RHEA SEEHORN TAKES IT TO THE LIMIT

SHE CAN'T SAY MUCH ABOUT HER STAR TURN IN NEW SERIES 'PLURIBUS,' BUT ONE THING'S CERTAIN: IT'LL MAKE YOU THINK

- BY YVONNE VILLARREAL

ANTHONY AVELLANO For The Times

“WHO ARE YOU really? What is real happiness? What do you actually need for happiness?” Rhea Seehorn murmurs. It’s an otherwise ordinary Wednesday afternoon, steps away from bookshelves stuffed with works like “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck and the “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series by Sarah J. Maas, when she casually lists these big life questions aloud while leaning over a vegan brownie and cup of tea at a small table inside Village Well Books & Coffee in Culver City. I’m still questioning whether I read the street parking signs correctly. But these are queries Seehorn has given hard thought to in recent months. That's what happens when you're headlining a Vince Gilligan show. Existential reckonings are part of the gig. Seehorn is at least familiar with the deep internal struggles that swirl within Gilligan’s protagonists. For six seasons on “Better Call Saul,” AMC's hit prequel spinoff to “Breaking Bad” that told the backstory of Walter White's smarmy lawyer Saul Goodman a.k.a. Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), Seehorn played Kim Wexler.

The fan-favorite type A lawyer with a perfectly-positioned ponytail was McGill/Goodman’s principled but increasingly conflicted girlfriend who got caught up in his elaborate schemes and paid a price for his crimes.

In his first followup to the “Breaking Bad” universe, Gilligan opted to forgo revolving another series around a tormented man in favor of one that let the shades of Seehorn's talent fill the screen.

Gilligan says that in “Better Call Saul,” which he co-created with Peter Gould, he saw in Seehorn what he had observed in Aaron Paul years before on “Breaking Bad” — an actor whose performance propelled a side character, wayward junkie Jesse Pinkman, into a figure that commanded viewers’ attention and became integral to the story.