‘Pluribus’ pushed Rhea Seehorn to confront her anger in real life

Minutes after her long-awaited Emmy win, Rhea Seehorn got unusually candid about what playing Carol Sturka on Pluribus stirred up for her personally: anger she usually pushes down. Speaking with Deadline, she said inhabiting Carol’s spiky, confrontational energy forced her to recognize how much she buries that feeling in real life.

“I became intensely aware of how much I suppress my own anger in my real life because I just wait till i break out in eczema to admit that i am upset about something, but it also taught me…what a gift it is to work with the same director, like i get to with Vince…he creates an environment where you can take risks,” she said.

On the show, Carol Sturka is a curmudgeonly novelist trying to keep her footing in a strange new reality after an astronomer’s discovery reshapes humanity. She’s framed as one of the few truly independent thinkers left, and much of her story sparks from her refusal to accept a world that wants to sand down conflict into compulsory calm.

That tension is baked into episodes like “Grenade”, where the World steps in to “help” Carol — and the gesture only enrages her further. Seehorn’s comment casts those moments in a new light: rather than just playing an angry person, she was testing what happens when anger isn’t stuffed away.

Her work just earned the year’s top drama prize. Seehorn became the 78th winner of the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series Emmy for her performance as Carol, the iconoclast at the center of Apple TV+ ’s mind-bender.

From Saul to Sturka

For viewers who’ve been with her since Better Call Saul, the win lands with extra weight. As Kim Wexler, Seehorn turned a coolly controlled attorney into one of TV’s most layered characters, drawing multiple supporting-actress Emmy nominations as the show reached its end.

• 2022 — Emmy nomination for Better Call Saul
• 2022 — Second nomination for the short-form series Cooper’s Bar
• Later — Another Emmy nod for Better Call Saul’s final season
• This year — First lead-acting nomination and a win for Pluribus

Seehorn also credited longtime collaborator Vince Gilligan with building a set where she could take big swings — exactly the kind of space that let Carol’s barbed honesty, and the vulnerability underneath it, come through.