Star of ‘Pluribus’ Rhea Seehorn | Fresh Air

What this episode is about

The narrative centers on Rhea Seehorn's character, Carol, in the Apple TV series *Pluribus*, as she navigates a strange and unsettling reality where, after the sudden death of her partner, she finds herself amidst a global transformation driven by extraterrestrial technology that connects minds and memories. As Carol grapples with the implications of this new collective consciousness, she becomes increasingly skeptical of the imposed happiness and conformity surrounding her, highlighting themes of individuality and resistance in the face of overwhelming change.

Key takeaways

• In Pluribus, happiness traded for individuality raises profound questions about the essence of true contentment.
• Groupthink may yield peace, but it risks diluting the human experience; where's the joy in a world without surprises?
• Carol’s struggle highlights a critical truth: sometimes, personal happiness isn't worth the collective bargain.
• Anger can be destructive, yet it's often the locomotive for societal change—an essential but volatile force.
• Vince Gilligan's Pluribus prompts a captivating dialogue: Is ignorance bliss when the alternative is unsettling self-awareness?

Who speaks in this episode?

• Terry Gross (Host) · 21 min speaking
• Rhea Seehorn (Guest) · 14 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, C-SPAN, Pluribus
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Pluribus, Better Call Saul, Kim Wexler
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Pluribus
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Better Call Saul, Pluribus, Breaking Bad, Kim Wexler
5. 20:00 – 25:00: Better Call Saul, Gus Fring, Patrick Fabian

Notable quotes from "Star of ‘Pluribus’ Rhea Seehorn | Fresh Air"

• By Vince Gilligan. It stars my guest Ray Seahhorn. You may know her as the co-star of Better Call Saul, which was both a prequel and sequel to Breaking Bad. Seahhorn and…

  about Better Call Saul · at 0:08

• The TV looking for a news show that might explain, all the channels are blank except C-SPAN. A man on that channel is at a White House podium talking directly to Carol by name.…

  about C-SPAN · at 0:57

• Character on Better Call Saul had her own anger issues and you're really good at expressing anger. Kim Wexler was an incredibly capable person at suppressing it, whereas I do…

  about Kim Wexler · at 5:57

• A cartel member, had just killed a colleague of Jimmy and Kim's, Howard Hamlin, played by Patrick Fabian. And the murder was in Jimmy and Kim's apartment right in front of their eyes.

  about Patrick Fabian · at 20:22

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Ray Seahorn — Person · 5 mentions
• Kim Wexler — Person · 2 mentions · first at 6:02
• Patrick Fabian — Person · 1 mention · first at 20:26
• Gus Fring — Person · 1 mention · first at 20:38
  They're frozen in fear as Lo then instructs Jimmy to go to the home of drugsar Gus Fring and kill him while Kim waits behind with Lo. Jimmy insists that Kim be the one to go…

Books & papers

• Better Call Saul — Book · 7 mentions · first at 0:12
• Pluribus — Book · 6 mentions · first at 0:24
  Bad. Seahhorn and Plurbus were just each nominated for a Golden Globe. In Pluribus, Seahhorn plays Carol, a writer of best-selling romance novels. Her life partner, Helen, is…
• Breaking Bad — Book · 2 mentions · first at 0:15
  Seahhorn. You may know her as the co-star of Better Call Saul, which was both a prequel and sequel to Breaking Bad. Seahhorn and Plurbus were just each nominated for a Golden…

Companies & orgs

• C-SPAN — Company · 1 mention · first at 1:01
• NCIS — Company · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. One of the most talked about TV series now is the Apple TV series Plurabus, created by Vince Gilligan. It stars my guest Ray Seahhorn. You may know her as the co-star of Better Call Saul, which was both a prequel and sequel to Breaking Bad. Seahhorn and Plurbus were just each nominated for a Golden Globe. In Pluribus, Seahhorn plays Carol, a writer of best-selling romance novels. Her life partner, Helen, is her manager. One night, Carol and Helen are leaving a bar when Helen has a seizure and dies.

