“…and we asked you if you’d like us to tidy up your house a little bit, and you sort of nodded absently? We’re almost done here, Carol.
There’s a way that Jeff Hiller’s Larry delivers his lines so matter-of-factly to Rhea Seehorn’s Carol in the fourth episode of Apple’s obsession-worthy drama series, Pluribus. Even though we know Hiller’s character is being his most helpful self because of the unified hivemind, part of us is calmed by his presence. After all, Hiller is continuing an incredible year on television after winning Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, but his work on the Vince Gilligan drama proves one thing for sure: when a great actor is paired with strong, thought-provoking material, he can make an impression in under ten minutes.
When I re-watched Hiller’s submitted episode, “Please, Carol,” something feels different when Seehorn’s emotionally confused and embattled character sits down with Hiller’s Larry. She has had one-on-one conversations with other people who have turned, like with Karolina Wydra’s Zosia, but there is something more intimate and pressing in this interaction.
Hiller has spoken before about how little he knew about the project before he and Seehorn had a rehearsal to hash out their scene work together, and their acting together feels wholly different than anything else we have seen up to this point on Pluribus’ curious first season. Carol asks Larry to reveal what Helen thought about Carol’s newest work, and Larry cannot hold back on telling her the truth. All the while, Hiller keeps his eyes stuck on Carol, and his voice remains placid but warm. When he reads a passage from Carol’s book, a smile crawls across his face before saying, “That made quite a few of us tingle.” It doesn’t matter if Hiller is playing around in comedy or dabbling in dark drama since he knows how to wring out the juice of any line. He allows us to think about the words in a completely different way.
When Carol chooses a different tactic and asks Larry to tell her what Helen thought of her unpublished novel, he tries to dodge the question. Is this a vulnerability in the hive’s armor? Before she orders Larry out of the house, we wonder how this conversation will weigh on Carol moving forward. Larry allows Carol to understand that everyone around her is incapable of lying.
On a sillier note, I begin the conversation admitting to Hiller how much I have admired his comedic work, especially when he played a flight attendant in my favorite episode of 30 Rock. We speak about voicework and the puzzling pull of Gilligan’s newest drama series, but we do spend a lot of time trying to think of the gayest question or talking point that we can muster.
Jeff Hiller is such a singular talent. He’s a performer you are always thrilled to see no matter if he’s telling you to run on Widow’s Bay, threatening you on American Horror Story, criticizing our “lesbian clown shirts on a Tina Fey sitcom, or soothing you on Somebody Somewhere or being “weirdly honest” as the world scuttles towards extinction. If Gilligan’s latest series is a premonition of things to come, we will all be glad that Hiller spent so much time with us.
Pluribus is streaming now on Apple TV.
