Emmy-Nominated ‘Pluribus’ Stars Rhea Seehorn & Karolina Wydra Talk Season 2, Sisterly Bonding & Details Of Seehorn’s New Film ‘Running’

Pluribus cleaned up in the Emmy nominations on Wednesday morning with a total of 18.

Lead Actress nominee Rhea Seehorn jumped on the phone with Deadline while still in her PJs, admitting she’d shed some tears over all the accolades for her fellow cast and crew, which include Drama Series, plus creator Vince Gilligan‘s nods for Writing and Directing, Supporting Actress Karolina Wydra and Supporting Actor Carlos-Manuel Vesga.

“I started crying 100%,” Seehorn said. “And Carlos Manuel! We’ve all been trading phone calls. We’re all trying to get ahold of each other. I was texting with Jeff Hiller. I just got to speak to Miriam Shor. We had a little cry together and I’ve talked to Vince and been texting with my sound crew, my camera crew… What a wonderful day. We made this show that we loved and believed in so much and for it to be received this way, it’s very thick icing on this cake.”

I do not know what I’m doing with the atom bomb in the driveway, I can tell you that. It’s definitely there. I don’t think it’s secretly an ADU for a mother-in-law.

Apple TV+’s Pluribus is created by Vince Gilligan and stars Rhea Seehorn as Carol Sturka, a romantasy novelist who finds herself mysteriously excluded from an instantaneous mind-melding happiness pandemic. Wydra plays Carol’s friend Zosia, Vesga is Manousos, one of the few others unaffected by the affliction and Shor is Helen, Carol’s ill-fated wife and manager.

The series, which is currently in production on its second season, saw the reunion of Gilligan and Seehorn following their work together on Better Call Saul, co-created by Gilligan and in which Seehorn played the character of Kim Wexler.

Wydra also spoke to Deadline the morning of the nominations, saying she was “in shock”, especially given her journey to getting the part. “I didn’t have an agent or a manager and I was a stay-at-home mom for quite a while and I didn’t even know how I would get back into acting,” she said. “I got the audition out of nowhere… I can’t believe, first of all, that I got the role with Vince and I got to work with Vince and Rhea and this incredible cast and everyone that’s worked on Pluribus and now this. It truly feels like I’m living in the dream.”

She credited Seehorn for making the Pluribus experience so fun, saying, “We laugh so hard on set. We have so much fun. It’s like a giggle fest. It’s the best. Also, we’re like sisters, Rhea and I, from the minute we met, we had this incredible connection and it’s very much of soul sister connection. And then with Vesga, we had like a brother-sister relationship. I’m so excited that he’s nominated.”

Seehorn said of the upcoming second season: “I am at the stage of dying to read scripts. I don’t have anything, but I know they’re so hard at work. I haven’t even dropped by the office for fear of disturbing them. There is every intention to get us started as fast as we can. I know that that’s so important to the whole writing stuff, but it’s also important to them to maintain the level of writing and production that they’ve done in the past and to reward the intelligence of our audience.”

As for the cliffhanger in the Season 1 finale that sees Carol ordering an atom bomb to nuke the world, Seehorn said, “I do not know what I’m doing with the atom bomb in the driveway, I can tell you that. It’s definitely there. I don’t think it’s secretly an ADU for a mother-in-law. I think we’re going to do something with it.”

When asked what she’d love to see her character Zosia do in Season 2 Wydra said getting in the cockpit to fly a plane in Season 1 was already a highlight. “It’s going to be really hard to beat taxiing the C-130 and going up in a helicopter. That’s really hard. I would love to find out more about her backstory. I’d be curious too, because that’s something I didn’t discuss with Vince because I didn’t want it to color my performance.”

Seehorn is currently shooting the Gavin O’Connor-directed Apple Studios film Running, in which she plays a coach. “I’m playing a track and field coach who used to be a high-level runner.” Only Seehorn is not what she would call athletic. “I have been having a good laugh about [the fact that] I’m the least athletic person in the world and I’ve done a couple of things this hiatus where I’m outdoorsy and I’m like, ‘I don’t think they realize I don’t normally even go outside.'”

The film is based on a story by O’Connor and writer Bill Dubuque, Running follows a homeless high school running prodigy trying to outrun his past and find a family. Spike Fearn, Brian Tyree Henry and Andrew Shultz also star.

To prepare to play the coach, Seehorn said she watched a lot of documentaries and “I interviewed some top high level award-winning coaches, Marlene Wilcox, Jennifer Ferrara, Ken Reeves.”

She added of the film, “We’ve been having just a blast and it’s such a beautiful script. So many of us thought it was a true story literally up until the day we were getting there and asking Gavin questions. it’s just a really, really great story and amazing young people playing all these track students. And it’s just been really a wonderful project to be a part of.”