0:37 Suddenly, everyone around Carol in the bar and in the ER are frozen in place or have fallen down and having a seizure. And then most of them get up and seem changed. They're talking and walking in unison. Their faces are somewhere between happy and hypnotized. What's going on? Back home, when Carol turns on the TV looking for a news show that might explain, all the channels are blank except C-SPAN. A man on that channel is at a White House podium talking directly to Carol by name. He gives her a phone number to call for more information. She calls and the man she saw on the TV is the one talking to her. He apologizes for Helen's death.

1:20 Millions of others have died, including the president. He explains that everyone now has the benefits of an extraterrestrial technology through pulsing signals that were sent. Everyone around the world is now held together by a psychic glue. Here's part of that scene.

1:38 Rest assured, Carol, we will figure out what makes you different. Figure it out. Why?

1:45 So we can fix it. So you can join us. Carol, you still there? You said my life was my own.

2:05 It is 100%. So what happens when I say no? Carol, once you understand how wonderful this is,

2:20 Carol. As time goes by, Carol learns that everyone has access to everyone else's memories and knowledge. Everyone is happy and there's peace around the world except for Carol and a few others. She isn't buying that these transformations are a good thing and she does everything she can to resist. Rey Horn, welcome to Fresh Air. I love this series. I loved you on Better Call Saul. It's really such a pleasure to have you on the show.

2:50 Oh my gosh, thank you. It is such a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Um, the premise of this series is is sci-fi, but the show itself is asking so many questions about human nature, like what is happiness? Is it happiness if there's no longer a larger meaning to your life? And is being an an individual with your own temperament and thoughts, is that more valuable than this happiness? And is anger lethal? Or is it good to let out your your anger and resist what you think is wrong? And um you know maybe we'll find out some answers to those questions and many other questions later but I just want people to know it's um there's some really interesting thoughts in this. Um

3:39 thank you. And did you find yourself asking what is happiness as you made the series?

3:47 Yeah, I definitely was asking myself a lot of those questions throughout the series. Um, and we had amazing conversations among the crew and the cast. Um, you know, some of these late night shoots and even on weekends, stuff of like, well, would you choose what's best for the individual versus what's best for the community as a whole? Um, I personally think I would absolutely be team Carol as far as arguing, you know, the necessity and the positives of individual thinking and independent thinking. For one thing, a big thing that came up for me was the fact that this group think um no matter how intelligent and how peaceful, one of the ideas of happiness and joy, which maybe is slightly different, is um being surprised by things, whether it's wonder growing up as a kid and hopefully still as an adult, or a giant belly laugh. And if you cannot be surprised, um there's never going to be any new

4:52 art. There's never going to be um a joke that you haven't heard. Uh there's never going to be surprise behavior that makes you laugh. Um and that's just such a source of joy for me. Um that I just can't imagine that contentment is the same as happiness. One of the other characteristics of your character in um Pluribus is that she is angry a lot of the time. She already had a kind of anger issue, but now that she's one of like 12 or 13 people in the whole world who haven't been affected by this whatever it is, this alien technology, um, she's angry all the time. You know, her wife died as this thing started as a result of this thing. and um she has no one she can really confide in cuz everybody is transformed and she knows that she believes there's something really terrible behind this.

5:55 So she's angry all the time. Your character on Better Call Saul had her own anger issues and you're really good at expressing anger. Kim Wexler was an incredibly capable person at suppressing it, whereas I do not think Carol is. But um but yeah, I guess she did have anger uh a certain uh righteousness about her. So you know, we talked about how the series has affected you thinking about happiness. What about anger? because anger can be really destructive. And in this series in Pluribus, when she gets angry, people die. Like anger is literally poison, a killing poison. Um but in real life sometimes it's important to get angry because first of all you just need to express yourself but second of all so somebody needs to know that you really offended or hurt or think that something is morally or ethically wrong and sometimes it takes anger to really get the point across.

7:02 Did you find yourself thinking about anger a lot and a lot your levels of anger? I have no idea if you like to express anger.

