and then I’m just going to want to go do Lego sets for a week.” A bizarrely large chunk of the discourse online revolves around whether Carol should just give up and enjoy the simple...

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