The Watch - Vince Gilligan On The Premiere of ‘Pluribus’

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Chris and Andy talk about the two-episode premiere of ‘Pluribus,’ Vince Gilligan’s new sci-fi drama on Apple TV, and how despite its unique concept, it still contains the hallmark style that the ‘Breaking Bad’ creator is known for (1:02). Later, Chris is joined by Gilligan to discuss what inspired the series, going back to Albuquerque, Rhea Seehorn’s unparalleled talent, why he wanted to write a hero protagonist, and much more (26:04). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of ‘The Watch’ and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Vince Gilligan Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Video Producer: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me in the studio in London, it's Andy Greenwald. We're cooking with gas today. Here we go. Okay, Andy, it's Friday.

If you're listening to this in the United States of America, Andy and I are here in London recording. Today is a special episode. We are going over the first two episodes of Pluribus, which aired on Apple. You can watch those episodes, and I highly, highly, highly recommend.

Check those episodes out. And then you listen to this episode of the podcast because what we've got is a chat with Vince Gilligan after you and I talk for about 15 minutes. I'll get into my conversation with Vince about the origins of this show. Yeah, how was that? Awesome.

He's a white whale for us. We've never, I've never met him, never talked to him. I was just like, never got you, man. And he was like, who are you? I interviewed him in our New York offices and he was enamored with the view from World Trade Center. That's nice. Yeah.

So this is the first series from Vince Gilligan solely created by him. since Breaking Bad. Obviously, Gilligan had a role a heavy hand. He co-created Better Call Saul. He directed El Camino, which was the Better the Breaking Bad spin-off in 2019, I believe it was. But for the most part, you know, it's been a few years. And Vince Gilligan is part of a loose generation of

writers who I think defined prestige television and like of that, Dame Lindeloff, Matthew Weiner, David Chase, not necessarily the same age bracket, but maybe the same level of authorial power and authorial reputation. And Pluribus is at once a left turn from him, and on the other hand, makes perfect sense as a Vince Gilligan product.

Let's do the most broadest of broad conversations for about a minute or two here before we get into spoilers. It is almost impossible to talk about this show without giving away what it's about, and they have done a great job. A great job suggesting things, but not saying what it's about. Can I just straight up say this?

I was so delighted to know nothing. Yes. Thank you for listening to our podcast. We appreciate it, but I do think you should stop and watch Pluribus before we talk more about it because part of the absolute exhilarating joy of the first two episodes of this show

is an almost childlike sense of, holy shit. Yeah. Where are we going? And then quickly followed by, we can go anywhere. Yes. And I feel like I'm floating because of it. Yeah. I thought this was one of the best first episodes of a TV show I've seen in years.

In my mind, I need to make a Bill Simmons-esque top eight pilots of the last nine years kind of thing. No, you need to do tears. You need to do a pyramid. pretty high up there. And let's just say what people can probably deduce from all the promotional materials, which is that Ray Seahorn, who was the breakout star

of Better Call Saul, is the star of this show, and it is essentially a platform for her performing greatness, I think. She's capable of doing so many different things, and Vince Gilligan really, he puts his players in a position to succeed. And it's really wonderful to watch that.

this show has elements of drama, comedy, sci-fi, horror, so many different things. So why don't we draw a line there? Take a beat. If you guys have not listened or have not watched the episodes, I just, please go watch them now and then come back. Can I say one thing in this, one other thing in this part of the conversation before we get into specifics? Last week, we were having fun talking about Taylor Sheridan's big move.

Yeah. And because I have a finger on the pulse, I'm the I Love L.A. demographic. I made an Albert Poole's reference. I went straight to Major League Baseball, which is having a moment. Vince Gilligan, at least through two episodes of this show, has done something that no one else in his entire cohort of the great masters of the prestige television era have done. Making him, I suppose, the mooky bets of this in that he is a World Series. champion in the first part of his career and then shows up and keeps fucking winning. Right.

I cannot tell you how exciting it was to see. Hasn't Verlander done that like four times? Okay, yeah. Okay, Verlander. Let's talk Justin Verlander. His whip is still remarkably high. He's ERA Plus. It is so exciting to see Vince Gilligan, who is just an absolute master of the

form in terms of writing, in terms of efficiency of character dialogue, his ability to mix the stressiest high stakes dramatic moments with absolutely goofy comedy, which he's done throughout his career brilliantly from X-Files through Breaking Bad and the whole Albuquerque universe that he created. Just like crack his knuckles, take a few years and be like, now I'm going to do this. Yes. And this is beautifully directed. He's got more in his bag than I realize as a director. There's some framing that's almost West Andersonian in the beginning of this show. And there is a

freedom to what he's doing here and a confidence in his ability to do it that I don't think we often see. I think filmmakers we see evolve and grow in different decades of their career. Sure. I mean, you talk about all the time on big picture or rewatchables or like we were just talking about P.T. Anderson and how he's changed over his career. But the big, the big, the Mount Rushmore,

Like David Simon made the wire and everything that he's done since, and some of it has really, really reached incredible highs. It is of a similar flavor to the wire because he is, like many of the novelists we like, he does a certain thing. And that is his hobby horse to ride, right? Matt Weiner and David Chase in various ways have struggled to reach the apex that they did, but also they didn't need to because they made masterpieces. Chase is coming back, though.

coming back with an MK Ultra show. Okay, so jury's still out. Okay. Right. But I would say that like the Romanovs, which was a ambitious swing, was not successful and was not successful. We don't even need to relitigate it. But the ways that Pluribus is successful suggests an absolute, he's just, he's playing

loose. Yes. It's someone who is confident and like has been an MVP and has maybe found a new team. Well, look, I mean, just on a very basic level. like that guy could probably have made breaking bad universe shows for the rest of his professional life. And seemed happy doing it. And it wasn't cynical, right? Like whether it was El Camino or whether it was, whether it was better call Saul. Like he, I'm sure certainly would have been like, please do this again. And he made those things with his whole heart. Like there was nothing about Better Call Saul that was like cynical.

Yeah. And that's okay. Like I feel like we've been on this podcast or just been in bars talking about artists we like being like, James Crumley only wrote one book. He just wrote it eight times. And that's awesome because writing a book is hard. I don't know. I feel like I'm getting in front of my skis just saying how exciting I found this. We can get into the specifics of it. But wow, you don't often see it.

