With Pluribus, Karolina Wydra gets to live out many actors’ greatest dream — and their worst nightmare.
Sure, she clocks in and works with creator Vince Gilligan and plays all of her scenes opposite Rhea Seehorn. But the bizarre specificity of her role on the Apple TV drama — she’s essentially the ambassador for a pacified human race with a shared consciousness, thanks to an alien virus — means that she can’t really react.
“I’m Eastern European, and I have a big personality, a lot of feelings,” the Polish-born actress says during a May conversation. “I cry so much that my friends are like, ‘Jesus Christ, just stop!’ So it’s really challenging because there were moments where I’d watch Rhea, whose performance is so beautiful and rich, and I just have to turn mine off? If I watch you do something, I’m going to react to it.”
Naturally, Wydra’s actor friends were surprised when she landed the part of an all-knowing, Zenned-out antagonist on one of the most anticipated series in recent memory. (Gilligan’s Better Call Saul follow-up scored a two-season order in a heated bidding war.) But not just because she has a tendency to be in her feelings. Wydra had been without representation for some time when the possibility of booking the coveted gig first emerged. “I took a break from acting to be a stay-at-home mom,” says the actress, whose previous credits include True Blood, Justified, Sneaky Pete and Agents of SHIELD. “When my agent and manager dropped me, I had no idea how on earth I was going to come back in my early 40s.”