7:10 Uh, no. I struggle mightily with um with how much I suppress my anger. Um, and as you said, there's this idea of uh anger can be, you know, um, a myasma almost that like can spread. And we've all seen like horrible things can happen when you just are riing people up with, you know, frothing at the mouth with um anger about things and negativity. Uh but at the same time, it is a necessary emotion, which I think is one of the arguments in the show that I side with of of the idea that all of the emotions are important um not just happiness. And um but I had asked Vince and he he he wasn't coming at it from an angle of particularly a woman being angry, but because I'm a woman playing the role that I I paused a lot thinking about that because I do think that I have grown up in a world that um maybe maybe it's on me, but it felt as though uh I was taught that uh anger was unpalatable specifically from females.

8:26 uh and that I should find a way to um make it palatable, my make my requests palatable um and and not express a lot of uh anger. When I was much younger, I would scream it as a teenager, you know, screaming, yelling, like the typical arguments you have over hairspray and idiotic things at home as a teenager. But um plus it was uh my parents were divorced and so it was a household of three uh women, my mom and my sister and I. So, there were actually a lot of hairspray arguments. Um, but uh, you know, you kind of grow out of this complete temperamental just I'm going to spew anything I want coming out of my mouth and you get out into the real world. And it it it did feel like and it's interesting you ask cuz I haven't pinned down like was it something I saw was you know in real life or something on a television show or what where was I getting this messaging that um that it wasn't okay to

9:25 raise my voice uh to be very very sharp um uh I'm I'm not I'm not sure of the answer of that but I know that it got to a place where it went too far literally to the place of like I'm nodding and just saying yes or whatever to you know somebody that's maybe speaking to me in a way that I absolutely disagree with. Uh and I go home and break out in asthma and that's not an exaggeration.

9:51 Oh gosh. Yeah. So I'm just like clearly the anger is going somewhere. Mhm. Um, I don't think it's okay to scream and yell in someone's face, but I think I have become conflict avoidant in the suppression of that anger to a degree that's not healthy. I will stand up for somebody else though in a heartbeat. If somebody else is being mistreated next to me, I'm I'm in there. I'll take you to the mat. But if it's at me, I tend to swallow it and try to figure out how I can make it better. in terms of um absorbing the message that women shouldn't display anger. No one needed to tell you that.

10:28 It's all over the culture. It's in movies and TV. Those expectations don't need to be um spoken. They've been passed on for centuries. But um does anger expressed as an actor become a great release valve for someone like you who has suppressed anger for uh many years? Um in some it didn't feel to be completely honest it didn't feel like therapeutic like oh thank god I have a place to release all of my anger now. Um but uh in instead for me I would take Carol's moments of um sort of explosive anger and I feel like prior to this event happening she probably had anger issues but she didn't explode a lot because Helen her partner was this complete buffer but now in this after event I I feel like if that's taken away from Carol and it becomes and that was fun as an actor to have this extreme obstacle to somebody that does just unleash rage, is extremely reactive, extremely um uh impulsive, uh no problem raising her voice, really

11:46 doesn't care what anybody thinks anymore. What's the point? Um but then to take that she to take that and give yourself as an actor this massive obstacle that she does care about not killing millions of people. So this whole tool is gonna be taken away from her. So how does she express herself now? How do you relay your feelings um in a way that the world is deeming safe? And as we just talked about, like sure the negative viewpoint of that is like the suppression of anger, but the positive thing was kind of like, yeah, but there's something to be learned from having to find a way to communicate your feelings and your boundaries without screaming and yelling in someone's face and character assassination, you know.

12:36 So, there's something to learn from that too. I want to point out something else that I think is very relevant to today. in the series. The series is called pluribus which translates to you know out of many one and in this era where diversity equity and inclusion is basically being um outlawed to the extent that they can by the Trump administration. E plur e- plurabus unum has always been like one of the founding principles or slogans if you want to call it that of the United States. Uh so this this kind of conformity is really the opposite of DEI because there's no diversity and equity. There's no need there's no diversity so there's no need for equity and inclusion because everybody has the same thoughts. Um

13:31 or you could argue that it's the ultimate in um all inclusion and everybody has equal everything.

