15 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About 'Pluribus'
We don’t want to speak too soon, but as Pluribus currently sits at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s looking like Vince Gilligan has done it again.
People are obsessed with Pluribus right now. If one more friend texts us to check it out, we might snap! Like, of course we watched it, our jobs depend on it. Okay, so if you haven’t seen it, it’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s sort of about what happens when humanity trades individuality for an easy “hive-mind” utopia. Rhea Seehorn is phenomenal. We're on the bandwagon. Here are 15 facts about the show everybody's watching.
What’s in a name?
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The word pluribus is Latin for “many” or “from many,” and it is most famously known from the phrase E Pluribus Unum (which translates to “out of many, one”). It still appears on US currency, passports, and the Great Seal, but Vince Gilligan said, “The show isn’t meant to be just American. I really want this to be a show for the whole world. I liked the idea of ‘out of many, one,’ not just in reference to democracy, but people everywhere - all becoming one.”
It’s been nominated for two Golden Globe Awards
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Pluribus received 2 Golden Globe nominations including “Best Television Series – Drama", and a “Best Actress” nomination for Rhea Seehorn.
Working with Rhea Seehorn got Gilligan to finally get crackin’
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He said, “About eight or nine years ago, I was thinking about a character who, inexplicably, for some reason, the world loved him. Everybody loved this guy. But about the same time, I was working for the first time with the wonderful actor Rhea Seehorn, and she had just started on Better Call Saul. And Peter Gould and I, ... and our writers, we all loved her. I said to myself, why don't I take this idea and make it about a woman instead of a man? And so I wrote Pluribus.”
Vince Gilligan was inspired by his time on ‘The X-Files’
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He said, "I didn't realize until I worked on The X-Files and saw writers like Darren Morgan creating funny episodes, that the genre could be so elastic. And that was a revelation to me. I started off 30 years ago as a kind of a comedy guy, really, but I realized I love writing drama. But then I thought, oh man, maybe I can do both at the same time.”
Vince Gilligan found the tone while filming
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Rhea Seehorn said, "Then when we got there on the set, when he said to me, when we were starting out, like, 'I'm not sure what this show is yet.' And I knew he wasn't being humble and selling himself short, ... but he meant tone, and I knew it, and I realized, ... let's do some playing ... where we're finding it. And so we would push it comedically some days, and he would call it, let's take it until it breaks to see what can the scene sustain. How far can you go before it's not in the same show as the wrenching, crying, snot-flying part of the scene that we just did?”
Vince Gilligan chose Albuquerque for his crew
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Because Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are both set in Albuquerque, Gilligan said, “I was nervous about making it in Albuquerque. I kind of thought we probably shouldn't do that, because it'll confuse people. It'll make promises to them that the show will have something to do with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. It really doesn't. The simple answer is because that's where my crew is, and I've worked with them now for almost 20 years. ... And I love them, but they all live in Albuquerque, and I can't bring them elsewhere.”
The show brought Karolina Wydra out of an acting hiatus
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Karolina Wydra, best known for roles in House and True Blood, never expected to work with Gilligan. After taking a break from acting to have children, she was shocked to get any offer at all.
The stunt performer and the school of fish
For the movement of the hivemind’s members (sometimes dozens or hundreds of them), Gilligan credits most of it to stunt performer Nito Larioza, who choreographed those scenes. He also said, “I used to scuba dive a little bit, and I was lucky enough to go down to the Caribbean. It fascinated me. These beautiful fish, they're all in a line, and then the lead fish all of a sudden turns a corner, like those light cycles in Tron.”
Apple was all-in from the beginning
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Apple reportedly gave Pluribus a two-season order before its premiere (which is a very uncommon move these days). They chose to not share production costs, but The Times described its scope as "as big as modern TV gets.”
They built Carol’s neighborhood from scratch
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Gilligan said, “They built a cul-de-sac from scratch in the middle of a field on the west side of Albuquerque. I wanted to have a great view of the Sandia Mountains. We built a real cul-de-sac with real concrete curbs and seven real houses. It was a big endeavor. It’s the biggest set build I have ever written for and it beats all the previous records for sets we built on the last two shows. The landscape is real and needs to be cared for.”
The title was incredibly hard to come up with
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Gilligan said, “This was the single hardest thing I've ever created, to title. It took years to come up with this title. Breaking Bad came easily, Better Call Saul came even quicker, and El Camino, that wasn't hard either. For Pluribus, we'd be working on the show and every week or so I'd say 'we gotta come up with a damn title for this thing. What is it?' We had a list of over 100 titles.”
The show went globetrotting
Though it’s centered in Albuquerque, they also filmed in Las Vegas, Big Sky, Montana, Northern Spain, and the Canary Islands. Originally, the team hoped to film in Norway, but due to logistical issues they opted to build the custom set instead.
Why John Cena makes a cameo
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In Episode 6, a hive-possessed John Cena (playing himself) appears in a chilling video explaining the hive’s adoption of “Human Derived Protein.” The choice of Cena was deliberate. Gilligan thought his persona would make the disturbing exposition more disarming and effective.
Episode 5 features an incredibly ambitious shot
In Episode 5, “Got Milk,” there’s a major sequence showing a ton of vehicles leaving Albuquerque. It was done using a combination of practical effects on a stage, a drone panning shot for the background, and many vehicles added digitally in post. According to producers, this was “likely one of the most expensive shots” in the first season.
There was a sneaky ‘Better Call Saul’ connection
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In episode 5, “Got Milk,” there’s an uncredited voice cameo by Patrick Fabian (who played Howard Hamelin in Better Call Saul). He provides the voice of prerecorded messages from the hive, and Rhea Seehorn didn’t know about it until she actually filmed the scene. She stayed in character during the take, and only laughed when the cameras stopped.