Okay, so going forward, we'll have a spoiler conversation for the first two episodes, which Apple is very smartly airing as a pair, rather than making people wait for the second episode, I think, because it gives a really good picture of both sides of this show. So this is the new series from Vince Gill. again, it follows a romantician author named Carol, who's played as I mentioned by Ray Seahorn, who after a viral outbreak, I think, is the best way to put it,

which is spread at least somewhat by kissing, turns almost everyone in the world into a member of a great collective consciousness. Now, the details of it are a little bit confusing because we are learning things alongside Carol. There's not a lot of audience privilege in this first episode. Everything that happens. We see a little bit. A little bit in the beginning about the origins of the virus.

We see something from space. We see some labs. And then we eventually learned that everyone's consciousness has now been glued together. Yes. And while that has been a pretty violent transformation, a lot of people die in the process. But at the end, and one of the people who dies is Carol's partner. Ellen.

Like another woman who helps her. with her romantici author. And with her anger and drinking issues. Yes. Once we get past that moment, which is a harrowing, harrowing sequence, we'll talk a little bit more about in detail.

Carol finds out that the world is essentially now been taken over by a great collective consciousness. Everybody is everybody. Everybody knows how to do everything. Everyone else knows how to do. And everybody's moving like ants in a colony.

Yes. And strangely, life seems both at, once terrifyingly lonely and scary but also society or at least the functions of society seem to be working a lot better because

there is a collective sort of for like a collective participation happening so this first episode is essentially one half kind of a dromody that wouldn't be out of place in better call Saul

it takes place somewhat in Alperkirky which is where Carol and Helen Live. And does some of the things that Better Call Saul did so well with framing characters against modern late-stage capitalistic backdrops to create

a sense of alienation or dislocation. And a deep fixation on process. Yes. How things are done. This is the Gilligan signature is and that comes in in the second episode as well. About halfway through this show turns into a Hitchcock horror film.

Is it Hitchcock or is it Romero? Like there's something, I mean, you know the references. It's a night of the living dead moment, but it's also a night of the living, nice dead. It's a night of the living kissing dead. Happy zombies.

And, you know, I think that this is one of the most striking internalizations of the last five years of what's happened in this world, rather than an explicit commentary on it. By making it sci-fi to some extent, and by just chance, changing things a little bit. So it's not COVID. It's not this. It's not that. He can tweak it. He can

talk about it in different ways. And what emerges is a protagonist who is miserable, but also wants to hold onto her misery and wants to hold onto her grief and wants to hold on to her individuality, even if going along with what everybody else is doing would be a much more painless way of existing. So that first episode, this first episode is just incredible and features several moments that I think I'll hold with me for a really long time. Number one is obviously Carol's steel, you know, she takes this guy's truck and is trying to drive her partner to the hospital

and society is collapsing. What did you think of that sort of more set piece particularly? I mean, it feels so uniquely fresh to be experiencing a, happy apocalypse. Everything is familiar in terms of the beats of something ending. We've seen plenty of dystopian

apocalyptic fiction over the last few years. But in addition to Night of the Living Dead being or Contagin being a reference point, I think the Lego movie is a reference point. In the goofiness of it as well, you know, there's the moment in the second episode where she tries to help

and there's someone hanging from a crane. He's like, it's okay. Carol, I'm fine. And that is pure, hey, Emmett from the beginning of the Lego movie. There's a little bit of good place in it. Yes, there is as well. And it, you know, I guess my feeling is it's just this continuation of just exhilaration that I felt watching the show, where it's like, when you talk to people who've written great songs and they're like, well, there really are only three chords. It's just how you deploy them. I know there are more than

three chords, but like traditionally in certain types of melodic pop music, it's just how you play him. And I was like, oh, he found a new way to play him. Yeah. He's mixing and matching this. And to your point about, like, it is about isolation and COVID. It is also about Luddism in the face of, like, what tribalism exists because of technology and community. But it also casts our main character as so negative. And at least in the first two episodes, as a negative, potentially negative murderous unintentionally so force in the world, that it makes you wonder. Because I think one of the things that is so complicated about our current moment is we are all yearning for a real return to a sense of community. And yet we see the communities that are forming

and it's like fucking grapers. It's like, wait, don't do our work. Wait, how is this working? People are finding each other, but maybe we didn't want them to find each other that way. And it's all deeply, deeply out of control. We shouldn't be this connected. Maybe we should be less connected. Yeah. And also, you know, the good place thing is such a smart point, too. Because as well as helping me understand why I know there was a bidding war for this, why Apple won out, I assume one of the reasons Apple won out, is because Vince Gilligan knew,

and maybe you talked to him about this because I haven't listened to your interview yet, that to do a show like this and really fucking do it, you need to say yes and all the time. So this is what I wanted to ask you about. As it moves from episode one, which is granular Carol's Nightmare Experience into episode two, generation of TV watching and a relatively recent indoctrination into how production works and how much things cost did not lead me to believe that we would get Air Force One in the empty Bilbao airport before the midpoint of episode two.

Now, you've been to New Mexico. Is that actually the New Mexico airport with a Bilbao sign? I don't know if you talked to Vince. Like it does seem, production is based now, He loves to give people work in Albuquerque. But regardless, even if he dressed New Mexico to be otherworldly destinations, like Tangier, which is where the second episode begins. Right. I've never seen a coastline like that in New Mexico. So there may be something going on here. My point is, he has the juice to ask for this.

He has the technical know-how and the production team to get it done. And he has the creative hunger to say, yes, yes, yes. Let's go. Let's go. let's go. The opening of episode two is a really good place, a really good example of what I wanted to ask you about. So like in TV writing, there's story, which is what this thing is about. There's plot, which is what happens. But Gilligan kind of takes it a step further in his writing, which is it's actually the plot that dictates the story or brings the story out. And so much as,

for instance, the second episode begins with this painstaking. Crazy. Essentially, like, journey from Northern Africa to New Mexico for this woman who resembles the woman on the cover of Carol's Romantician novels. Resembles a man. Who is supposed to kind of resemble Helen, basically, I think, in a way. But also it was supposed to be like a, when Carol was feeling more bold, it was going to be a coming out story. Yes. But she blinked and made the sexy pirate a man.