13:37 That's true. That's true. But that's by erasing their religion, their ethnicity, their geography. Um

13:45 or you could say they are all religions and they are all geographies, right? And you could also say they're all artificial intelligence because that's also how they sound when they're speaking. They're not. But when they speak it sometimes sounds like you know you know the verbal

14:02 artificial intelligence talking right to you. I also really appreciated that our um that our new pope that his favorite motto apparently is e- plurbusum. So I I really appreciate him advertising the show.

14:13 Oh yeah. I thought you were going to tell him he was a fan and I thought really has time.

14:17 No no he just says that that like that came out that that was his uh one of his favorite mottos I guess and I was like we were just laughing. Thanks. Thanks for the shout out.

14:28 Um, so your character starts off as a famous romance novelist with this ardent following and she goes to a bookstore and does reading there which everybody loves. Um, and it's it's you know a romance novel aboard a ship with a pirate. Anyways, the language is full of like really typical romance book language. Um, so I did you do research and go to readings uh of romance novelists?

15:03 I did. I went to um The Ripped Bodis, which is an amazing romance novel store um that only does romance novels in uh in Culver City and um just flipped in and looked around. I have to tell you one of the first things that struck me is the amount of subg genres and the specificity about of these subg genres. Um it's historical, paranormal, it could be romance, suspense. Um then within that there were sub subg genres of ones that um people that want them to be more dialogue, more chatty versus more um

15:43 descriptive. More descriptive. Descriptive. Yeah. And uh certainly, you know, there's LGBTQIA stuff. There's stuff that people really want to st sound period. There's stuff that people want to sound futuristic um versus very contemporary slang language. Uh it was kind of incredible. Um but I also h I watched a couple people do um readings from their books and I was really surprised at the breath of people of fans listening. Uh there was a lot of people dressed like early Stevie Nicks um in a beautiful way. Uh but then there was also like you know just a uh there was um some couple that look like they came straight from a corporate job, a man and a woman in office suits. Uh uh young people younger than me, people older than me. Um it definitely it definitely wisened me to uh how huge this genre is and how much it encap encapsulates you know all the different novels it has.

16:49 So the character in Pluribus was originally written for a man by Vince Gilligan and then he decided to rewrite it for you. Um how did that happen? I don't believe there were scripts, you know, with a male character and then he went back and rewrote. I think he said he was um

17:13 conceiving it for kind of kicking around. Yeah. Conceiving quite a few um concepts he was interested in. I think he said that uh and it was during Better Call Saul um in season one. I think he said taking breaks from the writer room and uh walking around on lunch breaks and stuff and just started it's just how he works. He just ideas will pop in his head sometimes questions without answers and one of them was what would happen if uh you woke up and the whole world was obsequious. The whole world was willing to do whatever you wanted to and give you anything you want. and it was a male character and he has said that um it's just because that's second nature to him that he is a man and he has written male protagonist uh and then I don't know the exact like shift that happened or where but I didn't know about it until after we had wrapped all of Better Call Saul but he said it was during I think

18:09 towards the end of season one of Better Call Saul that he was just watching me work and um had talked to me a lot about the the way I work as well as watching me perform. Um, and decided that I I'm stuttering because it's hard to say this because I'm I'm I'm floored by the compliment and the flattery to put it mildly uh and and struggle saying it about myself. But he said that he um he realized like I I have to write something for her. I I have to uh I need to make sure that I do um a project with her and actually wouldn't these concepts that I'm noodling with, wouldn't they work even better if they were her? And he knew that he also wanted to play with tone and take wild swings as far as like it could be darkly comedic or it could be darkly psychological. Sometimes it's going to, you know, go between back and forth. Um, and he was impressed uh at my ability to do those things. So hard for

19:12 me to say about myself. Ah, that can be the title of this episode. Raise the horn brags about himself. Um, yeah. I don't know. Listen, I've had to sit next to him in interviews when he's saying it and I'm just I'm just my face is one giant tomato red ball when he's saying it. But, um, but I'm certainly very thankful for it. My guest is Ray Seahhorn, star of the new Apple TV series Pluribus. The series was created for Seahhorn by Vince Gilligan. Seahhorn also co-starred in Better Call Saul, which was created by Gilligan and Peter Gould. That series was a sequel and prequel to Gilligan series Breaking Bad. In Better Call Saul, Seahhorn played Kim Wexler, a lawyer who marries Jimmy McIll, an unethical lawyer who gets involved with a Mexican cartel, played by Bob Odkerk.

