“Who’re you actually? What’s actual happiness? What do you truly want for happiness?” Rhea Seehorn murmurs.
It’s an in any other case atypical Wednesday afternoon, steps away from bookshelves filled with works like “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck and the “A Courtroom of Thorns and Roses” collection by Sarah J. Maas, when she casually lists these massive 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 accurately. However these are queries Seehorn has given onerous thought to in latest months.
That’s what occurs whenever you’re headlining a Vince Gilligan present. Existential reckonings are a part of the gig.
Seehorn is no less than accustomed to the deep inside struggles that swirl inside Gilligan’s protagonists. For six seasons on “Higher Name Saul,” AMC’s hit prequel spinoff to “Breaking Dangerous” that instructed the backstory of Walter White’s smarmy lawyer Saul Goodman a.okay.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 obtained caught up in his elaborate schemes and paid a value for his crimes.
In his first follow-up to the “Breaking Dangerous” universe, Gilligan opted to forgo revolving one other collection round a tormented man in favor of 1 that allow the shades of Seehorn’s expertise fill the display.
Gilligan says that in “Higher Name Saul,” which he co-created with Peter Gould, he noticed in Seehorn what he had noticed in Aaron Paul years earlier than on “Breaking Dangerous” — 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 conscious of her previous to us auditioning and casting her. However she was simply incredible from Day 1. What Peter and I noticed in her was a possible to take a present that, initially, was about one character and make it a two-hander. And I simply knew very, in a short time within the early lifetime of ‘Higher Name Saul’ that I needed to work along with her once more after it was over.”
So he got down to create a narrative the place she was No. 1 on the decision sheet.
How did Seehorn course of that information?
“I simply 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. Something. A collection. A movie. A Staples business,” 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 loads of context to its premise. Right here’s what can be stated: Seehorn performs Carol, a fantasy romance writer who, regardless of a profitable profession and seemingly loving relationship along with her accomplice, is described as “probably the most depressing particular person on Earth.” After a sign from house modifications the world in a big method, she should save humankind from happiness. The nine-episode drama premieres with two episodes on Nov. 7; new episodes shall be launched weekly after that.
For some time, Seehorn solely had the primary script to make her assessments in regards to the world Gilligan was constructing. She finally obtained her fingers on two extra earlier than 2023’s twin Hollywood strikes kicked in. When she completed studying by way of them, one thought got here to thoughts: “‘Wow, that is lots of me,’” she says, launching into laughter. “He had warned me — ‘You’re going to be in nearly each scene’ — however then you definately learn it and also you’re like, ‘Oh … oh.’”
Cautious to be as imprecise as potential, she continues: “I can’t spoil it. There’s loads of time I spend utterly by myself. I’m not making a gift of something am I? Make certain I’m not!” Apart from the way in which she needs to be coy in regards to the collection, she’s appealingly unguarded in her enthusiasm for the journey it despatched her on as an actor.
“‘Higher Name Saul’ was its personal animal, however it had the mothership,” she says. “With this, in our conversations, it felt like Vince needed to push issues to the restrict — it’s genre-defying, tone-defying. It’s hilarious after which gut-wrenchingly upsetting. It’s scary in quite a lot of methods. It actually makes you assume: What would you do on this state of affairs?”
In search of 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 comfortable, which led us to this bookstore close to her residence. “I purchase books continually,” she says. Her most up-to-date buy was Rachel Kushner’s spy thriller “Creation Lake.” However these days, she’s been prioritizing William T. Harper’s ebook, “Eleven Days in Hell: The 1974 Carrasco Jail 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 can even star Taylor Kitsch and Diego Luna.
She lights up because the dialog veers into the stuff she watched to unwind whereas capturing “Pluribus”: “I’m obsessive about ‘Hen Store Date,’” she says. “Do you watch? Can we please use this text to get me on that present? That is my marketing campaign.”
Rhea Seehorn, who stars within the new Apple TV collection “Pluribus,” says the present is genre-defying: “It’s hilarious after which gut-wrenchingly upsetting. It’s scary in quite a lot of methods. It actually makes you assume: What would you do on this state of affairs?”
(Anthony Avellano / For The Instances)
She wrapped manufacturing on “Pluribus” final December. Since then, she‘s shot an indie movie, “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 faculty. They’re the sort of life moments, she says, that feed into these massive questions mentioned earlier and what the present confronts.
“It’s about this reckoning — a giant exploration of who you’re. It obtained me enthusiastic about how we deal with actually tough feelings,” Seehorn says. “There was a relentless by way of line for me about this sense of tension that everyone knows. When we’ve got these nightmares the place you’re working round telling everybody that the barn is on fireplace they usually all hold saying, ‘It’s effective.’ And also you’re screaming that it’s not.
“You end up pondering, how do I measure success?” she continues. “About every little thing — relationships, profession, expertise, ambition. There’s causes we make armor, typically long-term, typically short-term. There are selections which are survival abilities, which are good for you at one time, that later are not the crutches and instruments they was. The efficiency Carol is giving initially — the place she hates the life she’s residing and questions the individuals who like her work as a result of it’s not spectacular sufficient — Vince and I had some deep-dive talks about that as individuals within the arts.”
In fact, the philosophy of self and objective 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 called NCIS when it added “Felony” to its title. “My dad was not Mark Harmon,” she jokes. After her dad and mom divorced when she was 12, the household stayed within the Virginia Seashore space.
On paper, Seehorn wasn’t primed for a lifetime of performing. However she felt a artistic 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 scholar at George Mason College. She thought possibly 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 attempt one thing that in any other case felt out of attain to her.
