Pluribus’ Vince Gilligan on making shows that ‘attract really smart viewers’

Today he is best known for the crime duology of Break the bad And You better call Saulbut when Vince Gilligan made his television debut, it was in the realm of science fiction. Over seven years he wrote a number of classic episodes of The X Filesranging from a monster themed parody Cops to a bizarre high-speed car chase that was his first collaboration with Break the bad star Bryan Cranston. And now he’s back in the genre with the upcoming Apple TV series Pluribuswhich begins broadcast in November.

But Gilligan tells me that while he was eager to return to science fiction, getting there was a bit of an accident. “I didn’t make a conscious decision to do another science fiction series,” he explains. The edge. Instead, he had a specific idea and discovered that no other genre would do. “I realized there was no other way to explain events than science fiction.”

Pluribus follows a woman named Carol (Rhea Seehorn, who previously worked with Gilligan on You better call Saul) who finds herself immersed in a very strange world. It seems that everyone on the planet, except Carol and a few other individuals, is infected with some form of endless happiness. Not only are they perpetually smiling, but it seems like they will do whatever it takes to make Carol happy and ultimately overwhelm her in their joyous mania.

It’s a story Gilligan has been toying with for nearly a decade. While working on You better call Saulhe would take long walks during his lunch break, which is when the concept began to take shape. “It almost started as a daydream,” he says. “I was thinking about this guy and he lived in a world where everyone was nice to him all the time. And it wasn’t that he was a particularly good guy, or particularly special. He was just a normal guy. But suddenly he wakes up one day and everyone likes him. And that idea tickled me; it never went away.”

He continued to think about this idea, and in the years that followed he also developed a strong appreciation of Seehorn’s work. So when You better call Saul was approaching its conclusion, he made the decision to rework the Pluribus concept with her in the lead role. “Something about Rhea stood out where I thought: I want to work with her again. Just like years ago when I did X-FilesI knew I wanted to work with Bryan Cranston again,” Gilligan says. “I basically adapted the role for Rhea. I wanted her to be a star, I thought it was high time for her to be number one on the call list, and I wanted to be the person to get her there.

One of the trickiest aspects of Seehorn’s character is that she is largely unhappy, even before the events that set off her affair. Pluribus” story in motion. This feeling is only exacerbated when she is confronted with an unrelenting wave of mirth. This creates the potential for a very unlikable lead, a solitary source of negativity in an ocean of happiness. For Gilligan, this meant that Carol required a careful balancing act that Seehorn was uniquely equipped to handle due to her experience in both theater and comedy.

“Carol is sarcastic and sarcastic and a bit of a misanthrope, but that’s just because of the way she sees the world,” he explains. “And suddenly this terrible thing happens in the first episode and she finds herself alone and desperately wants the world back. She decides she’s going to have to take matters into her own hands and be a hero, and I love the idea of ​​a reluctant hero.”

Preparation for PluribusThe premiere was filled with mystery. It started with cryptic teasers, followed by trailers that only hinted at the extent of what’s really going on. Gilligan says that “we’ve done such a good job of keeping it a secret that part of me can’t wait for it to be revealed to the world.” But he also notes that this level of restraint is a key part of how Pluribus unfolds – and it’s something he could probably only achieve at this point in his career.

“I don’t think I would have had the confidence to leave much of it to the public,” he says. “Ten or fifteen years ago, I probably would have felt an overwhelming desire to explain everything. And now I realize – and Rhea helped me realize – that it’s amazing how little dialogue there is that you sometimes need when you’re watching really good acting. Of course, with something like Pluribusthere are rules that you must explain. But the older I get, the more confidence I gain, not in terms of my abilities but in the wisdom of the audience. The kind of shows we create attract really smart viewers.

Besides Seehorn, there’s another element that will be familiar to fans of Gilligan’s previous work: the setting. Just like Break the bad And You better call Saul, Pluribus takes place in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Gilligan says the decision was made primarily so he could stay with the same team, with whom he worked for 20 years, on two series and a film. And while this choice may have Internet sleuths searching for a connection between all of Gilligan’s series, he insists that Pluribus is its own universe, so they would search in vain.

“Don’t hold your breath,” he said. “You will turn blue.”

_{Pluribus begins streaming on Apple TV on November 7.}