20:04 The series lasted six seasons, and while shooting an episode in that final season, Bob Odenkirk suffered a heart attack and collapsed on set. He had just completed shooting an intense scene with Seahhorn that we're about to hear an excerpt of. It's the scene in which Lo, a cartel member, had just killed a colleague of Jimmy and Kim's, Howard Hamlin, played by Patrick Fabian. And the murder was in Jimmy and Kim's apartment right in front of their eyes. They're frozen in fear as Lo then instructs Jimmy to go to the home of drugsar Gus Fring and kill him while Kim waits behind with Lo. Jimmy insists that Kim be the one to go because he thinks it might be even more dangerous for Kim to stay with Lo. Here's the scene. Tony Dalton as Lo speaks first.

20:56 I know. I know you're a lawyer and not a killer, but look, you can do this. Okay, this guy, he's a house cat. Black, medium height, short hair, glasses. He kind of looks like a librarian. But don't be fooled. Even a house cat can scratch. So that's it. Hard part's over. Now you pull out the camera. Same principle as the gun. Point and shoot. Take a picture. One where I can see the face clearly. And then you bring it back here where me and Mrs. Goodman will be waiting for you. And then you're done. I'd say it's about a 20-minut drive over there. 20 minutes back. Maybe 10 minutes to do the job. Let's call it an hour all together. So, you're back here in an hour or send her.

21:46 What? She should do it. Jimmy, why her? Don't do that. This guy, the uh the house cat,

22:02 he looks through his people in the middle of the night and he sees me. Who's this [ __ ] What's he doing? Maybe maybe he gets his gun. Maybe he calls the cops. Either way, that door stays shut. But he sees a woman. She looks like she's in distress. Maybe her car broke down.

22:20 I mean, you'd open the door for her, wouldn't you? Stop. Stop. Yeah, but she's really clever. I don't know if she's going to stick to the plan.

22:29 She will. No. No. No. No. No cops. You know she will. No. Look, this doesn't even make any sense. I I've uh I've never shot a gun before. I've never even held one

22:41 like I have. Jimmy, what are you doing? You know she's the best choice. No, I'm not. I I I can't I can't do it.

22:48 She can do it. You know she can do it. You know I'm right. Stop. Just stop. LISTEN. STOP IT. I SHUT YEAH.

22:57 That was a scene from Better Call Saul right before the star Bob Odenkirk had his heart attack. Were you on set with him when this happened?

23:07 Uh, yes. So, Jimmy and I, Bob and I are now on uh being held captive on the couch and we had just done our side of it. We were getting ready to turn around, which is the cameras, the lights, the props, everything are going to crew is now going to move to the other side of the room so they can turn the camera around on Tony Dalton playing Lo because we were on opposite sides of the room. Um, and we had been shooting the scene for maybe the about 10 hours and uh they tell actors when it's a a big turnaround, meaning there's enough time to go to your trailer cuz this is a lot of equipment that's got to be moved, it's not a quick thing, but um we didn't go to our trailers, which is another like thank god he didn't. If Bob had gone to his trailer and just passed out, which is which is what happened when this um heart attack happened, um he he would have been dead by the time they knocked on the door and that would be

24:01 that. No one would have even known. He would have just passed out. So, we went down to that end and and Bob was watching a Cubs game and chatting with us um also on his exercise bike which he would do to stay just kind of alert instead of getting sleepy after hours and hours of shooting. Um which did not cause a heart attack. I have to say that his his rebound from his heart attack was because he was in the best shape of his life from training for his film Nobody. But um he and Patrick and I are just laughing and goofing off and then and then Bob got off the bike and looked like he was going to faint. So we ran to catch him so his head wouldn't hit the concrete floor. And then we realized, oh, this is this looks like either a seizure, a stroke, or a cardiac arrest.

