“Who are you really? What is real happiness? What do you actually need for happiness?” Rhea Seehorn murmurs.
It’s an in any other case bizarre Wednesday afternoon, steps away from bookshelves full of works like “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck and the “A Court of Thorns and Roses” sequence by Sarah J. Maas, when she casually lists these large life questions aloud whereas leaning over a vegan brownie and cup of tea at a small desk inside Village Properly Books & Espresso in Culver Metropolis. I’m nonetheless questioning whether or not I learn the road parking indicators appropriately. However these are queries Seehorn has given onerous thought to in current months.
That’s what occurs if you’re headlining a Vince Gilligan present. Existential reckonings are a part of the gig.
Seehorn is no less than aware of the deep inner struggles that swirl inside Gilligan’s protagonists. For six seasons on “Better Call Saul,” AMC’s hit prequel spinoff to “Breaking Bad” that informed the backstory of Walter White’s smarmy lawyer Saul Goodman a.ok.a. Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), Seehorn performed Kim Wexler. The fan-favorite kind A lawyer with a perfectly-positioned ponytail was McGill/Goodman’s principled however more and more conflicted girlfriend who received caught up in his elaborate schemes and paid a worth for his crimes.
In his first follow-up to the “Breaking Bad” universe, Gilligan opted to forgo revolving one other sequence round a tormented man in favor of 1 that permit the shades of Seehorn’s expertise fill the display.
Gilligan says that in “Better Call Saul,” which he co-created with Peter Gould, he noticed in Seehorn what he had noticed in Aaron Paul years earlier than on “Breaking Bad” — an actor whose efficiency propelled a facet character, wayward junkie Jesse Pinkman, right into a determine that commanded viewers’ consideration and have become integral to the story.
“Aaron made that character indispensable,” Gilligan says over video name. “It was like déjà vu with Rhea Seehorn. I hate saying I wasn’t aware of her prior to us auditioning and casting her. But she was just fantastic from Day 1. What Peter and I saw in her was a potential to take a show that, at the beginning, was about one character and make it a two-hander. And I just knew very, very quickly in the early life of ‘Better Call Saul’ that I wanted to work with her again after it was over.”
So he got down to create a narrative the place she was No. 1 on the decision sheet.
“I just cried,” she says.
It’s not, as some might have hoped, a Kim Wexler spinoff — although, she’s nonetheless open to that: “I’ll do it. I’ll do it. Anything. A series. A film. A Staples commercial,” she says.
Rhea Seehorn as Carol in Apple TV’s “Pluribus.”
(Apple TV)
“Pluribus” has been a tightly-guarded venture for Apple TV with a strict embargo on particulars that makes it tough to supply quite a lot of context to its premise. Right here’s what might be mentioned: Seehorn performs Carol, a fantasy romance creator who, regardless of a profitable profession and seemingly loving relationship along with her accomplice, is described as “the most miserable person on Earth.” After a sign from area modifications the world in a major means, she should save humankind from happiness. The nine-episode drama premieres with two episodes on Nov. 7; new episodes can be launched weekly after that.
For some time, Seehorn solely had the primary script to make her assessments concerning the world Gilligan was constructing. She ultimately received her fingers on two extra earlier than 2023’s twin Hollywood strikes kicked in. When she completed studying by means of them, one thought got here to thoughts: “‘Wow, this is a lot of me,’” she says, launching into laughter. “He had warned me — ‘You’re going to be in almost every scene’ — but then you read it and you’re like, ‘Oh … oh.’”
Cautious to be as obscure as potential, she continues: “I can’t spoil it. There’s a lot of time I spend completely on my own. I’m not giving away anything am I? Make sure I’m not!” Other than the best way she must be coy concerning the sequence, she’s appealingly unguarded in her enthusiasm for the journey it despatched her on as an actor.
“‘Better Call Saul’ was its own animal, but it had the mothership,” she says. “With this, in our conversations, it felt like Vince wanted to push things to the limit — it’s genre-defying, tone-defying. It’s hilarious and then gut-wrenchingly upsetting. It’s scary in a variety of ways. It really makes you think: What would you do in this situation?”
Searching for to playfully lean into the present’s curiosity in exploring happiness and the human situation, in scheduling our meet-up I requested that Seehorn choose a location that makes her pleased, which led us to this bookstore close to her residence. “I buy books constantly,” she says. Her most up-to-date buy was Rachel Kushner’s spy thriller “Creation Lake.” However currently, she’s been prioritizing William T. Harper’s ebook, “Eleven Days in Hell: The 1974 Carrasco Prison Siege at Huntsville, Texas,” which chronicles the true story of the standoff between inmates and regulation enforcement. On the time of this sit-down, Seehorn is days away from starting manufacturing in Texas on a movie adaptation of the ebook that may also star Taylor Kitsch and Diego Luna.
She lights up because the dialog veers into the stuff she watched to unwind whereas taking pictures “Pluribus”: “I’m obsessed with ‘Chicken Shop Date,’” she says. “Do you watch? Can we please use this article to get me on that show? This is my campaign.”
