Lifestyle
‘Pluribus’ star Rhea Seehorn says no thanks to a world dictated by group think
Rhea Seehorn plays a misanthropic romance writer in the Apple TV series Pluribus.
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Rhea Seehorn says she’s on “Team Carol.”
In the Apple TV series Pluribus, actor Rhea Seehorn stars as Carol, a bestselling romance author who suddenly finds herself living in a world where everyone around her is bound together by a “psychic glue.” They share memories and knowledge and they are happy and peaceful. The only problem: Carol’s not interested in joining them — especially if it means losing her own sense of self.
“I would absolutely be Team Carol as far as arguing the necessity and the positives of individual thinking,” Seehorn says. If the world were taken over by group think, she explains, “There’s never going to be a joke that you haven’t heard. There’s never going to be a surprise behavior that makes you laugh. And that’s just such a source of joy for me that I just can’t imagine that contentment is the same as happiness.”

Seehorn previously played Kim Wexler in AMC’s Better Call Saul, co-created by Vince Gilligan. He is also the creator of Pluribus. Seehorn says Carol’s character was originally imagined as a male protagonist, but was rewritten for her to take the starring role. Gilligan “wanted to play with tone and take wild swings as far as [the series] could be darkly comedic, or it could be darkly psychological … and he was impressed at my ability to do those things,” Seehorn says. “I’m certainly very thankful for it.”
Interview highlights
On playing angry characters in Pluribus and in Better Call Saul
There’s this idea [that] anger can be a miasma almost, that can spread. And we’ve all seen horrible things can happen when you just are riling people up. … But at the same time, it is a necessary emotion, which, I think, is one of the arguments in the show that I side with — the idea that all of the emotions are important, not just happiness. …

Because I’m a woman playing the role … it felt as though I was taught that anger was unpalatable, specifically from females, and that I should find a way to make it palatable. … When I was much younger, I would scream. As a teenager, you know, screaming, yelling, like the typical arguments you have over hairspray and idiotic things as a teenager. … My parents were divorced, and so it was a household of three women, my mom, and my sister and I. … But, you know, you kind of grow out of this. …
I don’t think it’s OK to scream and yell in someone’s face, but I think I have become conflict avoidant in the suppression of that anger to a degree that’s not healthy. I will stand up for somebody else, though, in a heartbeat. If somebody else is being mistreated next to me, I’m in there. I’ll take you to the mat. But if it’s at me, I tend to swallow it and try to figure out how I can make it better.
On how she prepared to play the role of a romance novelist
I went to The Ripped Bodice, which is an amazing romance novel store. … And I just slipped in and looked around. And I have to tell you, one of the first things that struck me is the amount of sub-genres and the specificity of these sub-genres. … I watched a couple of people do readings from their books, and I was really surprised at the breadth of people, of fans, listening. There was a lot of people dressed like early Stevie Nicks, in a beautiful way. But then there was also … [a] couple that looked like they came straight from a corporate job. … People younger than me, people older than me. It definitely widened me to how huge this genre is and how much it encapsulates all the different novels it has.
On changing her name from Deborah, which was her first name, to Rhea, which was her middle name
I got a little chunky in puberty, and kids started yelling at me, “Hey, fat Debbie, do you want some more Little Debbie’s?” (which are snack cakes.) … I was just like … I just need a fresh start. And I think I identify more with my middle name. And weirdly, there was no issue with kids that had known me forever. Everybody just sort of was like, “Yeah, that makes sense.”
On her father being a counterintelligence agent
I knew he was investigating things and I knew that they were secretive, but I didn’t have a lot more details than that. And I am loathe to say that my head was too far up my butt as a teenager to actually be interested in what my parents actually do. And then he died when I was 18, so I didn’t get to ask a lot of the questions that I wish I had asked. …

My Dad’s favorite answer to everything was, “What are you, writing a book?” If you even just said, like, “Where are you going?” … And I thought I was so brilliant when I was 15 that I finally had a comeback. And I said, “Yeah, I am.” And he said, “Well, then leave this chapter out.”