24:48 all of which we need medical attention. And so we started um screaming for help and it it took a beat, a horrifying, terrifying beat. And eventually um a set medic was there um a different set medic that had just started um then Rosa Estrada came over and and it turned out that they couldn't get his heart to start and uh they needed a defibrillator and Rosa ran to her car and got it and they brought it back and they were able to revive him and then and then the ambulance came. But yeah, Patrick and I were we we wouldn't let go of him either. They just kept having to tell us like you you can't be holding on to him while he's being electrocuted.

25:32 But that was that was it was very hard to let go of your uh friend for a second in that moment.

25:39 I'm glad you have such vivid memories of this cuz like when I interviewed Bob Odenkirk, he had no memory of it.

25:45 He has none. He has none. And so when we went back to shoot that scene, we had finished that she uh shoot months later. Um, and Bob has no memory of the entire day, not just the event, but the entire day. And they showed him footage so that he would know where he was sitting. And I go, I said, I mean, we shot this for 10 hours. We also rehearsed it for a week and a half drilling it. And it's this very emotional, tense scene. I said, remember now, do you remember um that day? Because we were shooting this all day. And he he looks at me and laughing and he said, "It is like I am watching an impostor in my body do a scene that I have never done in my entire life." And I was like,

26:24 "What a strange feeling that must have been." Isn't that crazy? Yeah. It's just like,

26:30 yeah, he has no memory of it um at all. We had to tell him multiple times after uh after he woke up in the hospital. So, I want to talk about your formative years, and I know that you are officially named Debbie, but at some point in your life, you felt like I'm not a Debbie. So, I'd like to know how old you were when you came to that realization and what being a Debbie translated to you. What did that mean to you?

26:59 I think I was 12. 12 or 13. And it's Deborah Ray Seahor. And oh, I see. So Ray was your middle name.

27:09 Array was my middle name. Um and uh and and it was shortened to Debbie. And um I can't even say why, but and it sounds um fabricated after the fact, but I really did have a sort of disconnect feeling with the name. Um, and then I got a little chunky um in puberty and uh kids started yelling at me, "Hey, Fat Debbie, do you want some more Little Debbies?" Which are snack cakes.

27:40 I was like, "You know what? I just I it was over the summer one year. Um, and I think it was me coming back to 8th grade and I I was just like, I just I think I just need a fresh start." And I think I identify more with my middle name. And weirdly, I there was no issue with kids that had known me forever. Everybody just sort of was like, "Yeah, that makes sense."

28:07 Your father was a counterintelligence agent for the investigative service. What is that, the investigative service?

28:13 Yeah, it was called NIS at the time, Naval Intelligence, and now it's NCIS of the Mark Harmon variety.

28:20 Right. Okay. Yeah. He was in the TED offensive in Vietnam um in the army and then became a Ranger and then went to NIS which I'm not sure if that's an unusual trajectory or not uh as far as the switch from services but um we were civilian and um the counter intelligence unit um you know would be like we moved I was born in Norfick Virginia and then we immediately moved or Nafk if you're from there um immediately moved to Japan and then Arizona and then we moved back to Virginia to catch the Walker spy family which was a big case in the 80s that he worked on that he worked on. Yeah. Uh that was a joint investigation with NIS um FBI and CIA about two brothers I think they were Navy and CIA that both had decided to turn secrets to become moles for the KGB.

29:18 Um, so it's it's counter intelligence, meaning our people. You're investigating our own who have decided to work for the other.

29:29 So, did your father's work as a counterintelligence agent require him to do spycraft, like wearing disguises?

29:39 No. I hear from other people that he when he was a deep in the field agent, um, uh even pre the fall of the Iron Wall and all of that stuff before my sister and I were around or at least conscious of his stuff. I heard there were disguises and things like that way back then. Um but after that it felt we understood that he was investigating people and we understood that he went to an office and that it involved government and um military officials and stuff or maybe just government officials. Um, and when we'd moved, we'd sometimes live on a base for a short while while they found us, uh, residential housing. Um, but I wasn't I knew he was investigating things and I knew that they were secretive, but I didn't have a lot more details than that. And I am loathed to say that my head was too far up my butt as a teenager to actually be interested in what my parents actually do. Um, and then he died when I was 18. So, I didn't

30:43 get to ask a lot of the questions that I wish I had asked. Well, you probably wouldn't have answered them.