Yes. So this woman basically comes across the world to... This is Carolina Weedra. Yeah, and to talk to Carol and to basically be her guide through this process because they think this is a person that Carol is going to respond to physically because she resembles some part of her id and some part of her imagination. But the actual process of getting her from Africa to New Mexico is not... She doesn't just show up.

We actually see her take a scooter and avoid a truck. that's piling dead bodies into it and get on a plane and fly that plane and then arrive at a first-class lounge and shower and change into an outfit in New Mexico and throw out like a bottle of water that she had and then go and meet Carol. But all these little steps

gives you this idea of a world that's 20-dimensional. Like that you're thinking about how are these people like hydrating? How are these people transporting themselves? Like who's filling up this plane with gasoline? Like how is she getting from this part of the coastline to an airport, you know,

and you start to see, without any words spoken, the collective spirit, what would happen if everybody was selfless and just helped each other? And it was like, yep, you take my scooter. Yep, you take my car. Yep, this is your plane now. We all have a place, we all have a role to play. Yes.

And it also leads to, you know, in that episode, there is a summit quickly. I think in the first episode, when she's speaking to the designated representative of the United States government who's like the undersecretary of the Department of Labor or something. It's really funny. He says like there are probably 11 people like you on the planet who are immune to being joined up, glued up.

And so I'm like, okay, well, that's the arc of the first season. Nope. She meets with six of them in a summit on Air Force One. In Bilbao. In Bilbao in the second episode. And they're all having a great time. And they're having a great time. And it is not a dystopian thriller.

It is not the Walking Dead where the rag tag group of survivors learns to make. make a new society. One of the dudes is just having lots of sex and is just like super into how fun this is. Yeah. Everyone else, because of how they lived their active lives, still has family. Yes. Now, their family are also, as Carol points out, their gynecologist and also the prime minister and also everyone alive. But, you know, as we, maybe this is a little bit of the echo of COVID too, of like, you kind of learn to make stuff work. Yeah. You know, as long as it resembles your real life, you can get along with it. Well, they put, and also, there's a story clock going,

which is that this consciousness, be an alien or an outbreak or both or whatever it is, they communicate to Carol that they are diligently working to figure out a way to bring her into part of the fold. To upload her. And that that is something that obviously these other survivors, quote unquote, want. There's another wrinkle that happens that was revealed in Bilbao, which is that Carol obviously has, as we've referenced, some emotional problems or some emotional control problems,

and that when she loses her temper, there is a ripple effect of that that winds up killing many of the thousands and thousands, millions of people when that happened. So she basically puts joined up humans on tilt because they cannot handle her bad vibes. Yes. And many die.

which is fucking wild. Yes. And they go into basically an epileptic seizure when she freaks out. And some of them worldwide are flying planes

at that moment or lifting each other up on cranes and it doesn't go great. So there's a bunch of situations where I think you start with her in a place

where she's being lauded for these books by her fans who she seems to have at best cynical relationship with. She's not proud of her work. Then there is

this point where she could be one of a dozen people in this world who get to just do whatever they want for this time being while they work on this, quote unquote, cure to make her part of this collective. And instead she's miserable and just lives alone in her same house in New Mexico. And a cul-de-sac.

Yeah, on a cul-de-sac and buries her partner out in the backyard. A very, very affecting moment there where you rarely get that in the horror movie, which is the bury you're dead. and having an episode that's equally treating the grief of a traumatic episode as it did the trauma itself or the exciting race to survival. And you get to the end of the second episode and you can see like a rhythm developing,

but at the same time, anything could happen on this show. This show could be about anything. I also think that there's a very smart decision that they made where they've cast at Seahorn. She's obviously the star of the show. a lot of unknowns after that. And global actors, like Samba Chuteau have never seen before,

he's from Mauritania, and he is the breakout character of episode two. It is such a confident flex. This is essentially a one-woman show. Yes. But also, any person alive could be on the show, real or imagine. But there's also that element

because of the way they cast it, you're not like, well, okay, this person's hanging out for three episodes. Correct. Or I know that they wouldn't bring Walton Goggins in just to do this. Now he's not on the show. I just mean...

Remember when we would talk about Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, and we would talk about how every single detail matters, and it's almost an OCD commitment to the Post-it notes or whatever. This is a similar example of attention to detail in that I think he knew, even when the show only existed in his mind, that putting anyone recognizable on screen would tip it and give us a sense, he knows how TV works. Yes.

When a famous, your point, when a famous actor shows up, we understand that that's someone who probably will either die dramatically or hang out for a while. Yeah. And we adjust our subconscious fandom antennae specifically. Yeah, and John Carl Esposito shows up in Breaking Bad. You're like, ah. Here we go.

Here we go. And when he shows up in Brider Carl Saul, you obviously know. But like, there's ways to play that where you're like, you don't bring this person in unless you're serious. But the way that this show is cast is now like, not only do you feel like it can go anywhere, but it has made me think of and I went back and watched some of his episodes

just for fun of X-Files, of Inskilligans, where you've got to start underneath Chris Carter. And X-Files has a very durable, you know, now and kind of out-of-date style, which was there was a overall serialized story about aliens and about, like,

the government's conspiracy around it. And then there was Monster of the Week episodes where you could go off just kind of have, are there vampires in Texas? No, but still. They could do something similar with Pluribus. Like, this could all be about what are these things and what am I to them and how will I survive?

But Carol could do lots of different things here. They could do anything. They could do anything with this show. She could be a political eater. She could open a video store. She could do whatever she wants. They could do episodes of the, you know, monsters of the week within the world of Pluribus.

And, you know, obviously Apple. has a long, they see the long game with a lot of these shows, sometimes longer than they need to be on. So I'll be interested to see, you've mentioned already that they've moved up plot points

that you would think would be like, oh, this could be the first season art, and instead it's in the second episode. And Pluribus is, you know, very rare, got a two-season commitment, which is exciting. But to your point, like, it doesn't have the shape

of what we're used to. Most shows begin with a very provocative question. or a bit of world building or world ending. And then you can kind of feel the seams of where it's going to have to get to and are they going to slow walk it or are they going to fast walk it? And this is just such a bold and confident paradigm shifting. Yeah, I'm going to do something here.