On her father’s drinking
Apparently he was a heavy drinker for most of his adult life, but it just didn’t get labeled as alcoholism, you know? And my dad was the life of the party and very, very smart, very, very funny, with a super dry wit. … The idea that he was in the Tet Offensive and, as far as I know, never talked to anybody about it, and that you would have a life built of a lot of secrets. … I don’t remember him ever saying that he had anybody to talk to about it. So I just bring that up because I think self-medicating was going on for quite a while before it physically became a full-blown issue and then full-blown disease.
On how she became an actor
I was obsessed with television, film, and as a kid in the suburbs in Virginia, I’d never known anybody that had even the loosest association with the entertainment business and thought it was just an impossible dream. And then, in my first year at George Mason University, you had to take an elective in the arts that was not your major, and my major was fine arts. And so I took an acting class. … It was not an emotional, ooey-gooey class — I took plenty of those later — but this was a hardcore, do-your-homework, script-analysis class using practical aesthetics that was developed out of the Atlantic Theater. And I just was in love with the fact that if you work really hard and study, you can incrementally get closer and closer to being good at this and hopefully one day great at this. …

And then I started going to D.C. theater, which I think is some of the world’s best theater … and [I] was just like: Immediately, I have to do this for my life. I don’t know how many day jobs I’m going to have to have. It was not about being famous. I knew that I had to be an actor and I’d support myself, however I had to.
Lauren Krenzel and Nico Wisler produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Lifestyle
Jewelry Among the Exhibits at a Daniel Brush Retrospective
Nearly four years after his death, a retrospective of the multidisciplinary work by the self-taught American artist Daniel Brush — encompassing sculpture, paintings and jewelry in materials as diverse as steel, Bakelite and gold — is scheduled to open June 8 at the Paris location of L’Ecole, School of Jewelry Arts.
“Daniel Brush: The Art of Line and Light” will be the fifth time that L’Ecole has exhibited the artist’s work. But its president, Lise Macdonald, said she believed Mr. Brush’s legacy warranted repeated consideration: “He is a very niche artist, but he is excellent — really one of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st century.”
The diversity of his creations has been part of his appeal, she said. “We don’t really consider him as purely a jeweler but more a protean artist where jewelry was part of his approach.”
L’Ecole Paris, which operates in an 18th-century mansion in the Ninth Arrondissement and is supported by Van Cleef & Arpels, has prepared programming to complement the show, from conversations with experts on Mr. Brush’s work (to be held on site and streamed online) to jewelry-making workshops for children. Details of the free exhibition and the events are on the school’s website; the show is scheduled to end Oct. 4.
The exhibition is to include more than 75 pieces, which span much of Mr. Brush’s five-decade career. They have been selected by Olivia Brush, his wife and collaborator, and by Vivienne Becker, a jewelry historian and author who said she first met the couple more than 30 years ago. Some exhibits, they said, have never been seen by the public before.
Ms. Becker, who wrote the 2019 monograph “Daniel Brush: Jewels Sculpture,” said the artist had possessed vast knowledge of the history of jewelry and shared her belief that jewels “answer a very important, very basic human impulse to adorn — that it’s essential to customs, beliefs, and ceremonies around the world.” She also has written a book documenting the L’Ecole exhibition — and with the same title — that examines the artist’s preoccupation with the themes of light and line.
“He loved the idea of making a real, intransigent, opaque metal into something that was almost translucent, or transparent,” said Ms. Becker, citing as an example a trio of bangles made in 2009 to 2010 that are called the “Rings of Infinity.” The lines that he engraved on the aluminum pieces functioned, she explained, to “elevate the jewel from a trinket to a great, great work of art.”
A series of engraved steel panels titled “Thinking About Monet” used the interplay of line and light to achieve a different effect, she said. Mr. Brush made individual strokes in tight formation on the panels, producing gently rippling surfaces whose color changes with shifting light conditions.
The effect “is really hard to understand. I couldn’t,” Ms. Becker said. “So many people ask, ‘Are they tinted? Are they colored?’ It’s absolutely nothing. It’s just the breaking of the light.”
