Rhea Seehorn responds to character criticism: "No one asked about Walter White being unlikeable"

Onstage at THR x Apple TV ’s Leading the Narrative: Women of Apple TV event in Los Angeles, Rhea Seehorn didn’t dodge the chatter around her new lead, Carol Sturka, on Pluribus . She zeroed in on the word that keeps popping up online — “unlikeable” — and how that label tends to land differently on women than on men.

“It ’s so weird, no one asked me about Walter White being unlikeable.”

Seehorn said the conversation around women at the center of a story often shifts to whether they’re “palatable” rather than whether they feel true to life. With Carol, she stressed, the rough edges are by design — the grief, the frustration, the abrasiveness — not traits the show intends to sand down.

Her point drew a line to TV’s long list of celebrated antiheroes and how audiences judge them, noting that male characters who lie, lash out, or scheme are often analyzed, while women who do the same are policed for charm.

How Pluribus was built

While the character debate rages, the show’s world — a strange, post‑apocalyptic landscape with a grounded emotional core — came together across two continents. The production leaned on stark, varied backdrops to match its genre‑blending tone.

• Albuquerque, New Mexico — The primary hub and the show’s setting; the team filmed extensively on city streets, local exteriors, and inside a dedicated downtown production facility to lock in the series’ visual identity.
• Helena, Montana — Additional sequences added different terrain and texture.
• Spain — Select locations expanded the scale, giving the series its across-the-world feel.

Seehorn’s remarks arrived as Pluribus continues to draw attention for both its deliberately thorny lead and the ambitious shoot that took it from the American Southwest to Europe.