That it feels exciting to be a part of it. And part of the excitement is you trust the bus driver who's taking us on this journey. Yeah. There's a confidence to that, both in terms of the filmmaking and in terms of our connection. I just didn't expect this. I don't know why. Yeah. I don't know whether that makes me jaded or whether it makes me just maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention.

I think they did a really good job of not tipping their hand. They really did. They were like, hopefully Vince Gilligan gets people in the door and once they see this. And I hope people aren't thrown off by the first half hour and they're like, what is the show about? You know, like I stick with it, stick with this first episode. But I even found the first episode, first half hour pretty magnetic anyway, you know, just watching them kind of go through their daily life. I did too. Quick question, because also it's funny. The opening is funny. Yeah. And I love that. It has a lightness to it despite what comes next. Just to check in here and maybe you've watched ahead a little bit, so I don't want to spoil, but pass two. But the perception I have is that while Helen did not survive the great joining up, during the moments when she was connected to the mainframe, they had access to her. Yes, but her consciousness did not get up. They can't just give her somebody who's like new Helen. Put her in a new body. Yeah. But they, know everything she's ever known and feel everything she's ever felt.

That's part of the invasive element that Carol does not like. And that Zosha is now represented a little bit. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Awesome. Let's listen to you talk to Vince Gilligan. He was very nice to give me some of his time.

We'll be back next week, probably Monday, I would hope. Yeah, Monday's good. Yeah. And thanks to Kai, Kaya, thanks to Bex, who's been setting us up here in London. And we'll talk to you next week. The playoffs are here. And you can predict the action. All the way to the finals with Fandul Predicts.

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But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sales. signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Vince, thanks so much for joining me. I feel like you're like one of my white whales. We haven't had you on the watch. I don't think before we did a lot of better call Saul stuff. Obviously, a lot of breaking bad stuff. But it's an honor to have you here joining me. And man, this show, I'm going to be careful about how I talk about it because we're going to put this

up after people have had a chance to see the first two episodes, but obviously I stopped myself at the first two episodes. I did not want to start confusing myself about kind of where it goes and everything. God bless you. For our pro, I know, I had to have some discipline. For our listeners, can you kind of give me a timeline of when you start thinking of this idea and how it develops over the course of time, kind of like with El Camino and then Better Call Saul in the background and what's going on there? Better Call Saul was definitely going on and was in the background. I started to come up with the first stirrings of this idea about, gosh, it feels like it was about a decade ago. It might have been around eight years ago. Okay. I wish I'd written it down

when I started thinking about it. I was working on Better Call Saul. Peter, Peter Gould and I had created that together and I was having such a good time working on it that I didn't want to leave, but it was between the start of Better Call Saul and El Camino, and we would take these lunch breaks where we would, you know, take a nap or, you know, do phone calls or whatnot. And I would take these long walks around the neighborhood, around Toluca Lake in California, where a writer's room is. The idea that as it first came to me had something to do with, it was about a guy, not a woman, but a man who everybody was really, really nice to him.

Huh. And people just loved him. And they had unconditional love for him, and they would do anything for him. They were solicitous to the extreme. And I thought, why, why is that? And I, you know, that came later, the why came later. But I was, I was thinking, what would that be like to live that life? Then I started, it started dawned me.

This could be, maybe a time. TV show or a movie. Sometimes when you're in the early inklings you have for an idea, you don't know, is it two hours worth of a story or is it 100 hours. But as I was thinking about it, I thought, well, maybe it's a mini-series, maybe it's somewhere in between. And maybe it's not a guy after all. Maybe I should write a female protagonist because here I am working with, at the time, working with someone I was beginning to realize very quickly upon Peter Gould and I hiring her, Ray Seahorn, she is so good. She is so good.

And so, you know, the first season or so, better call Saul, he and I are just pinching ourselves thinking, we love everybody in this thing from Bob, from Bob Odenkirk on down. Everybody's just, you know, pulling their weight and then some. And Michael McKeon, my guy getting to work with him. Yeah. But this Ray Seahorn, that was the. the unknown in our lives in my life. And I loved writing for her, as did all of the writers on that show.

And the directors all loved directing her. And she was just an absolute breath of fresh air and a pleasure to work with. And so I thought, you know, if I'm smart, I'm going to have something figured out for when this show ends. Yeah. I learned that lesson a long time ago after the X-Files. I learned you've got to have the next thing in the offing. Yeah, you can't have too many meetings. You're just like, I don't know, kicking some stuff around.

Yeah. I'm just hanging out. I'm just, you know, eating Cheetos and hanging out in the backyard, you know. I thought, my God, I should write a story for her, and maybe it's this one. And that's my long-witted answer to that question. How much is the last, you said you started around eight years ago? How much is the last, say, five years? Because I think anybody who watches these first two episodes will see phrases, sensations, they'll have feelings that will remind them of what it's like to be alive over the last five years, whether it has to do with this idea. of a viral infection. We don't really know quite what it is, obviously, in these first two episodes, to, I think even some of the things that Carol says and does are very reflective of a certain state of mind.

Like, I think people are going through and have been going through. So how does this idea change with kind of like what's going on in real life over the last couple of years? That is a great question. And it's just a lot of it is just pure, dumb luck in terms of timing. Yeah. my part. I was thinking about this, as I said, the better part of a decade ago. And when COVID hit, I recall thinking to myself, oh, crap, everyone's going to think this is about COVID. Not only they're

going to think this is about COVID, but they're going to be so sick and tired of COVID, no one's going to want to order this thing. Yeah. That was a real true fear I had all through 2020, 2020, 22. The good news and the bad news for me is that I work so slowly. It's like watching a glacier melt, you know, how long it takes me to write stuff and come up with stuff. That by the time we were, you know, ready to go on this thing, COVID was at least a little bit in the rearview mirror. Yeah. Although I think we're still suffering from the general craziness that it inflicted upon all of us. Yeah, I think you can see that, you know, everything from our current state of us. politics but also in just like weird behavioral things that you know I don't know that they'll go away anytime student where you're like oh like maybe we're all a little bit meaner but we're also all a little bit more guarded of our space and you know

it's it's interesting to see it seep into things I don't think I think if you did something like if you were gonna make the the the TikTok of COVID outbreak show right now people might be like man I'd rather not but but I think when it's when it shot through with this kind of like I don't know would Did you describe it as a light sci-fi sensibility when it comes to this show? Yeah, it's definitely not hardcore sci-fi, although the basic premise, I tried to make it as seemingly scientific as possible, as believable in terms of actual science. And we had a lot of technical help. We had wonderful technical help in terms of radio astronomy and in terms of genetic engineering.

