Rhea Seehorn, our guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, which was recorded at Chapman University, is best known for outstanding performances on two Vince Gilligan-created TV drama series: as Kim Wexler, a lawyer and love interest of Jimmy McGill, on AMC’s Better Call Saul (2015-2022), and as Carol Sturka, a bestselling romance novelist who winds up as one of just 13 people on Earth who retains free-will after some a virus melds everyone else’s minds, on Apple TV’s Pluribus (2025-).

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For her performance on Better Call Saul, Seehorn was nominated twice for the best supporting actress in a drama series Emmy and three times for the best supporting actress in a drama series Critics Choice Award, and won the Television Critics Association Award for individual achievement in drama in 2023. And for her performance on the first season of Pluribus — which the New York Times described as “enormous, in quality and quantity” — she has already won the best actress in a drama series Critics Choice and Golden Globe awards, was nominated for the best actress in a drama series Actor Award, and is nominated for the best actress in a drama series Emmy Award, one of 18 noms for her show; another is for best drama series.

Gilligan recently described Seehorn — one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in the world for 2026 — as follows: “I’ve been really blessed to work with a lot of great actors over the course of many shows now — going all the way back to The X-Files and forward through Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. So I don’t say what I’m about to say lightly: There is something about Rhea Seehorn that puts her in a category all her own. She can do it all. She can be as dramatic as all get out, but she’s also one of the funniest people I’ve ever met in my life. The full range is there, everything you’d ever want in a performer. But it’s more than skill. It’s her outlook. She has a work ethic like you can’t believe. She really wants to be the best artist she can be. She probably wouldn’t identify herself that way, but she is an artist through and through. And she takes the craft of acting seriously in the most positive possible way. It’s never annoying, never precious. She’s also one of the most generous actors I’ve ever encountered. A day player will show up on set with one scene to film, someone who’s been on the call sheet for maybe 10 minutes, and Rhea will walk right up to them, introduce herself, and say, ‘You want to run our lines together?’ She does it because she wants the work to be good — not just her work, the whole show’s work. You feel that distinction. It matters.”

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Over the course of this conversation, Seehorn reflected on her beginnings in the theater in Washington, D.C., and New York; how a decade of “unsuccessful” auditions nevertheless paved the way for her casting on Better Call Saul; how she reacted upon learning that Gilligan had written Pluribus for her (after initially envisioning the protagonist as a male); why playing Carol Sturka on that hit Apple TV show is both the most challenging and rewarding job she has ever had; plus more. She closed by taking questions from film students.

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