Movies & TV Pluribus Pluribus Set Decorator Reveals How Those Body Parts Got Their “Fleshy Vibe” Reactor interviewed Ashley Michelle Marsh about dressing the show’s diverse array of sets. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on August 4, 2026 Credit: Apple TV   Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Apple TV   The first season of Pluribus takes us across the globe, and set decorator Ashley Michelle Marsh was responsible for dressing all of those sets, from Carol’s house to Manousos’ old office, to that cold storage unit chock full of body parts. One of her favorite things to decorate, however, was the crashed plane we see when Zosia takes off in the military plane to meet Carol. “It’s very rare that you have to go and call someone and be like, ‘Do you have a broken plane that you can truck here?’” she told me in an interview. We talked about that plane, where she found the materials to dress the spaces where Carol, Diabaté, and Manousos spend time, how she gave those body parts a “fleshy vibe,” and more. Read on for our full conversation. Image: AppleTV This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity. What did you want to convey about Carol through the things in her home? We really wanted to make sure that her house felt like a home, like a retreat, like somewhere she would want to be all the time, and that it was comfortable. We also wanted to have small things from travels that maybe Helen had drug her around to that she begrudgingly ended up loving, and we wanted to make sure that there were some pieces in there that told their own story. She has a love for everything that is in her home — there’s a really beautiful antique hutch in the dining room, for example; maybe they went antiquing. They didn’t go to Pottery Barn. We looked everywhere for items. We’re based in Albuquerque, but we got that hutch all the way out in Rio Doso, New Mexico, which is two or three hours away. So we really searched and hunted really interesting places. Image: AppleTV Diabaté is also a very specific, and we see what he tends towards with his place in Vegas. Can you talk about trying to reflect his sense of style through that space? The suite was already really cool, but we wanted to bring in more elements that felt glamorous. So we added some more dark drapery. We added lights with crystals. We added that beautiful mid-century bar, because basically I always thought of Diabaté as a kid at heart, and he was just writing out a Christmas wish list of how to make everything perfect. Since he has the Hive have a script and play parts, I think he definitely thought about what was in there and was like, “Let’s make it the best!” For the bar, we started calling around to our favorite mid-century modern vendors, and we’re like, “Hey, what do you have? We would go to people’s storage units, to their garages, anywhere until we found someone that was like, “Oh yeah, I have this, and I want to part with it.” Because that’s the other thing—you can find all these great pieces, but no one wants to give up their incredible finds. For that bar, I think we got it from someone’s storage unit. Speaking of Diabaté, I’d love to talk about Air Force One. How did you go about creating that space? We spent lots of time researching. We looked at any basically declassified photo of Air Force One, from all the way back to Reagan to Bush, Obama, and we just clipped together all the details. Then we decided we wanted it to be a fresh take on it as well. So in the traditional Air Force One, the seats are brown, but we wanted this to feel like it was in its own world, because once the Joining happens, we kind of are in a slightly altered version of reality. So we chose blue for the chairs to make it feel regal and a little bit less dour. Image: AppleTV And then there’s Manousos’ office, which has a very different vibe. Yes. How did you approach putting that together? We had a whole different color palette for Manousos when he is still in South America. We did a lot more yellows and browns to give it a warmer vibe than Carol’s house, which had cool paint colors and a cool tone. And so down there, we also wanted things to feel a little bit more lived in. Like maybe that was his dad’s. Maybe that was his dad’s dad’s. We wanted that space to feel as though it had really been there for a long time, and maybe it had been passed down. Who knows? So the things in there are a little bit more loved and worn. Where do you find worn things like that? We do a lot of a lot of flea market shopping, thrift stores, and we have a couple of prop houses here. So sometimes there’s interesting items there, but for the most part, we go out and shop everything. Facebook Marketplace is our friend. We also occasionally still use Craigslist. Image: AppleTV I also wanted to ask you about Sprouts, the grocery store that’s empty and then refilled after Carol asks the Hive to do so. Can you talk about what that entailed? It was wild because we had a limited amount of time there. I think we only had two days, and it was overnight work, so they were open during the day, and then we came in at night. We did have assistance from some of the Sprouts workers, thankfully. They helped us undress the entire front of the store, and literally we spent hours just undoing all of it, making it empty, then they shot that portion with it empty during the day. The food was put in the back; they had freezers and refrigerators. And then if it was something that was going to spoil, we worked it out where we would donate it, which was great. Then we came back at night with some help with my team and the Sprouts workers and restocked the whole store overnight, which is crazy. It wasn’t exactly the whole store, basically from the bakery bread aisle to the deli meats, all that section in the front is what we cleared out and put back, and then VFX helped us with the backside. It was incredible how amazing the Sprouts workers were because they knew how to do it instantly, so they were like, “Okay this goes here, here, and here.” It was almost like they were part of the Hive because they knew it so well. Image: AppleTV What was your favorite thing to work on? One of my favorite things to talk about is the plane crash we see when we first meet Zosia and she’s taking off in Moracco and flies over a plane crash. That was a real plane we had shipped in to Albuquerque. It had already crashed and was in parts, so we had to break it open a little bit more, get additional seats and luggage, and then paint came in and made it look like it had just crashed. I found that really fun and interesting because it’s very rare that you have to go and call someone and be like, “Do you have a broken plane that you can truck here?” And then the body parts in the cold storage facility. That was a fun set because we had lied to ourselves that we would just be able to fake it on some of the things, and we were like, “Oh no, we have to actually fill this entire place with fake body parts.” So the sculpting team created thousands of these body parts, and then it went to the paint department, and then it got to my department, and we were trying to figure out how to make them look even more real. We put pantyhose on top of them, just to give them a fleshy vibe. So that was really fun, and it was hot, like 100 degrees in there. And just the irony that it was an old cold storage warehouse and it was the hottest place we worked. The first season of Pluribus is now streaming on Apple TV.[end-mark] The post <i>Pluribus</i> Set Decorator Reveals How Those Body Parts Got Their “Fleshy Vibe” appeared first on Reactor.