Diksha Sundriyal
Apple TV+’s ‘Pluribus’ takes the audience into a strange new world where a novelist, Carol Sturka, is the only one who can save everyone else from falling into what looks like a pit of utter happiness. The story opens on a very unexpected point, leading Carol to become an unlikely hero of the story. Her generally grumpy nature stands in stark contrast to the happiness that seems to have taken over the world. While the story might take a sci-fi premise, the character remains as complex and relatable as expected of creator Vince Gilligan. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Fictional Carol Sturka Was Born Out of Vince Gilligan’s Desire to Create Good Guys
Vince Gilligan is best known for creating seminal TV shows like ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Better Call Saul,’ which turned anti-heroes into lovable characters that the audience roots for against all odds. While Gilligan was happy about the success of both shows, there came a time when he started to think about flipping the script. He said that he’d started to get “a little weary of writing bad guys,” especially when he saw that too many people were taking cues from the likes of Tony Soprano and Walter White. His desire to create a good guy led him to a character who would be loved by everyone. Initially, it was supposed to be a male character who hadn’t particularly done anything good, but was, nevertheless, treated exceptionally well by everyone around him. The idea of such a person intrigued him.
After meeting Rhea Seehorn, with whom he also worked on ‘Better Call Saul,’ he decided to build the character around her, leading to the creation of Carol Sturka. While he wanted Carol to be a good person who wants to save the world, he knew that it wouldn’t make her immune to flaws. Still, despite her shortcomings as a human being, she is focused on saving the world when no one else wants to do it, and that forms the crux of the character. What made him feel even closer to Carol, compared to his other creations, is that he saw himself in her. Describing himself, Gilligan said, “The sarcasm and the negativity and the general miserableness — that’s the easy part for me, honestly.” He poured the same characteristics into Carol as well, giving her a sense of realism that brings her closer to reality and lends more weight to the story.
Carol’s Fictional Novel Adds Another Layer of Realism to the Character
Formulating the character in his own image, Vince Gilligan decided to make Carol a writer because, being one himself, he knew the challenges that it would bring. Referring to movies like ‘Taken’ and ‘Mission: Impossible,’ he said that because the world expects someone like Liam Neeson and Tom Cruise to be the leader who takes charge of saving the world, the idea of a romance writer like Carol being the one seemed even more interesting and entertaining. He added, “That’s about the last person in the world you want tasked with saving humanity because we’re all a bunch of inept idiots.” As he leaned into the professional details of the character, he found that making her a screenwriter would be boring, given his own experience in the field. In contrast, he found that “romance authors just seem more colorful, fun, and interesting.”
So, he decided that Carol should be a successful romance writer, even though she isn’t as colourful and fun as her books. In the show, she is revealed to be the author of a book called ‘Bloodsong of Wycaro,’ which is a part of a series that focuses on a woman falling for a pirate, while battling the challenges of the world she lives in. While Carol and her novels have many fans, she herself feels disgust towards them, calling them trash that somehow her audience laps up. This underlines her self-loathing and her general distaste towards the world. This trait of hers adopts a more meaningful turn as, despite all these negative feelings, she still feels that the world is worth saving, and becomes the hero that she would most likely have despised writing about in her novels.
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