# Transcript: Featured Session: Albuquerque Aftermath: From Breaking Bad to Pluribus with Rhea Seehorn, Vince Gilligan, and Key Creatives **Date:** March 14, 2026 · 10:30 PM **Session:** [Featured Session: Albuquerque Aftermath: From Breaking Bad to Pluribus with Rhea Seehorn, Vince Gilligan, and Key Creatives](/sessions/2026-03-14/pp1150525-featured-session-albuquerque-aftermath-from-breaking-bad-to-pluribus-with-rhea-s) ## Summary Creator Vince Gilligan, star Rhea Seehorn, and key collaborators discuss their creative journey from Breaking Bad through Better Call Saul to their new series Pluribus. The conversation explores their collaborative philosophy of trusting both the audience and the artists, never underestimating viewers' intelligence, and allowing characters to drive the story rather than forcing predetermined outcomes. ## Topics `television production` · `creative collaboration` · `character development` · `audience trust` · `storytelling philosophy` · `costume design` · `musical composition` · `performance craft` · `grief and depression` · `writer's room process` ## Key Takeaways 1. The best creative work happens when you stop keeping score of whose idea is whose - the best idea wins, regardless of who originated it. 2. Trusting your audience to understand complexity without over-explanation allows for more nuanced, sophisticated storytelling and performances. 3. Small details like costume choices (brown suits, paper clip buttons) can communicate character depth as powerfully as dialogue when given proper attention. 4. Starting fresh on a new project after years of success is both liberating and terrifying - it requires reexamining which creative lessons still apply and which must be left behind. 5. The characters should tell you where the story goes, not the other way around - forcing characters to serve predetermined plot points rarely produces authentic results. ## Full Transcript The moderator opens by asking Vince to tell the story of where the Breaking Bad universe came from. Vince shares that he found an old notebook with the very first idea - just one sentence about "good guy does something bad" - and it was dated 2004. He mentions that Sony blessed the project, though one executive initially missed it and later acknowledged his mistake. Rhea Seehorn recalls her first encounter with Vince's work. She was auditioning for another show on the Sony lot, a perfectly lovely show, but she could tell the character wouldn't evolve. Walking back to the parking building, she saw the Breaking Bad RV and thought, "Can you imagine doing that kind of writing?" She appreciated how the show asked audiences to think and derive their own interpretations, with complex characters like the work she'd done in theater. Literally the next day, she was called in to audition for Better Call Saul. Rhea emphasizes that casting director Ali Thomas didn't pigeonhole her as a sitcom actress and called her in for all sorts of parts. During the final testing process, she met Vince and Peter Gould, who went to great lengths to make what could be a nerve-wracking test as comfortable as possible. After Better Call Saul finished, she called all her producers and writers to see what they were working on next. That's when Vince said he'd written something for her. He warned her it was "kind of sci-fi" and she could wait to read it, but she said yes immediately, knowing he would only write something interesting with female characters she'd want to play. Dave Porter discusses the collaborative approach, noting that Vince always reminds them to never underestimate the audience. For the kinds of stories Vince tells, there's never a reason to think less of the audience. They want to encourage thought and detail, which is why it takes time to make these shows. This through-line carries through all of Vince's work and is part of why they value putting their time into the story. Costume designer Jennifer Bryan talks about creating Saul Goodman's look for Better Call Saul. She explains that brown is not a power color, which made it perfect for a pompous-looking lawyer trying to appear successful. They developed specific details like ticket pockets and even custom buttons. She created buttons from broken metal parts of a shoe, wiring them with paper clips - a brilliant detail showing the character barely holding it together. Rhea mentions that whenever she needed to check back in with Kim's love for Jimmy, she would look at that shoe with its paper clip repair and think, "He's only keeping it together with paper clips." The discussion turns to how Vince and the team pull together all these extraordinary contributions from artists working at the top of their game. Trina Siopy credits Vince's approach from the beginning: everything comes back, everything means something, including cast and crew contributions. They have many show houses where they talk about everything and question themselves constantly, truly respecting their "village" of talented folks. When asked about balancing his instincts with writers' contributions, Vince emphasizes that the best thing to do is not pay attention to whose idea is whose. When the writers' room is working well, he's not keeping score. Some of the greatest moments across all three shows, he doesn't remember who said what - it just washes over the circle. The best idea wins. There's no reason for people not to enjoy coming to work, and when you don't pay attention to who said what, the creative dividends increase. He also notes that characters tell you where the story goes - you don't tell the characters. Rhea reflects on playing Carol in Pluribus, noting she only got scripts one at a time and didn't realize she'd be doing episodes with almost no dialogue or almost by herself. But as a fan of Vince's work, she knew he films characters doing tasks with the same care as dialogue-heavy scenes, expecting as many story beats to come from it. The trust he gives performers - that they can tell the story through performance alone - was exciting. She appreciates how trusting the audience also means trusting the performers. When you trust the audience to know what you're thinking, you don't have to telegraph everything, which frees you up to do more complex and nuanced performance. Discussing the fan response to Pluribus, Rhea shares that when they were in London for the premiere, they got a summary of reactions because they didn't want to be surprised in the press room. They heard it was doing really well. She had hoped to make the best show possible - it was awesomely weird, she couldn't guess where it would go, and even the crew stayed up late asking each other questions. But she wondered if it would be a niche, cultish thing. For it to generate such broad audience reception and conversation blew her away. For critics and fans to like the same show - "you don't always win that lottery." When asked what Pluribus is about, Rhea laughs that she's playing a character who doesn't understand what's going on, so she doesn't have to know. But she reflects that it's about human nature, what it means to be human, defining the pursuit of happiness, success, love, and relationships. She and co-star Carolina Winter (who plays Osha) discussed whether the characters are being manipulative of each other, and a crew member pointed out, "Isn't that every romantic relationship? If you're flirting, you want something." Rhea admits she doesn't know all the answers and loves it. Vince adds that he spent years doing press for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul explaining things, and he learned to be more sphinx-like and let others figure out what it means. This is the hardest show of all to explain - much easier with Breaking Bad. He learns about his own show when people tell him their interpretations, whether from crew members, collaborators, or viewers. One reporter asked if the whole thing is a metaphor for grief and depression - that when you're grieving or severely depressed, you feel down a well, and people telling you to cheer up feel like a foreign species. Rhea thought that was an incredible interpretation. Dave Porter discusses the music of Pluribus, noting it was the first opportunity after years in the same universe to start totally from scratch. It was both enormously exciting and daunting, because what they'd been doing had been pretty successful. The mandate was to be different, to distinctly distinguish this show from the others. Taking their creative process and really reanalyzing which lessons had value in the Pluribus world and which to leave behind was a long, difficult process. But it gave them freedom to take their favorite lessons while truly exploring new territory. --- *Source: stt · Language: en · Model: anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5* [← Back to session](/sessions/2026-03-14/pp1150525-featured-session-albuquerque-aftermath-from-breaking-bad-to-pluribus-with-rhea-s)