But, yeah, it was fun for me to get to flex some of those science. muscle that I used to use on X-Files. Yeah. And even before X-Files, I always love science fiction, even as a kid in elementary school. I was writing stories about giant robots and spaceships and building spaceships and making monster masks and alien masks. And it's always something I've gravitated toward. And I, if you had told me 25 years ago, I'd be known mostly for writing hard-bitten crime dramas and stories.

is about drug dealing, which I literally know nothing about. Yeah. I would have said, you're crazy. I'm going to be a science fiction guy, or I'm going to be a light comedy guy, you know. But you kind of go where the characters take you and where the stories take you. And this one kind of fascinated me, so I figured, I didn't set out to say, it's time for another sci-fi show. I just, I liked how this story was making me feel or think.

You know, the Breaking Bad pitch or the tag logline for Breaking Bad is kind of legendary in the television industry. And I was curious whether you had one for pluribus that you had kind of used in your head, whether or not with Apple TV or Sony TV executives or even just to people that you're like, here's what the show is about. Have you kind of come up with something for this? Yeah, a good word to the wise folks, you know, doing this for a living one to do, you know, it's a good thing is to have what they call the elevator pitch. Yeah.

which is basically the one-sentence distillation of what it is you want the show to be, or at least what you think you want the show to be as you embark upon it or what you want people to think of it. And, yeah, the one-line pitch for Breaking Bad was, we're going to take Mr. Chips and turn them in a scarface. And so I thought, I got to get a good pithy one for this new show. So we didn't have one for Better Call Saul, by the way. We just, we didn't even know where the hell was going.

Yeah, we just sort of groped our way through. And, and, uh, but, uh, with this, with pluribus, it was the most miserable person on earth tries to save the world from happiness. So that's, uh, that was the, that was the one line pitch on this one. I know that, uh, when Breaking Bad was first conceived of, you know, you thought about it as a show, maybe taking place in Riverside, is, if that, is that correct? That's right. Riverside, California.

Um, and then obviously, economics and, and, and whatever movement. moves it to New Mexico and now, I think when people still think of New Mexico, they think of the better calls all Breaking Bad Universe. And this show is also shot in New Mexico. And it was this almost like romantic feeling to like return to some of these vistas. And I wonder as a filmmaker if you felt like there was like that same feeling of like, it's like your home turf now. You know, it wasn't any kind of feeling of ownership or anything like that. It was, but I do love New Mexico. I love Albuquerque and the desert, the environs surrounding Albuquerque. And I thought long and hard about it. I thought I really probably should set this in a whole other place. And when you see

the show, it could happen anywhere. Sure. Our main character, Carol Sturke, could truly live anywhere. And I thought it's probably would be wiser to have a whole fresh new start. The reason is set on Albuquerque is simply that we have a wonderful crew there that feels to me like family, and I wanted to keep working with them. It was as simple as that. There is no story of that I can think of that this show is set in Albuquerque. I just, I wanted to keep working with my same old crew. They're a wonderful bunch of men and women, and, you know, the people behind the camera, with people in front of the camera, they're some of the best people I've ever worked with, and it feels like a family.

And I wanted to do my part to keep them working, and I wanted to continue selfishly to work with them. Are there parts of Albuquerque that you're still discovering? Yeah. It's not that big a city. It's a city of, I'm guessing here, but it's, you know, people can Google this and prove me right or wrong. But it's about half a million people, 400,000, 500,000, I think,

in the greater metro area. Maybe it's less than that. I don't know. But it's, you know, we're always discovering neighborhoods in which to shoot and which to set things. And so far in season one, you'll see a few, you know, if you're a Breaking Bad fan or a better call Saul fan, you'll probably recognize a few landmarks. Certainly the Sandia Mountains to the east of town. But we're done a pretty good job of, you know, even in a medium-sized city, you really could shoot in probably any medium-sized city for years. and years

and find new places every episode. And we have a wonderful location manager named Christian Diaz de Badoia who is so good at his job and he finds, he and his guys, his scouts, find us amazing places every episode.

So I want to talk to you about, you know, my favorite sequence of these first two episodes is this kind of bravora 20-minute sequence as when Carol, when, I guess, for lack of,

of a better term. What if you were just watching it, you would be like, oh, this is the invasion moment. This is the moment where everything is turning and all the people in this bar that Carol and Helen are visiting turn. And it kind of turns into this, you know, got the Bernard Herman score going. And it kind of, is that Everett, G. Robinson, who's up on the mural outside of the bar? That is Al Capone. That is actually Al Capone. We didn't put that there. People are going to say, what did he mean by having Al Capone? And that is a real, really wonderful bar and restaurant called Vernans. Okay.

You can go eat there. And I would recommend it. Maybe not after this episode. Exactly. But yeah. But it's a really fun place to hang out. And it's an interesting little kind of a strip mall there because on one of the walls of the strip mall there, they have Walter White's tombstone.

No. Yeah, seriously. It's not necessarily part of Vernon's. And I can't remember the exact story of who put it there. But God bless the- Technically. Well, God bless the folks who put their money together, put it up. It's really awesome.

It's worth getting your picture taken in front of. But yeah, the Al Capone mural is just there. Yeah. And I thought it looks cool. There is no deeper thematic reason as to, you know, it just happened to be there. So we shot it. That whole sequence has got elements of horror.

It's got elements of film noir, it, it's got, I mean, have you trying to think if you would shot something, there's so many obviously like moments in Breaking Bad like, you know, the prison assassinations and things, but like this seems like something that did it take a long time to shoot

that particular sequence? Can you tell me a little bit about it? It took, I forget exactly how many days. Well, just the stuff at Vernon's took, gosh, we were shooting at night. Well, some of the indoor stuff we probably shot during the day or we did splits where you do half day and half night. I probably

probably were there five or six days, I think, because I like, I got this kind of philosophy. I'd like to not reuse shots. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with reusing shots. The greatest movie is far greater than I will ever make, have repeated shots in them all the time. But I kind of, personally, I kind of dig, you know, figuring out, doing my homework, figuring out the shots that are going to make up a sequence. Do you storyboard? I don't storyboard. I would. I love storyboards, but I'm too obsessive, compulsive or whatever. I would take too long drawing the storyboards.

