Movies & TV Pluribus Interview: Pluribus Costume Designer Studied Specific Authors for Carol’s Look In an interview with Reactor, Pluribus costume designer Jennifer Bryan dishes on the fashion sense of the hive mind By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on December 12, 2025 Credit: Apple TV Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Apple TV Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus raises a lot of questions. A lot. Those questions can vary from existential to more practical, such as how does a hive person decide what to wear when they wake up in the morning. Luckily for you, there’s a concrete answer to the latter question: “At that point, clothing simply becomes protective: a top, a bottom, a pair of shoes. And also there’s no need to think about color coordination or whether stripes go with polka dots,” Pluribus costume designer Jennifer Bryan told Reactor in an interview. Bryan also said that show creator Vince Gilligan “wanted the show, from a costume perspective, not to look like anything else that had been seen on TV in the in a sci-fi genre, he didn’t want them looking like zombies.” Mission accomplished! Bryan also revealed details on Carol Sturka’s author look, her inspiration for Diabaté’s garb, as well as some cameos that may make you want to rewatch a certain scene. Read on for our full discussion, though be warned that this interview contains very mild spoilers from the first two episodes (and frankly, you’ll get more out of it if you’ve seen those two episodes before reading below). Credit: Apple TV This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. This must have been such a fun project. I would love to hear how it was pitched to you. When we wrapped on Better Call Saul, there was crew gossip, but nothing could be verified, just like when we wrapped on Breaking Bad, there was crew gossip, but nothing could be verified. So it first started off with crew members gossiping on set. We went on hiatus, and then I got a call. By that time, it was becoming clear that [show creator Vince Gilligan] was up to something. So he called me, and he goes, “Hey, Jen, so I got this thing, and Rhea [Seehorn] is gonna be our lead.” From there, we got a little bit more formal with it. We went to a meeting, and he basically pitched the draft of the project; that it was sci-fi, Rhea was going to be our lead, and it was going to have a global aspect to it. He was going to use actors from different parts of the world. At that time, the working title was Wycaro, which was named after the books that [Seehorn’s character, Carol,] wrote. It was going to be set in Albuquerque, but then it would go to other parts of the world. And I thought, “Vince is never going to leave Albuquerque. Maybe we go to another part of New Mexico that looks like another part of the world.” Well, to my surprise and delight, we ended up in the Canary Islands, and we ended up in northern Spain. He wanted the show, from a costume perspective, not to look like anything else that had been seen on TV in the in a sci-fi genre, he didn’t want them looking like zombies. Credit: Apple TV You mentioned Vince said he didn’t want them to look like zombies, which makes sense having seen the show. Did he give you get any direction about what the hive was like? Or did you create a story for yourself about a hive person who wakes up in the morning, and sometimes they put on a TGI Friday’s outfit, sometimes they put on cycling gear? Vince gave me some movies to watch—there was a Kurosawa, and there was I Am Legend. And then, of course, because he said he didn’t want to be looking like zombies, I also wanted to watch what he didn’t want. So Walking Dead fell into that category. I decided that they were of hive mind; they did not have the luxury of personalizing their clothing. So what I pitched to [Gilligan] is that I reduced clothing to something that was surely not decorative, no adornment. It’s not going to show where you lived, globally. It’s not going to show your religion. It’s not going to show your status, whether you’re rich or middle class, a shoe shine guy or a CEO. It’s not going to show any of that. All of those messages that clothing transmits to people around you I’m going to strip away. And at that point, clothing simply becomes protective: a top, a bottom, a pair of shoes. And also there’s no need to think about color coordination or whether stripes go with polka dots. They don’t care. Now why do you see different occupations represented, different walks of life? They got zapped in a moment when they were doing a thing: when they were waitressing at TGI Fridays, when they were delivering that package for DHL, when they were in the lab and doing night cleaning of the lab. It had to look real in that in that moment when they were frozen and made that transition. If they were a surgeon in a hospital, they would have had on scrubs and a surgical cap. And then in with all of that, then you get the more ordinary, nondescript clothing that we all know, and also clothing might be coming from another part of the world, so it could be a Scottish kilt that might be worn with a Hawaiian shirt. They don’t recognize those boundaries. They’re gone. Image: Apple TV Can you talk about deciding what Carol would wear for the pilot? I’m sure the yellow leather jacket has come up in conversations. The first look that I had for her was on her book tour. So she had to have that middle-aged romance novelist, kind of a vibe. Vince had suggested that I look at some of the well-known romance, pulp fiction novelists, like Jackie Collins and Barbara Cartland, those women going back who were really prolific in that genre of writing. I remember pitching to Vince that it should look relatable to her book-signing audience, her fans, but slightly elevated so they could still relate to her, but look up to her. So she wasn’t over the top, but just in that sweet spot where [the fans] could think, if they had a little money, they could probably buy a suit like that. Or maybe they’ll go to the hairdresser next time and go, can I get my hair cut like that? Then, when she sheds that facade and is now her real self… I knew that she was going to have a lot of action, and we needed to add a jacket, and so I decided it needed to be a leather jacket, and it needed to be a bit cropped so that she could do all of those moves. So I came up with the idea of a hybrid cropped jacket that I designed. It was hybrid of a motor jacket, but not quite. And I decided on the color because I knew those scenes were going to be shot in the dead of night, very dark, and I needed her to pop. And also, the yellow is the color of caution. So I would like to think that subliminally, it might have sent a message to the viewers that something is slightly unsettling. Credit: Apple TV I’d also love to talk about the other characters who haven’t joined. Diabaté [played by Samba Schutte] must have been a fun one. He was one of my faves. Samba Schutte is from Mauritania. And I realized that he was quite a dandy, and that was a perfect opening for me to use one of my favorite groups of people in clothing and costume. In the Congo, which they still do this in Brazzaville, there is a group of men called Sapuers; they are modern day dandies that dress to the nines in top designers. They may be a plumber and live in a little tiny house, but when he steps out of his little house in his not-so-affluent neighborhood, these dudes are off the chain. And I told Vince about these guys, and I said, it’s perfect, because it is African modern-day culture. It goes back to the colonial times when they would copy the French colonialists in their garb and make fun of them. And then it got elevated. So when he gets off the plane, what else would I put him in but an African-print tuxedo? Credit: Apple TV And what about Zosia [played by Karolina Wydra]? Zosia was very interesting. She was, for me, the most transformative within her storyline. At first, we’re not sure where she comes from, except we figured out that is seems to be North Africa, which it is, Tangier, Morocco. And so we see her in traditional Northern African clothing, and she has that on, and it’s like a symphony, she just moves from one environment into the other, but her clothing has to fit into each one. So she flies that plane. And that was Karolina taxiing. I mean, the pilot was off camera in case, but that was her on the runway. And then she lands in Albuquerque, and strips off because she knows she’s now on the real mission, which is to meet this woman, and have her feel comfortable so that [Carol] Sturka doesn’t immediately kick her out her backyard. So she walks into the shower, and the three people that attend to her to shower are me, Cheri Montesanto, our makeup artist, and Trish Almeida, our hair stylist. And I think that was very considerate of Vince, because he wanted this to be real, but he wanted Karolina to feel very comfortable with the people around. So we got our little cameos. New episodes of Pluribus premiere on Apple TV on Fridays.[end-mark] The post Interview: <i>Pluribus</i> Costume Designer Studied Specific Authors for Carol’s Look appeared first on Reactor.