The Pluribus cast unpacks Carol and Manousos tense meet-up: It says a lot about being human
The crossover Pluribus viewers have been waiting for finally became a reality in the Season 1 finale, as the world's number one hive-mind haters, Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) and Manousos Oviedo (Carlos-Manuel Vesga), meet up for the first time.
However, the pair's first meeting is less an enthusiastic team-up than it is two of the most stubborn people on Earth duking it out. And Vesga wouldn't have it any other way.
"I did expect a kind of clash between them, and I was hoping for it, because actually it says a lot about being human," Vesga told Mashable in a video interview alongside Karolina Wydra, who plays Zosia. "The Joining is a group of people who never argue, who are always agreeing on everything. What makes [Carol and Manousos] real humans is that they actually don't see things eye to eye. They both agree that this has to be changed, and we need to change it back to what it was, but not necessarily the same way."
A big reason for the disconnect is that, in the time it's taken for Manousos to journey from Paraguay to Albuquerque, Carol's started a relationship with Zosia, who is herself an extension of the hive mind. Because of this relationship, Carol's views of the Others have softened, while Manousos is more determined than ever to destroy them.
"When he gets to Albuquerque, Carol is not the same Carol," Vesga explained. "I remember reading the script and thinking, 'Oh my God, he's going to hate her. He's going to resent her.' She's the worst traitor ever, she sent me this VHS cassette, and I see this recording, and I go through what I went through..."
"Well, you did take a long time," Wydra joked.
"I'm sorry I don't drive faster!" Vesga said.
Seehorn, too, relished the conflict between Carol and Manousos.
"They're both these immovable objects and so intent that their opinion is right," Seehorn told Mashable in a video interview. "Hopefully the audience can see both points of view throughout the scene. Like, he showed up with a machete. That's not exactly a subtle move. And Carol, even pre-Zosia, has always felt bad about actually hurting any of these people and does not believe they should be obliterated."
The newly forged Zosia connection definitely adds an extra layer to Carol's motivations throughout the scene, though. The meeting was the scene Seehorn and Vesga read together for Vesga's audition, at which point Seehorn hadn't had access to the rest of the Season 1 scripts. Still, from just those few pages she could tell that Carol was hiding something, and that Manousos was sniffing it out.
"I loved the power dynamic shifting, where she sees that he can tell that she's lying," Seehorn said. "Even with the language barrier, she's so defensive in that moment because she's being called out for literally sleeping with the enemy."
Carol's blatant defensiveness adds a layer of humor to the meeting. So does the use of Carol's phone translator, which serves as an intermediary for her and Manousos' conversation. Between its constant interruptions and its translation of everything — even pleas for it to stop translating — it becomes a dryly funny third presence in the scene.
Seehorn and Vesga used an actual phone translator during Vesga's audition. "I noticed from there, 'huh, this is going to be cumbersome, and therefore it's going to be funny,'" Vesga said.
During the actual shoot, though, there was no phone. Instead, another actor, Sofia Embid, was on set performing as the translator.
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"The interaction was more complex because you had three people instead of two," Vesga recalled of shooting the scene. "At the beginning, we were just trying to adapt to this new rule of not just the two of us playing, since we had another person outside that we couldn't actually see, but we could hear her. I remember at some point feeling kind of frustrated at myself."
However, Pluribus creator Vince Gilligan encouraged Vesga to push through that frustration.
"I remember Vince coming up to us and saying, 'You keep talking. It you're interrupted, deal with it, but just keep talking. You have your conversation, just allow the interruptions to be there,'" Vesga recalled. "After that, I was like, 'OK, I get it now and can enjoy it. Now I can have fun.' And I remember walking to the next scene with a huge smile, just feeling the feeling of having had the best playdate ever as a 5-year-old. Because that's what happens with Rhea. When you're with her on set, it's like having a playdate with your best friend."