Yeah. So what I do, I do this thing where I do, and I think I, I think all the homework I'd do, so much of what I'd know and do comes from my days on the X-Files. I learned, I wouldn't be able to do anything. I wouldn't be here now if it weren't for the X-Files. I wouldn't have known how to run a show. But as far as directing goes, I learned from some really excellent directors on the X-Files, Kim Manners and Rob Bowman. Yeah. And these just a bunch of really wonderful directors. And I think the way Kim Manners used to do it, I think, no, actually, he would write in his scripts. He would write descriptions, I think. I probably stole this from a bunch of different directors, but I don't have the time or the capacity to do all the storyboard. So instead, I'll get a plan view of the set.

and I'll draw little circles with little triangles indicating which way the camera's pointing. Sure. But I try to, you know, I spend hours and hours doing the homework, and you don't have to do homework when you're directing. I find it, you know, invaluable. I wouldn't ever want to be on a set without having done my homework. Then you can throw it all away if you want, but at least you're prepared. And at least it feels like malfeasance otherwise to show up and have 300 people standing there the clock. What do you think, guys? I know, I'm not feeling it here. Let's go, come back another day.

I know, you got too much responsibility there to keep everybody employed. Okay, so you're shooting about a week of nights at this place. Yeah, I'm sorry. I tend to digress. Even my digressions have digressions, but I like doing a sequence where I'm not repeating shots any more than I have to. And because of that, there's a lot of setups in that sequence, as you've seen. And so, yeah, we're shooting like a week of nights thereabouts. Yeah, I got off on a real tangent. Sorry, I'll try to keep the answer short. I asked about the story, but I'm hearing about the process stuff. So you're shooting at night and then I think that that sequence feels like, you know, it feels like war of the worlds and it feels like the kind of hallmark of that moment where everything is changing.

But it also, to my point earlier, it reminded me of looking around in 2020 and just being like what the hell is going on and like, what am I allowed to do and what should I do? and is it safe to do this and is it safe to do that. What are you trying, without asking you to be like explain yourself, but like what were you trying to convey with that sequence? Where were you trying to put the audience? I was trying to remind the audience of every sci-fi and horror movie trope they've ever seen. Yeah. Because I love, and I was doing it from a place of love,

because I am a big fan of sci-fi movies, uh, great ones, cheesy ones, movies of all sorts, going back to the 40s, you know, the 50s that I love, I love the original invasion of the body snatchers. I love the remake of that. I love all these wonderful genre stories in which the world is ending. I was trying to play with every, in the writing and in the directing, trying to think of every trope I could think of. And then wherever possible, turn those tropes on their ear. Not in any way to make fun of them, but just, to, A, to do something new and something different, and B, to show the affection I have for them.

Yeah. But the first episode of this show, if you were to watch it and stop after the first hour, the first episode, you really would not have a good indication of what the show is. I'm really glad Apple's going to show the two. The two together on the first night, because the second episode, you don't, you're like at the end of the first episode, you get an inkling of what's coming. then you really have to watch the second episode to kind of really get what's going on. Because the first episode is designed, by design, it's designed to be straight up genre, straight up horror, straight up sci-fi, you know, body snatcher type stuff, apocalyptic type stuff.

And then we, you know, endeavor to turn all that on its ear at the end of the first episode and then onward from there, the second episode and beyond. It is a pretty unique feeling to feel like it's a different show every, every episode. Like, most, I mean, I think probably we're conditioned to think, you know, that there needs to be like this tonal balance to like our shows and that like you're kind of identifying something immediately as like, oh, well, they know what they're doing. Because it's going to keep repeating, even in these limited series that have become so popular that we love so much. But I loved the feeling of starting the second one immediately. not only did it feel different because I think it's in some ways

more somber and in some ways much more funny but it then kind of you get this whole other side of Carol as a character and you really start seeing what a five tool player Ray Seahorn is which I already knew because Kim Lexler is one of my favorite TV characters

but is there any limit to what you can write for somebody like that? Because she does so many different things just in two hours. She can do anything and it's It's so much fun to write for her. And I'm speaking for myself and for the writers of Pluribus. This was definitely a group effort.

We love writing forward because she can do anything. She can make you laugh. She can make you cry. She can scare you. She can be scary. She can do anything. And it's fun finding new things for her to do. And watching her, you know, hit it out of the park.

It's fun watching her perform at such a high level, consistently. I felt very confident. I never feel, I'm not a confident person by nature. As we record this, we don't know yet how people are going to receive this thing. I hope, you know, selfishly, I hope they dig it. And I'm always nervous about that, doing something new, you know, trying something, you know, people may or may not respond to. But I had the utmost confidence in Ray. I knew she could pull it off. And even then she surprised me. Yeah. As the episodes progressed, as we got into episodes. I didn't direct where I'm watching, you know, director's cuts, because I don't really watch

dailies once we get rolling. Maybe I should, but, you know, it's held me in good stead so far. I watch a lot of times I'm seeing a director's cut for, you know. Like the assembly that the director does. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And just saying, my God, she is even better than I thought she was going to be. I just, I, and also, she is the sweetest person in the world.

Yeah. And she is so funny and so smart. And I just, I love her to pieces. I selfishly, for my own personal self-aggrandizement, I'd love for this thing to be a hit, but more than any other reason, I want this thing to do well. It's for Ray. Yeah. Because she deserves to be number one on the call sheet.

Absolutely. She's somebody you don't want to take your eyes off of, but she has, like, qualities that are, you know, some of my favorite character actors have for sure she can bring, just with a look of a face. You're like, I know exactly what I'm getting here, you know. I got in trouble that. We were doing some interview. this is a month or two ago, a very early something or other. I can't remember who we were talking to,

but I said, the thing that's so great about Ray is that she has a face like a jumbo-tron scream. And she looked at me and he's like, what? And I was like, you know, it's like a Monty Python sketch or something. The one where he's talking about, you know, His Majesty is like a stream of bats piss or something. But I didn't, I wasn't trying to be funny. I think it was after that thing happened with the Coldplay thing,

with the jumbo. Yes. So I said I had Jumbotron screens on my mind, but what I meant, and I didn't word it well, writers are like, we're all into our witty dialogue and all that. But it's my favorite thing of all is when we can write a scene where there are no words, or there's no dialogue, and the actor just puts it across. And she has this ability to broadcast. That's what I meant with a Jumbotron screen analogy.