30:47 Probably not. And my dad's favorite answer to everything was, "What do you write in a book?" If you even just said like, "Where are you going? What do you write in a book?" And I thought I was so brilliant when I was 15 that I finally had a comeback. And I said, I go, "Yeah, I am." And he said, "Well, then leave this chapter out." And then

31:05 Your father became a a heavy drinker. Is that right? Correct. Yeah. What impact did that have on you?

31:13 Um, apparently he was a heavy drinker for most of his adult life, but it just didn't get labeled as alcoholism, you know, and my dad was um the life of the party and very, very smart, very, very funny with a super dry wit. And growing up in a time where like h having martinis, I don't know that they had them at lunch if you're working for the government, but um it was pretty normal that that's what you do at the end of the day. And then that just keeps creeping up, especially if uh I don't know. I wish it was here that I could ask him. It makes me so sad that it it at least wasn't. I don't know if it is now. I feel like it's gotten better from what I hear, but but regularly um offering and even normalizing people in the service to get uh therapy, it just wasn't a thing back then. um the idea that he was in the Tet offensive and as far as I know never talked to anybody about it um and that you would

32:13 have a life built of a lot of secrets and you know even investigating sometimes your own department then I don't remember him ever saying that he had anybody to talk to about it. So, I just bring that up because I I think self-medicating was going on for quite a while before it physically became a full-blown um issue and then full-blown disease.

32:39 You thought you would have a career in the visual arts as a painter. How did you get in into acting? What changed your mind?

32:49 I wanted so badly to run away with the circus. And by that, I mean television and film. I was obsessed with television film and as a kid in the suburbs in Virginia um I'd never known anybody that had even the loosest association with the entertainment business um and thought it was just an impossible dream. And then in my first year at George Mason University, you had to take an elective in the arts that was not your major. And my major was fine arts. Um uh and so I took an acting class with Lenny Raybuk and very thankfully it was not a emotional ooey gooey class. I took plenty of those later, but this was a hardcore do your homework script analysis class using um practical aesthetics that was developed out of the Atlantic Theater. And I just was in love with the fact that if you work really hard and study, you can incrementally get closer and closer to being um good at this and hopefully one

33:51 day great at this. And that was the best news ever to me cuz I didn't know a lot about how to do this thing, but I thought, "Oh, if you just want hours put in and like stay home and study and work at this, uh, I I'm I'm in." And then almost immediately the idea that oh this is studying the behavior of humans and the wise and and it was at times a very difficult household um coming up and the idea that you could actually start thinking about people's behavior as um a result of what it is that they want and their uh inability to use the correct tactic or that give them circumstance that are holding them back.

34:36 It's just like it blew my mind that that is how you can organize human behavior and not only have empathy for it but mimic it in a way that invites people in to go on a journey with you when you're on stage. And then I started going to DC theater which I think is some of the world's best theater is Washington DC theater. Um and watching those performers um and was just like I have to do this immediately I I have to do this for the rest of my life. I don't know how many day jobs I'm gonna have to have. It was not about being famous. I I knew that I I I had to be an actor and I'd support myself however I had to.

35:15 Well, Rey Horn, I want to thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this interview. I really like Plurubbus and um

35:23 so thank you for all of that. This is a dream come true being here.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Star of ‘Pluribus’ Rhea Seehorn | Fresh Air"?

Terry Gross (Host), Rhea Seehorn (Guest).

What is "Star of ‘Pluribus’ Rhea Seehorn | Fresh Air" about?

The narrative centers on Rhea Seehorn's character, Carol, in the Apple TV series *Pluribus*, as she navigates a strange and unsettling reality where, after the sudden death of her partner, she finds herself amidst a global transformation driven by extraterrestrial technology that connects minds and memories. As Carol grapples with the implications of this new collective consciousness, she…

What is mentioned in this Fresh Air episode?

9 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Better Call Saul, Pluribus, Ray Seahorn, Breaking Bad, Kim Wexler, C-SPAN. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Star of ‘Pluribus’ Rhea Seehorn | Fresh Air"?

The episode runs 35 min; the transcript is about 5,882 words in 70 timestamped sections.

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