Karolina Wydra had not acted for five years when she was cast as the emotionless personification of an alien hive mind in Vince Gilligan’s sci-fi series Pluribus. “There’s a blissfulness about her, and peace in her soul,” she tells Screen.
Pluribus, Vince Gilligan’s follow up to Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, is an Invasion Of The Body Snatchers-esque series in which an alien virus turns the world’s population into a peaceful hive mind. The Others is an all-seeing, all-knowing collective that shares everyone’s memories, minds and abilities. But around the globe, a handful of people remain immune, among them Carol Sturka (played by Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn), a romantasy novelist living in Albuquerque, New Mexico grieving over the death of her wife Helen, one of millions lost during the Others’ takeover of mankind.
To convince Carol to join their way of blissful thinking, the Others send an emissary and chaperone, Zosia. She is modelled after Carol’s most famous literary creation, a character the author envisioned originally as a woman before Helen talked her into making a man to help book sales.
The show’s casting directors, Sharon Bialy, Russell Scott and Sherry Thomas, saw thousands in their search for Zosia, before they remembered Polish model-turned-actress Karolina Wydra, who had starred in Incarnate, a 2016 horror film they had worked on. But Wydra had not acted in five years and was difficult to track down.
“I was 39, the pandemic happened, and I thought procreation was a good thing to do,” laughs Wydra, whose parents came to the US in the late 1980s after the end of communism in their native Poland. “The world is falling apart. And I’m like, ‘I’ve got to make more humans.’ Once I had my son, it was important for me to be a stay-at-home mom. Growing up, my parents used to travel a lot and that was hard for a child. And when I had Atticus, my agent and manager decided to part ways [with me]. I had a second son and, again, it was important for me to be with them. Then, when I was ready, I was 42. I was scared, I wasn’t sure how I would come back to [acting].”
The Pluribus team got in touch with Wydra via her commercial agency, asking her to audition for Vince Gilligan’s new Apple TV show. “My whole being was beyond ecstatic because I always dreamed of working with Vince. In my 20s and teens, I was an avid filmgoer, I loved cinema, but I never watched TV until my friend said, ‘You should see Breaking Bad.’ I said, ‘I only watch independent films and European films and experimental films.’ I was that snob.”
But her friend insisted. “I was blown away. I said to my team, ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to be in the Vince Gilligan Universe. Any audition, any part. I don’t care how big or small.’”
Nothing happened, but she did work with Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston on Sneaky Pete. “It was like my little secret. Maybe one day I get to work with Vince.”
Except, when the call finally came, Wydra was hesitant. “I wasn’t going to do it. We build this fantasy of wanting something, and then faced with the opportunity you go, ‘What if I do it and nothing happens?’ It’s that fear of failure,” she reflects. “And there was the other part of me that said, ‘You have nothing to lose.’ I got to meet Vince. I got the first two scripts. When I read for Zosia, I was terrified. I was overwhelmed and excited and had a ton of questions. Then I met Rhea, and Rhea’s phenomenal.”
For much of Pluribus’s first season, Carol is angry and antagonistic, while Zosia is an oasis of calm, an emotionless counterpoint to Carol’s grief-stricken hostility.
“Normally, I do backstories for my characters and dive deep into that,” explains Wydra, speaking from New York the afternoon of the Gotham TV Awards, where Pluribus will later pick up the prize for breakthrough drama series. “I couldn’t for Zosia, or I didn’t want to, because the minute you meet her, she’s part of the ‘Joining’. She’s already altered. There’s a blissfulness about her, and peace in her soul. [The Others] have memories of being angry, rageful, bitter, nervous, but not in a physical form.”
Wydra worked on Zosia’s posture with physical relaxation and meditation techniques. “I hunch a lot and Vince would tell me to straighten up, because when you hunch your back you can come off as insecure. And they’re not insecure. They’re very present,” she continues. “So creating a physicality for her that was inviting, non-threatening was a thing I worked on. They’re joyous, unflappable, content, like an indulgent grandmother doting over her grandchildren. Even the way they speak is very proper; they choose every word to be precise.”
Career path
Wydra spent her late teens and 20s modelling for brands such as Armani, Levi’s and Calvin Klein after being discovered in an Orange County shopping mall with her dad aged 15. “They thought my father was my boyfriend. I was so appalled. I was like, ‘I’m sorry, do I look a certain way?’”
She won the Elite Lee Jeans Model Look Contest before signing for the agency. “I went to Japan when I was 16, took a break and got back into it when I was 19.” The dream was to be an actress although her parents never supported it. “We were immigrants and they believed you needed a stable career, to be a lawyer, a doctor.”
Wydra continued to work as a model while she studied acting in New York and appeared in an episode of Law & Order, various commercials and several short films, including one directed by Mike Figgis. “I had a chip on my shoulder because I wanted so desperately to go to Julliard. Acting was my little dream, my secret I carried until I was 25.”
Her acting career took off after moving to Los Angeles, with sizeable roles in House, True Blood, Justified, Quantico, Sneaky Pete, Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Twin Peaks: The Return, as well as movies including Be Kind Rewind, Europa Report, After, Incarnate and Crazy, Stupid, Love.
As for the second season of Pluribus, Wydra says they hope to start filming by the end of the year. “But I haven’t read a script,” she cautions. “I don’t know where it’s going. I know Vince is working hard and has his process. Obviously, we want it to be faster, but the truth is, he pays such attention to detail and is such an incredible craftsman, he needs time to create.”
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