‘Pluribus’: Rhea Seehorn & Vince Gilligan Explain [Spoiler]’s Cameo for Major Hive Mind Reveal (VIDEO)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Pluribus Season 1 Episode 6 “HDP.”]

“It’s a cookbook!” is one of the most chilling lines ever uttered on television. It’s from a classic 1962 episode of The Twilight Zone, “To Serve Man,” in which a translator slowly discovers that the titular tome from seemingly benevolent extraterrestrials who turn Earth into a Utopia isn’t about altruism. Turns out, as many Pluribus fans already suspected, humans are on the menu in this series, too.

In the sixth episode of Vince Gilligan‘s sci-fi drama, Pluribus, Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) finds a freezer full of body parts that are being used as nourishment for the hive mind. Hey, they aren’t allowed to kill anything, even a carrot, so this recycling of human bodies makes sense to them. We spoke with Gilligan and Seehorn about Carol’s discovery, John Cena‘s cameo, and how Gilligan finally got his “Hitchcock moment.”

Vince, why did you decide to take this cannibalism turn, and then have the superhero Peacemaker himself, John Cena, do a cameo to explain it all to Carol?

Vince Gilligan: I like hitting all the sci-fi and horror tropes and then turning them on their ear. And that is a good example of that. That episode was written by a wonderful writer named Vera Blasi. It felt like at that point in the show, we’re starting to be more on the side of the Others and less feeling like Carol was right about the world. So, we mix it up. We like to keep the audience guessing. Is this a good thing? Is it not a good thing? And who better than to explain why they eat people than John Cena?

Rhea, talk about shooting that freezer scene and finding the frozen body parts.

Rhea Seehorn: The head that she picks up is Vince’s head.

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Gilligan: I’m a Method actor. Fourteen-hour surgery. But no, they scanned my head. This is my one Alfred Hitchcock moment. I’ve never been on any of the shows because Hitchcock did it so much better.

Seehorn: That was a fun surprise. Although clearly Carol should not be giggling when she finds it! I’m sure I got that out of my system. Coming in there with this flashlight, that is a dance with camera and light — what do you want to see and what do you not want to see? I’m [Rhea] filming it on a video camera and playing Carol’s terror as well. As we did so often, we kept trying to make sure I remembered this is a normal person going through this very abnormal thing. For me, I’d probably throw up. We wanted to keep that element of, this is not a superhuman person dealing with these extraordinary circumstances. But her ego is just a little bit happy that she was right, that they’re monsters. And she really wants proof, too. So, she’s pretty excited about that part. It was fun. Terrifying scene to play.

Rhea, did you work with John, or were those scenes shot separately?

Seehorn: I didn’t see [him] until the first time I saw that videotape [when] we were filming me watching it. That was really fun. Not that I’d be surprised, but it’s just we don’t think of him as somebody that delivers news coverage about eating people. And yet there he was doing a great job at it.

Gilligan: But that’s the magic of the movies. They never met, we shot him in Tampa, and then we burned him into the TV screen in Las Vegas.

Pluribus, Fridays, Apple TV