Though Mr. Brush was a widely acknowledged master of skills such as granulation, the application of tiny gold balls to a metal surface, both Ms. Brush and Ms. Becker said the exhibition’s goal was not to highlight his virtuosity — nor, Ms. Becker said, was that ever a concern of Mr. Brush’s. “He didn’t want to talk about the technique at all,” she said. “Technique has to just be a means to an end. He just wanted people to be amazed, to have a sense of wonder again.”
The works selected for the L’Ecole exhibition reflect his range, which veered from diamond-set Bakelite brooches inspired by animal crackers to a steel and gold orb meant to be an object of contemplation. “He didn’t want to have boundaries,” Ms. Brush said. “He wanted to do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it.”
The couple met as students at what is now called Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and her 1967 wedding ring was the first jewel that Mr. Brush made.
All of Mr. Brush’s works were one-of-a-kind creations, completed from start to finish by him in the New York City loft that served as a workshop as well as a family home. Photographs of the space, which contained a library with titles on the eclectic subjects that preoccupied him — Chinese history, Byzantine art, Impressionist painting — and the antique machinery that inspired him and that he used to make his tools, are featured in the exhibition and reproduced in Ms. Becker’s book.
Ms. Brush is a fiber artist in her own right, but Mr. Brush also frequently credited her as an equal participant on pieces bearing his name. “I did not physically make the work,” she explained, “but the work would not have evolved or happened the way it did if it were not for the way we lived our lives,” she said.
Lifestyle
Thanks to ‘Mormon Wives,’ Dirty Soda Is a National Obsession
The first time Pop’s Social, a catering company in South Orange, N.J., that specializes in dirty soda, served an alcoholic drink at an event, something strange happened.
At the event in December, its nonalcoholic offering, a spiced pear-cider seltzer with vanilla and peach syrups, cream, lemon and cold foam, was a hit. The Prosecco-spiked version? Not so much.
“People were more interested in the mocktail than the cocktail,” Ali Greenberg, an owner of the business, said in an interview.
Dirty soda — a customizable blend of soda, flavored syrup, creamer and sometimes fruit, served over pebble ice — has been crossing into the mainstream for years, especially after the cast of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the hit reality show that premiered in 2024, frequented Swig, the Utah chain that started it all.
But its reach has gone far beyond the Mormon corridor, and its rise in popularity has dovetailed with an overall decline in U.S. alcohol consumption. “There’s not a lot of Mormon people in our neighborhood,” said Greenberg. “But there are a lot of people who are sober-curious or not drinking.”
The reality show, which follows a group of Mormon influencers in Utah, helped popularize dirty soda beyond the Mountain States and inspired a wave of TikTok videos on the subject. Swig rapidly expanded — growing from 33 locations in Utah and Arizona in 2021 to now more than 150 locations in 16 states — along with other Utah chains, and spawned copycats nationwide.
Dirty soda has joined other Mormon cultural exports, like tradwife influencers, a “Real Housewives” franchise in Salt Lake City and Taylor Frankie Paul, the Bachelorette who wasn’t, that have captivated America.
With the recent rollouts of dirty soda at McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and Dunkin’ — behold the Dunkin’ Dirty Soda: Pepsi, coffee milk and cold foam — and the appearance on grocery shelves of Dirty Mountain Dew and a coconut-lime Coffee Mate creamer for homemade dirty sodas, we may have reached peak dirty.
The idea for dirty soda came out of a desire for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has millions of followers in Utah and surrounding states, to have more options for social drinking, as the church prohibits the consumption of alcohol, hot coffee and hot caffeinated tea.
When Swig introduced dirty soda in 2010, it filled a need, providing a pick-me-up for car-pooling moms and an after-school treat for their kids. It was quickly adopted by many in the community.
“In other cultures, parents go, they pick up their coffee in the morning, and for me and for a lot of my other friends’ parents, it was, ‘Let’s go pick up our dirty soda,’” Whitney Leavitt, a breakout star of “Mormon Wives,” said in an interview.