Rhea Seehorn, who stars within the new Apple TV sequence “Pluribus,” says the present is genre-defying: “It’s hilarious and then gut-wrenchingly upsetting. It’s scary in a variety of ways. It really makes you think: What would you do in this situation?”
(Anthony Avellano / For The Occasions)
She wrapped manufacturing on “Pluribus” final December. Since then, she‘s shot an indie film, “Sender,” with “Severance’s” Britt Decrease, had a quick household trip and helped the eldest of her two stepsons get settled in for his first yr of school. They’re the sort of life moments, she says, that feed into these large questions mentioned earlier and what the present confronts.
“It’s about this reckoning — a big exploration of who you are. It got me thinking about how we handle really difficult emotions,” Seehorn says. “There was a constant through line for me about this feeling of anxiety that we all know. When we have those nightmares where you’re running around telling everyone that the barn is on fire and they all keep saying, ‘It’s fine.’ And you’re screaming that it’s not.
“You find yourself thinking, how do I measure success?” she continues. “About everything — relationships, career, talent, ambition. There’s reasons we make armor, sometimes long-term, sometimes short-term. There are choices that are survival skills, that are good for you at one time, that later are no longer the crutches and tools they used to be. The performance Carol is giving at the beginning — where she hates the life she’s living and questions the people who like her work because it’s not impressive enough — Vince and I had some deep-dive talks about that as people in the arts.”
After all, the philosophy of self and function and happiness was not one thing Seehorn thought of a lot whereas rising up. Deborah Rhea Seehorn — she glided by Debbie till her early teenagers — was born in Norfolk, Va., however spent her childhood in locations like Arizona and Japan due to her father’s job as an agent for the Naval Investigative Service, later often known as NCIS when it added “Criminal” to its identify. “My dad was not Mark Harmon,” she jokes. After her dad and mom divorced when she was 12, the household stayed within the Virginia Seaside space.
On paper, Seehorn wasn’t primed for a lifetime of appearing. However she felt a inventive pull: Her mom did musical theater in highschool; her father and paternal grandmother painted. And Seehorn and her sister started sketching from a younger age. Seehorn initially had ambitions of pursuing a profession in design or artwork — she majored in portray whereas a pupil at George Mason College. She thought perhaps she’d land a job doing exhibition design or artwork restoration on the Smithsonian or one of many different museums round city. However when she was required to take an elective course her freshman yr, she noticed a chance to strive one thing that in any other case felt out of attain to her.
“At the time, at least to me, American television and film had people who looked like models,” she says. “I didn’t. I thought I would get made fun of mercilessly if I said I wanted to be an actor. It felt the same as saying I wanted to be a supermodel. But I knew immediately, with the first class I took, that acting was it for me.”
It was taught by Lynnie Raybuck, a instructor and actor who stays a mentor to Seehorn. That is the place — in life and on this dialog — it turns into clear Seehorn revels within the strategy of appearing. She grows animated referencing Sensible Aesthetics, the appearing method developed by David Mamet and William H. Macy for the Atlantic Theater Firm, and detailing her fondness for in-depth script evaluation.
“To me, it blew my mind the first time I realized that it isn’t magic fairy dust on some people — that they’re just talented and you’re not,” she says. “That there is a way to work toward that. As soon as somebody said there was a way to study that and there was a way to get closer and closer to inviting that audience in to go with you on a journey and make it believable, I just was like, ‘Well, this is what I’m doing for a living.’”
Rhea Seehorn starred as Kim Wexler reverse Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill in “Better Call Saul.” (Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Photos Tv)
She knew it wouldn’t pay the payments straight away. She ushered, labored the field workplace, learn stage instructions for brand spanking new performs — she had days jobs, too, like working at TGI Fridays — “By the way, they just offered me suspenders since I never got them.” (She was underage and unable to serve alcohol on the time, so she was a hostess who did expo for the waiters.)
She ultimately landed in New York, working at Playwright Horizons, an off-Broadway theater. After a number of years, the pull of L.A. led her west. She was solid within the ABC sitcom “I’m With Her,” starring Teri Polo and loosely based mostly on author Chris Henchy’s marriage to Brooke Shields. It didn’t final lengthy, however different roles would come together with various levels of steadiness. She had a recurring function as an assistant DA within the authorized dramedy “Franklin & Bash” and performed the most effective pal of Whitney Cummings’ fictionalized model of herself in NBC’s “Whitney,” which ran for 2 seasons from 2011 to 2013.
Then, as “Better Call Saul” was coming collectively, the casting administrators engaged on the venture had been aware of Seehorn, who had auditioned for them many instances over time, and what she may ship.
“The first time I met her was for the producer sessions and there were three actresses who were reading for Kim with me,” Odenkirk says by cellphone. “The other two actresses were absolutely fantastic. But Rhea and I had chemistry, and we all knew it. We all felt it. It was undeniable and it was easy.”
She was solid as Kim, earlier than a final identify was even assigned to the character, and with no inkling for the way important she would turn out to be to the story. And it shortly turns into clear how she dissects her characters. (Each Odenkirk and Gilligan, with out prompting, say that her scripts had been usually closely marked up with scribbled notes, highlights and tabs.)