“On the time, no less than to me, American tv and movie had individuals who seemed like fashions,” she says. “I didn’t. I believed I’d get made enjoyable of mercilessly if I stated I needed to be an actor. It felt the identical as saying I needed to be a supermodel. However I knew instantly, with the primary class I took, that performing 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 performing. She grows animated referencing Sensible Aesthetics, the performing 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 thoughts the primary time I noticed that it isn’t magic fairy mud on some individuals — that they’re simply gifted and also you’re not,” she says. “That there is a solution to work towards that. As quickly as any individual stated there was a solution to examine that and there was a solution to get nearer and nearer to inviting that viewers in to go together with you on a journey and make it plausible, I simply was like, ‘Properly, that is what I’m doing for a residing.’”
Rhea Seehorn starred as Kim Wexler opposite Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill in “Better Call Saul.” (Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television)
She knew it wouldn’t pay the bills right away. She ushered, worked the box office, read stage directions for new plays — 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 at the time, so she was a hostess who did expo for the waiters.)
She eventually landed in New York, working at Playwright Horizons, an off-Broadway theater. After a few years, the pull of L.A. led her west. She was cast in the ABC sitcom “I’m With Her,” starring Teri Polo and loosely based on writer Chris Henchy’s marriage to Brooke Shields. It didn’t last long, but other roles would come along with varying degrees of steadiness. She had a recurring role as an assistant DA in the legal dramedy “Franklin & Bash” and played the best friend of Whitney Cummings’ fictionalized version of herself in NBC’s “Whitney,” which ran for two seasons from 2011 to 2013.
Then, as “Better Call Saul” was coming together, the casting directors working on the project were familiar with Seehorn, who had auditioned for them many times over the years, and what she could deliver.
“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 phone. “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 cast as Kim, before a last name was even assigned to the character, and with no inkling for how essential she would become to the story. And it quickly becomes clear how she dissects her characters. (Both Odenkirk and Gilligan, without prompting, say that her scripts were often heavily 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, still able to recite it by memory. “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 starting her acting career: “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 Times)
Odenkirk admiringly references Seehorn’s level of attention and their shared approach in defending the emotional intelligence of their characters. He notes the predicament the “Better Call Saul” writers sometimes faced in placing Jimmy/Saul and Kim, who knew each other so well, in dramatic situations that ordinarily would require more obliviousness or willing 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 simply love her seriousness of objective. And her love for shedding herself within the dream.”
It’s why he’s not shocked Gilligan needed her to guide his subsequent collection.
“She is formidable in nature,” Odenkirk says. “Her power on display is nice, her dynamic vary is unbelievable. She has the power of character of a number one man — I’m simply going to say it. She has the spine and the steely willpower of a number one man.”
In truth, when the thought for “Pluribus” started tugging at Gilligan years in the past, within the midst of “Higher Name Saul,” he initially envisioned it having a male protagonist.
“However I’d take these lengthy walks throughout our lunch breaks within the writers room and, I can’t keep in mind when precisely, however it dawned on me on a kind of walks that I actually like this younger woman, Rhea Seehorn,” he says. “She’s a extremely good actor. And I began pondering, ‘Why does the principle character of my subsequent present must be a man? ‘ I used to be about to say I sort of tailor-made the function to Rhea, however the fact is, I don’t know if that’s true. Rhea has so many strengths as an actor, I do know she will do something I threw at her — identical to I knew a few years earlier than that Bryan Cranston may do something. She makes it look straightforward.”
When Seehorn and I converse once more just a few 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 way of quite a few jigsaw puzzles and “Paint by Numbers” — her actions of selection when she wants to show down her actor mind — within the time since we final spoke; she reaches for the portray of crops she not too long ago accomplished as proof. We finally return to the thought of happiness. What makes her comfortable proper now?
“It’s my household and my mates, however it’s additionally my work,” she says. “Carol, on paper, has most of the issues that I need, that many people need. Success at work, particularly in a profession within the arts. However she gained’t imagine the hype. Her mocking of her work and her followers is only a mocking of herself. It’s self-loathing — like she’s making an attempt to beat individuals to the punch.
“For me, I noticed I totally personal and won’t be embarrassed about the truth that a 3rd leg on that stool for my happiness is my work,” she continues. “It’s intrinsically part of who I’m and I’m a greater mother to my stepsons and a greater accomplice to my fiance as a result of I get to do what I like.”
And she or he’s discovering new methods to do extra of it. She has turn into an govt producer on Katja Meier’s Swiss TV present “$hare” and made her episodic directorial debut with “Higher Name Saul” — “I want to attempt to direct once more. There’s a few tasks and other people I’m speaking to about directing on their present. Individuals are like, ‘Why didn’t you direct the primary season [of ‘Pluribus’]?’ I’m like,’I used to be making an attempt to recollect to brush my enamel with all I had occurring.’”
She references the kids’s ebook “Archibald’s Subsequent Large Factor,” written by actor Tony Hale, whom she shared display time with on “Veep.” It’s about embracing the journey you’re on.
“You’re continually transferring your purpose put up and all it’s doing is simply s— on your self and the place you are actually,” she says. “Carol missed issues till they have been taken away. She may have stopped judging every little thing and judging herself.”
It was a reminder to embrace the liberty to assume exterior 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 way of confusion, concern, grief, anger and frustration like pretzel dough being looped right into a knot — on her personal, but not alone.
“Every thing made me nervous about Carol,” she says. “As quickly as Vince despatched me the script, I used to be like, ‘That is bananas.’ You’re in your solution to work and also you simply assume, ‘What if I simply took this off-ramp and I fled the scene and it could be throughout?’ However then you definately’re like, ‘You realize what, I’m gonna present up and do my finest. Consider me, I did some takes that I’m positive have been embarrassing, however I used to be identical to, ‘When else are you going to attempt? The time is now.”
In different phrases, she says, “Don’t be a Carol.”
