To all the Pluribus fans out there who are begging Vince Gilligan for Season 2 stat, don’t worry, his mom beat you to the punch.
Over the weekend, Gilligan appeared at Televerse alongside cast members Rhea Seehorn, Karolina Wydra, Carlos Manuel Vesga, and Jeff Hiller to promote the series ahead of the Emmy Awards, and spoke with DECIDER about the trek to plot out the second season. According to the Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator, while fans around the world have been begging him for updates about Season 2’s progress, no one has been more persistent than his own mother, Gail, who is making a pretty good argument for speeding things up a bit.
“My mom is always on me about it. She’s always saying, ‘I’m not gonna live to see this damn season two of yours,’” he told DECIDER. “And I said, ‘Mom, we’re working as fast as we can.’ So please bear with us. Don’t hold your breath. It’s gonna be a while.”
Gilligan’s mother previously made a cameo in Breaking Bad as Rebecca Simons, a neighbor of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), so perhaps the elder Gilligan just trying to figure out her schedule to be able to swing by the set for Pluribus. Either way, Gilligan says he’s asking everyone from his own mother to the fans on social media to be as patient as possible as they prepare to pick the cameras back up for Season 2.
“That [the wait] is not on purpose, that is NOT to make the fans frustrated with us. That is my least favorite thing about the process, is how long it takes. But it takes what it takes because it takes us quite a while to figure out this very complex story. Now we’ve got it figured out for Season 2. Now we got to shoot it. And that takes a long time because… It’s a story about a worldwide event, so we have to arrange all over the world, which is fun, but it takes a lot of planning, it takes a lot of scheduling,” he shared.
Additionally, the series — which premiered in November and recently scored Apple TV 18 of its 89 Emmy nominations this year — has an extensive amount of post-production work that Gilligan says fans are not privy to. While it may seem like a series that relies more on writing, filming, and cutting (i.e. not digitally editing in dragons for Game of Thrones and such), there’s so much more that goes on behind the scenes that needs to be perfect before people can see where Carol (Seehorn) goes next.
“The post-production process takes a lot longer than people would think, because, you know, for instance, in every shot, we’ve got to erase the background. The world has not been depopulated, but sometimes there’s, people are just kind of leaving our main character alone,” he said. “There’s always some car in the background we’ve got an artist up to digitally erase, or there’s someone walking in the background. The visual effects, which most of them, you would never even know were visual effects, take forever.”
In the meantime, fans will just have to make do with the nine episodes Season 1 brought the world. Good news: you can also rewatch Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, too. That’s bound to take some time!
Pluribus Season 1 is now streaming on Apple TV.
Apple TV comes with a seven-day free trial for new subscribers and has just one ad-free streaming plan available for $12.99/month.
Amazon Prime members can also subscribe to Apple TV directly through Prime Video and take advantage of a $5.99/month deal. A bundle with Apple TV and Peacock is also available, offering $10/month in savings.