“I only have one line of dialogue in that first episode, other than the intercom,” Seehorn says, nonetheless capable of recite it by reminiscence. “They told me later it wasn’t on purpose that I have almost no contractions in the first couple of episodes and other people do. And I was like, should I ask them if it’s OK to elide ‘want to’ to ‘wanna’ or ‘do not’ to ‘don’t.’ But then I was like, ‘No! What if I just try to figure out who talks like this?’ It started to be this thing of ‘Who is this controlled person? And why would she be this controlled?’ She became so important to me because I had largely built her out of subtext and this private part of her that mostly the audience was my biggest confidant.”
Rhea Seehorn on beginning her appearing profession: “I thought I would get made fun of mercilessly if I said I wanted to be an actor. It felt the same as saying I wanted to be a supermodel. But I knew immediately, with the first class I took, that acting was it for me.” (Anthony Avellano/For The Occasions)
Odenkirk admiringly references Seehorn’s degree of consideration and their shared strategy in defending the emotional intelligence of their characters. He notes the predicament the “Better Call Saul” writers typically confronted in putting Jimmy/Saul and Kim, who knew one another so properly, in dramatic conditions that ordinarily would require extra obliviousness or prepared unawareness.
“When Kim and Jimmy were together, there were times — not many, but a few — where one of them was lying to the other one,” he says. “And it was always a challenge. We’d be like, ‘Saul knows he’s being lied to’ or ‘Kim knows Saul is lying.’ And we’d have to find a way around it. Or we’d have to let go — she’s [Rhea] good at that too … I just love her seriousness of purpose. And her love for losing herself in the dream.”
It’s why he’s not shocked Gilligan wished her to guide his subsequent sequence.
“She is formidable in nature,” Odenkirk says. “Her strength on screen is great, her dynamic range is incredible. She has the strength of character of a leading man — I’m just going to say it. She has the backbone and the steely determination of a leading man.”
Actually, when the thought for “Pluribus” started tugging at Gilligan years in the past, within the midst of “Better Call Saul,” he initially envisioned it having a male protagonist.
“But I would take these long walks during our lunch breaks in the writers room and, I can’t remember when exactly, but it dawned on me on one of those walks that I really like this young lady, Rhea Seehorn,” he says. “She’s a really good actor. And I started thinking, ‘Why does the main character of my next show have to be a guy? ‘ I was about to say I kind of tailored the role to Rhea, but the truth is, I don’t know if that’s true. Rhea has so many strengths as an actor, I know she can do anything I threw at her — just like I knew many years before that Bryan Cranston could do anything. She makes it look easy.”
When Seehorn and I communicate once more a number of weeks after our preliminary assembly, she is video-calling from a nondescript room throughout a break from manufacturing on “Eleven Days.” She has already fiddled by means of a variety of jigsaw puzzles and “Paint by Numbers” — her actions of alternative when she wants to show down her actor mind — within the time since we final spoke; she reaches for the portray of crops she lately accomplished as proof. We ultimately return to the thought of happiness. What makes her pleased proper now?
“It is my family and my friends, but it’s also my work,” she says. “Carol, on paper, has many of the things that I want, that many of us want. Success at work, especially in a career in the arts. But she won’t believe the hype. Her mocking of her work and her fans is just a mocking of herself. It’s self-loathing — like she’s trying to beat people to the punch.
“For me, I realized I fully own and will not be embarrassed about the fact that a third leg on that stool for my happiness is my work,” she continues. “It is intrinsically a part of who I am and I am a better mom to my stepsons and a better partner to my fiance because I get to do what I love.”
And he or she’s discovering new methods to do extra of it. She has turn out to be an govt producer on Katja Meier’s Swiss TV present “$hare” and made her episodic directorial debut with “Better Call Saul” — “I would like to try to direct again. There’s a couple of projects and people I’m talking to about directing on their show. People are like, ‘Why didn’t you direct the first season [of ‘Pluribus’]?’ I’m like,’I was trying to remember to brush my teeth with all I had going on.’”
She references the youngsters’s ebook “Archibald’s Next Big Thing,” written by actor Tony Hale, whom she shared display time with on “Veep.” It’s about embracing the journey you’re on.
“You’re constantly moving your goal post and all it is doing is just s— on yourself and where you are now,” she says. “Carol missed things until they were taken away. She could have stopped judging everything and judging herself.”
It was a reminder to embrace the liberty to assume outdoors the field along with her efficiency. The primary episode is a high-wire balancing act; at one level, there’s a 12-minute stretch that has her character twisting by means of confusion, concern, grief, anger and frustration like pretzel dough being looped right into a knot — on her personal, but not alone.
“Everything made me nervous about Carol,” she says. “As soon as Vince sent me the script, I was like, ‘This is bananas.’ You’re on your way to work and you just think, ‘What if I just took this off-ramp and I fled the scene and it would be all over?’ But then you’re like, ‘You know what, I’m gonna show up and do my best. Believe me, I did some takes that I’m sure were embarrassing, but I was just like, ‘When else are you going to try? The time is now.”
In different phrases, she says, “Don’t be a Carol.”