She can broadcast her emotions. I don't know if she'd be a great poker player or the world's worst poker player because she could act the poker hand but on the other hand you can read her emotions in her face like a jumbo trot screen and you would also know how she was feeling about

I mean there's scenes where she can go from bored to angry to lonely to board again and it's like sitting on a couch and but as a viewer I'm getting that with she doesn't have anybody to talk to really I mean, she can make this, you know, this operator phone call. But other than that, she's pretty much just going through these emotions and you're kind of imagining, you're putting yourself in her shoes and imagining this. Obviously, I think a lot of people are going to talk about what pluribis is about and, you know, what are you trying to say with that?

And I came across a quote of yours from a New Yorker interview, I think towards the end of Saul. And you were telling a story about working with Michael Mann. And you were talking about, you know, like, what am I? you're writing something for him and you're like, what's it about? What am I doing here? And he was just like, your job is to come up with a script that inspires the actors and director. And then hopefully this work will be viewed by moviegoers. And they'll say, oh, well, that was interesting. I didn't see where that was going. I like the twist and turns. I like the characters. That's the job. The fru-frou thematic stuff is for other people to figure out the college professors, et cetera. And I

realize that this is my battle with the Vince Gilligan project is like, what draws me to it, actually watching you and your writers and your directors and creative people think through things outside of what it's about. And so the second episode is actually like, what would you do the next day? What would happen? You know, and how would you grieve? And how would you get rid of a body? And how would everybody start to connect with each other all over again, this completely new reality? Do you find that it's useful for you to kind of keep it at that, not surface, level, but like practical, because like so many of your, my favorite moments in your shows are someone doing something. And what are the, all the little things that has to be done to get like

this postage situation worked out or to get something loaded up or taken off of a truck? And I've always wanted to ask you about how you go about that kind of writing. You know, I got to say, I've never actually met Stephen King, but his book about writing. I think it was it called On Writing. I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot from reading that very slim book about how he went about writing. And one of the things that always stuck with me from his book was he said, people love process. People love watching other people do their jobs, especially if it's a job you yourself are not familiar with.

And especially if that person is actually good at their job. and sometimes the people we present on these shows are not so good at their job. Yeah. But I really took that to heart when I read that, and I read that, God, back probably when I was in college or shortly thereafter. And it really, I kind of knew innately he was right. I thought about it. I thought about, you know, you have to be your own first fan. And I don't mean that in terms of a fan of yourself, but you have to be the first reader or the first reader.

or the first viewer of the thing you're writing. Yes. And you have to. I mean, you don't have to do anything. But, I mean, the way I like to think of it is it helps me to try to please myself. You know, you want to write something. Oh, that's funny or that's sad or that's, you know. And I thought, well, you know, I do like watching the process.

I like, and so let's not skip it. Let's not skimple it. And that really started with breaking. bad for a twofold reason. A, I'd always wanted to kind of show that kind of stuff. And B, we had the great luxury on breaking bad of serialized storytelling, which we didn't have on the X-Files. X-Files was the greatest job ever, but it was, or a very close second greatest job ever, but it was very episodic and it was very tight in terms of running time. And you, you know, you have to, you have to cut out a lot of that process.

But when you get a chance through more leisurely running time and serialized storytelling, when you get a chance to show that stuff, you know, you just, you got to, I think you got to have confidence in the audience. And I always have confidence in the audience that they are smarter than I am. Yeah. And I don't believe this thing about, yeah, we live in a world of diminishing attention spans. and there are certain people who, for whom

breaking bad and better call Saul and pluribus are not intended. I don't mean that in a, in a hoity-toity or, you know, in a sense of, oh, you know, they're specific. But they're, you know, everything is now specific, isn't it?

Used to be, in the back in the old days, you'd write a TV show and you'd, if you were really successful, actually most of America were lying in the last episode of MASH, 100 million people watching. I was looking at some experts. file, I was doing some re-watching of episodes of viewers from X-Files, and when I would look at the Wikipedia and it would show the rating, I had to make sure I hadn't taken melatonin.

I was like, 16 million people watch this. This is a famous story about Veronica's closet, a show being canceled when it had a viewership of only 20 million years. I mean, it's just, it's not that world anymore. And so that is a, I guess you can say it's a curse, but it's, I prefer to see it as a blessing because I think it's a wonderful boon as a writer to get to tell a specific story, to get to put in as much process as you want to make the storytelling leisurely up to a point.

You don't want it to be slow, but it doesn't necessarily need to be super fast either. And yes, we perhaps do live in a world of diminished attention spans, but that's not everybody. So thank God we don't have to attract 20 million viewers, because you and I wouldn't be talking. I wouldn't be anywhere. The fracturing of the television audience, which is not always a good thing,

but it allows shows to be a success with big finger-clothes when it only has, you know, a million or two million viewers, however many. And I love the viewers we attract, and I know they're all smarter than I am, and I write for them. I think about why I get drawn to certain genres, and, you know, I'll want,

There are things that I will watch where it'll pretty much be like you could put anything with certain hallmarks of like a spaghetti Western. And I will give it a solid 45 minutes before I turn it all. And it could be really bad dubbed spaghetti restaurant. But the things I love the most, like whether it's like a heist genre, heist movies, right? It's not really because I think it's so cool that these guys are robbing banks or cracking safes. It's because most of the best ones like thief or heat or whatever are about, all right, How would you do this? And then how would you get away with it?

And what happens if getting away with it goes wrong? How would you get away with that? Like, where would you go next? And, you know, it's those moments in these movies where you're like, God, everything has gone wrong for these guys, but they're still thinking it through. And that's the same thing you saw and breaking bad and this do where you're like, how's she going to do this?

I mean, I know she wants to bury her lover in the backyard and have this moment, but I've never dug a hole. That's hard, you know? Digging a hole is hard. especially in that part of Albuquerque where it's just truly just nothing but lava rock. Yeah. Yeah, you just can't do it. And then the great thing about it is Carol's character comes through.

