What if everybody in the world loved you? It sounds nice, but as Vince Gilligan illustrates in his new series Pluribus, that simple idea can lead to terrifying, mind-bending results. The latest offering from the Breaking Bad creator can trace its origins back almost a decade.

When Gilligan was beginning work on Better Call Saul, he started pondering another character, “who at the time was a male character.”

“I was thinking about a character who inexplicable, for some reason, the world loved him,” Gilligan tells Supanova. “Everybody loved this guy, everybody in the world was willing to bend over backwards for this guy. No matter what he did, they could never be mad at him, they could only wish for good things for him, and they would do anything he asked.

“And I don’t know what it was that intrigued me, but I thought about it for weeks and months, and I started to slowly flesh out why that might be the case, and it very quickly, as you would imagine, became a science fiction idea, but it wasn’t intended to be necessarily from the beginning.”

At the same time, Gilligan found himself working for the first time with the “wonderful” Rhea Seehorn, who played Kim Wexler on Better Call Saul.

“We all loved her,” the filmmaker enthuses. “The whole crew loved her; everybody would move heaven and Earth for her. She’s such a wonderful person and she’s so good, in terms of her acting talent, that I said to myself, ‘Why don’t I take this idea and make it about a woman instead of a man,’ and so I wrote Pluribus.

“We didn’t have a title for the next couple of years, but what became Pluribus, I wrote for Rhea. And that’s when the idea happened, but I don’t know where exactly it came from, but that’s what I was thinking… it’s hard to say where the ideas come from, I never know exactly; I just wait for them to appear.”

The show’s promotional rollout has been one of cryptic teasers and out of context footage that raise more questions than they answer. Seehorn’s character, Carol, is the “most miserable person on Earth” and it’s her responsibly to “save the world from happiness”, as the show’s official tagline reveals.

The flipside to that coin is Zosia, portrayed by Karolina Wydra. Without giving too much away, Zosia is the “straight man” to Carol’s “funny man”, as the duo explain.

“First of all, getting to play with Rhea Seehorn is such a gift,” Wydra begins, turning to her co-star, “you are a phenomenal actor, truly, and you make it so easy, and you’re so giving.”

Seehorn is quick to respond in-kind, noting that Wydra is “incredibly gifted and also an incredibly generous actor”.

“Having such different energies, where one person is being the straight man, and one person is being a buffoon, or a wackadoodle, is very funny,” Seehorn continues.

“Carol running around and acting like an insane person, even when she was justified in being angry, the calmness and neutrality that Zosia would exhibit made Carol look like a 5-year-old having a temper tantrum, and so I knew that was inherently funny.

“And then there were other times where it added this dramatic element that I know were challenging for me as far as playing these extreme moments of anger, or deep, deep despair, or pleading with her, or being very angry; they are their own challenge for me.

“I remember distinctly thinking, ‘What an incredible challenge for her,’ because in those moments, you’re taking away tools that most humans have, and definitely most actors have, where she can’t mirror me; she’s not following me down that emotional path, she’s not getting angrier as I get angrier, or getting upset because I get upset.”

Wydra confirms they were “great challenges” as an actor, sharing, “It was fun to be able to tap into that and be able to hold that space for you and see how that feels in my body, when someone is having such big feelings and you just go, ‘Okay, let them wash over you, do not react.’”

Seehorn adds: “I remember you being upset, like having empathy for me as Carol, and having to tell yourself, ‘I’ve got to swallow that, because Zosia can’t.’ And I was like, ‘That’s so hard.’”

“Those were fun challenges,” Wydra notes.

Pluribus made its global debut on Apple TV with its first two episodes on Friday, November 7. New episodes will follow every Friday through December 26