Leavitt was surprised when her dirty soda order became a recurring question from reporters in recent years. “They were so excited to hear all of the different syrups and creamers that we add to our drinks to make whatever your go-to dirty soda is,” Leavitt said. (Hers is sparkling water with sugar-free pineapple, sugar-free peach and sugar-free vanilla syrups, raspberry purée, a squeeze of lime, and fresh mint if she’s “feeling really fancy.”)
In April, Leavitt became the chief creative and brand officer at Cool Sips, a beverage chain based in New York that sells dirty sodas.
“Mormon Wives” inspired Kaitlyn Sturm, a 26-year-old mother of three from Jackson, Miss., to post recipes for dirty sodas on her TikTok. The one she makes the most contains Coke or Dr Pepper, homemade cherry syrup, a glug of coconut creamer and a packet of True Lime crystallized lime powder, which she combines in a pasta-sauce jar filled with pebble ice. “It kind of has become like a ritual, where I make one for my husband as well, and we have it most evenings,” Sturm said in an interview.
The trend has also hit fast-food menus. The new “crafted soda” menu at McDonald’s is riddled with dirty soda DNA. The Dirty Dr Pepper, with vanilla flavoring and a cold-foam topper, is the chain’s version of what has shaped up to be the universal dirty soda flavor. Since 2024, Sonic, beloved for its porous, soda-absorbing pebble ice, has offered “dirty” drinks — your choice of soda plus coconut syrup, sweet cream and lime.
These drinks might feel new, but there are antecedents in the Italian sodas of the ’90s (fizzy water and a pump of Torani syrup); the Shirley Temple (ginger ale or lemon-lime soda with grenadine and maraschino cherries); and the egg cream, a tonic of seltzer, chocolate syrup and milk. And what is a dirty Dr Pepper with cold foam if not a descendant of the root beer float? “It’s just a soda fountain from 125 years ago,” Kara Nielsen, a food and beverage trend forecaster, said in an interview.
Though Leavitt moved to New York City with her family in December, her dirty soda ritual has remained consistent, with one key difference. “In Utah, we don’t get to walk to dirty soda shops,” Leavitt said. “We have to drive there.”
Lifestyle
Chaos Gardening: A Laid-Back Way to Garden
Annuals include flowers like marigolds and nasturtiums. They grow fast but won’t come back the next spring (though they will drop seeds and possibly propagate). Perennials like lavender and sage will return year after year, but they may take longer to grow. Wildflower and pollinator packets often contain both annual and perennial seeds but are frowned upon by some serious gardeners, because the selection can be haphazard and ill-suited to the area.
It’s a good idea to exercise a little situational awareness. How much rain can you expect? How much sunlight? Dig the earth and feel it between your fingers — is it sandy? Loamy? These are things to keep in mind as you prepare for your journey into horticultural chaos.
“You want to prepare your soil, your site, at least a little bit,” said Deryn Davidson, a sustainable landscape expert at Colorado State University Extension in Longmont, Colo. “Try to get rid of weeds. Make sure the soil is ready to receive seeds.”
Davidson, who has written about chaos gardening, strongly advised covering the seeds with a layer of soil, lest they become bird food. As for watering, that depends on where you live, she added. On the whole, though, the formula is straightforward: “Soil, sun and water is what these seeds need,” Davidson said.
Not everyone is a fan of the trend, or at least the way it has been portrayed on social media. “Nature is not chaos — nature is pattern,” said Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and the author of “Braiding Sweetgrass,” which recommends imbuing modern life with Indigenous wisdom.
“It seems unrealistic,” Kimmerer said of the chaos gardening videos she has watched. The feeling of effortlessness they convey — a common social media effect, almost always the result of deft editing — seems to elide the work that goes into a garden, whether chaotic or not, she suggested.
“I want my garden to be natural and biodiverse,” she said. “That’s a good impulse. I don’t think this technique is going to get you there, but that’s an important impulse.”
Boitnott, the maker of the viral video, offered a simple reason for why chaos gardening has become popular: “It just makes you happy.”
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