And that's the coolest thing about all of these shows and stuff we're talking about is Carol being stubborn. Yeah. And Carol thinking that like, you know, no one can possibly understand my personal experience because now they're all sharing one experience. It comes through because she doesn't have the right tool to dig in the ground. And she refuses, you know, here, go get, you know, no, I don't want any help. I'm doing it myself. Yeah, she's, she's a stubborn, she's a stubborn hero. Do you have to have rules or principles about, okay, you know, we have this, we have a sequence here.

We want her to get this to do this or she's got to get to this other country. What would happen? What flight would she put where? Would she sit on the flight, all that stuff? Do you have to have kind of like a part of your brain that's like, okay, but now I need, we need to then cut back to some emotional balance or character beat that goes beyond just the lifting up and down of a tray table or whatever it might be. The best version of this job is when you approach it organically, I have come to find.

When you're in the writer's room and you're surrounded by really smart folks that you like spending 12 hours a day with, the best version of this job is when we sit there and we say to ourselves, where is Walter White or Jimmy McGill or Carol Sturke's head at right this minute? What does she want to do next and what obstacle is? is arrayed before obstacles, plural or arrayed before her. When you slow it down and you granularize it, if that's a word, to that degree, that's where the good stuff happens, I think. And then every now and then to kind of blow some fresh air through your brain, you think ahead

and you say, you know, what would be a really cool place to get to? You know, where do we want to head this season? Where do we want ahead by the end of this episode? So that's helpful too. And that always can be a good thing to do. But the version that doesn't seem to work, at least for me, is when you get too, your vision becomes too distant. And you're like, I got to get to this scene. It's going to be a cool scene.

Well, how do you get there? Because this character would never do thus and so, which would put them into the position. When you get lazy about character, you're done for, I think. that's if people, it's the, this old thing we've all heard, you know, okay, Bill,

we got to check out this haunted house. Oh, my flash light just went dead. I tell you what, I'm going to go to the attic. You should split up. Yeah, we should split up.

You know, it's, that's a, that's a fun one to, to ponder because it's like, the movies we all love are the movies that worked harder to explain basic human behavior.

Everyone, everyone is an expert in human behavior. Everyone of a certain, age, you know, probably not even adulthood. You get to be around 12 or 13 years old. You were an expert on human behavior. Yeah. You can, and you can call BS on behavior that is not human, that is not recognizable, that is not legit or kosher. So, so often, and still some movies we love, we kind of turn a blind eye to it. But, you know, there'll be characters doing, you know, heading to the attic of the haunted house all by themselves, just because it's going to be a scarier scene.

but it always works better still if there's a reason they have to split up that you can actually buy. That's where the hard work comes in. That's where the, you know, it's like pulling teeth or pulling your hair out trying to figure the stuff out. Yeah, and I also think that when you watch Carol go through

what she does in the first episode and a half, when you get to the second half of episode two, and she's actually interacting with people nominally like her, you know, it goes poorly, but you know why. And you can understand this is a person who assumes that everybody's going to think the way she does or see things the way that she does. And when they don't, that's just, that sets her off. That's a complete deal breaker, you know?

And she may have these unarticulated feelings for this person that she feels like represents something in her life. But it's fascinating to watch. I have, you know, I have so many questions, but I'll wrap up with this one because I, you know, you've talked in the past couple of years about your desire to write. something that was about more of a good guy. Yeah. And jury's out in Carol.

She seems like a good person-ish, you know, maybe not a nice person, super. But I was curious whether or not without giving away what happens in Pluribus, you felt like you were able to do that this time around. You're always reacting to the last thing you did when you're writing, you know, like, what have I done in the past, you know? And for me, it's like, what can I do different next time? I had seven wonderful years on the X-Files, and I took it for granted the idea of writing heroes. But Mulder and Scully were heroes.

Yeah. Old-fashioned, wonderful heroes that I started to take the idea of writing for heroes for granted because I thought, yeah, that's what everybody does. And then when I had a chance to write an anti-hero, and the way for me was paved by the Sopranos and the Shield, I thought, this would be great. And what a breath of fresh air. The world needs this, you know. And then now it's been 20 years now of just, I feel like, I feel like we get so many anti-heroes or just flat-out villains that we root for in our fiction that it's starting to leak into the real world. And we got, we got real-life people who are like, yeah, the lesson to be taken from breaking bad is, you know, just sticking to everybody.

Light-cheed's deal, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, to me it's a cautionary tale to some folks that's aspirational, you know. So I'm not trying to save the world or anything, although if I could, I would. But it's not that so much. It's just I kind of did. I wouldn't say I get tired of writing bad guys, but I kind of had my fill of it. It's kind of time to push back from the table.

Well, if you're going to do so much process stuff, you have to put your mind in there, the character's point of view of like, all right, how am I going to? That's true. And I remember a night. And I mean, I just was like the greatest thing in my life was getting a right breaking bay. I'm getting to work on it with all these other great people. But I remember driving home late at night from the writer's room one time. And this was probably season five or so.

Yeah, pretty dark. Yeah, and it was dark. And a car pulled up next to me and I just had this brief, weird certainty that someone in the next car was eyeballing me and they were going to shoot me. And I blame Todd for that. Yeah. And I finally like, I look over. Because, you know, yeah, because when you do that 12 hours a day, 14 hours a day, it starts to get in your head a little bit. And I looked over and it was a soccer mom and coming back with kids from some, you know, like a Honda Odyssey or something, coming back from some late soccer game.

But a certain point, it's just like, ah, I've kind of had enough of this. You know, and it doesn't mean I'll never write a bad guy again. But I like the idea of writing. To me, Carol is a flawed hero, an imperfect hero, but she's trying. And is the quest she's on even the right thing to be doing? I'm not even sure the jury. I think the jury's out on that. But she's trying to do the right thing versus Walter White and for most of his run, Jimmy McGill as well.

They weren't necessarily trying to do the right thing. And it's refreshing. It's a lot easier, I will say, to make bad guys interesting than good guys. It's tougher making the good guys, which is a shame, a weird irony and a shame. but it's worth attempting, I think. Well, Vince, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for the show. It's going to be so exciting to go over an episode by episode.

I can't wait to dig deeper into the first season. Thank you, man. This was fun. Yeah, thanks for coming then.