‘Pluribus:’ Carlos Manuel Vesga Leverages Childhood Play For Inspiration

The Contending sits down with Pluribus star Carlos Manuel Vesga about his performance on Apple’s critically acclaimed drama.

Carlos Manuel Vesga had a great challenge getting across Manousos’s emotions in Apple+’s Pluribus. Almost silent in several episodes, he communicates experiences and emotions about what he is going through in this brand new world through only facial expressions. In this interview with The Contending, he pays homage to those who have and are trying to cross the Darién Gap as Manousos, and he talks about the importance of going back to playing as a child to help one become a better actor.

The Contending: When we’re first introduced to Manousos, besides his outburst on the phone, you have to communicate his feelings through your facial expression and just watching him walking around the storage unit area. What was it like to try to communicate what was going through his mind in that way?

Carlos Manuel Vesga: It was about expressing, not what’s going on on the surface, but actually what’s going on inside the character. And honestly, it required complete focus and control at all times, because apart from it being silent we are not talking about big, physical actions.

This guy’s not throwing baseballs, or running through a field, it was very small actions that he would do. So I would need to focus on things like what goes on with his face when he finds that special frequency, radio frequency. So it was definitely quite a challenge but I was blessed to have the best people around me to help.

The Contending: When he does leave we’re still not given a whole lot about him, except for the moment he runs into his mother and there seems to be a great deal of animosity there. Did you and Vince come up with a bit of a backstory there, or did you guys just try to leave it and you just let the emotion come through?

Carlos Manuel Vesga: They didn’t give me any backstory for Manousos. But I don’t know if they were aware of the amount of information that they implied about him by having him be an immigrant. That is a lot of information, you know. It doesn’t matter the specific circumstances of why he had to leave Colombia and move to Paraguay. But being an immigrant implies a lot of things: uncertainty, anguish, hope, resilience, hard work, fear–all those things.  But regarding his mother, I don’t have a clue about what has happened with this lady.

I thought, when I read it though, that these people are geniuses, because the way that he can tell that she’s not his mom is because she’s sweet. That is absolutely genius. And I have to say, Soledad Campos, the actress who played his mother, was spot on performing this sort of sweet and yet creepy woman. The way she’s so sweet, but she comes in the twilight, she appears there. I remember Vince telling me, in this scene you’re dealing with the car and then you sort of sense something going on behind you and you freeze. Like you know, there’s an imminent danger. And then he turns around, and it’s his mother and we get that not so friendly line from him. I love that.

The Contending: Watching you navigate that forest when we get the shots of those needles and we know they are going to do something bad. And the tension is building but you can sense the dedication he’s got to go through this. What went into creating that?

Carlos Manuel Vesga: Well, the first thing that came to mind was the fact that people are actually crossing the Darién Gap as we speak. And me being a Colombian, I’m very much aware of the tragedy that’s been going on there. So the first thing on my mind was, I need to honor these people’s resilience and their hopes for a better life, that they go through this hell to get to the promised land. In the case of Manousos you could actually establish a parallel between them, because to him the promised land is Carol. She is the light at the end of the tunnel.

But it was quite a challenge that he only has three lines: the cat is gray, the dog is yellow, and the girl saves the mouse from the trap. And so I had to try to convey different states for Manousos through those three lines, which was quite a challenge. Sometimes I teach acting and there’s an exercise where you set up a scene for two volunteers, and you would go, this is a police station’s interrogation room, and you’re the cop, and you’re the suspect. You have to do this scene, but you can only use the lyrics from Mary Had a Little Lamb. And by just saying the lyrics to the song.  It’s amazing how intonation and physical language can convey the actual scene with those words. So, I remembered that exercise and I played around with the different ways that I could say The cat is gray and try to convey different emotions and thoughts.

And I have to say for that episode the director, Adam Bernstein, was crucial for me, because he himself is such a playful person. And I do believe that the secret to acting is to be playful. To go back to when you were a kid and you were playing pirates with your friends.

And you commit to the game, and you commit to playing. It’s not that you believe it, it’s that you commit to the rules, and you play, and you have fun. It was a gift to work with Adam, and it was a gift to take such a tragic situation, and be able to play around with it.

The Contending: Speaking of getting to his promised land, when he gets there it’s not quite what he expects. Carol has had this change of heart about The Joined and your guys’ back and forth is fantastic. The anger that he’s having that she has now been as he sees it, warped, so to speak, at least in his view. The intensity you guys are going through is added on because you’re having issues communicating with the translator on her phone. Then the added ridiculousness of dropping the phone. What went into kind of creating that dynamic between the two of you for that episode?

Carlos Manuel Vesga: That scene, the umbrella scene, was my final auditioning scene.  That was the final reading in LA, which was actually with Rhea, and Vince was there. I remember when I was doing the reading we didn’t have the actual translator working on the phone.

So we had to pretend that we were listening to it, and I remember thinking, it’s gonna be very cumbersome to have the actual translator, or the person talking into our ears, translating what we are saying. This is gonna make our jobs a bit harder because we’re gonna have to involve something new apart from the two of us. So I remember while we were doing the reading I was thinking, I hope I get the job because I am gonna have so much fun doing this.

When we started doing it with the third actor off-screen, who was actually speaking into our ears through earpieces, she would interrupt at a certain point, and then she would interrupt at a different point, so it became a real problem with the translator. And I remember, at some point, Vince came over, and he said, You know what, just forget about what was written and just react to the interruptions from the translator. Every time you hear it, just react to it. Again it was like going back to playing pirates. You learn the rule that the bed is the boat, and if you step off the bed, you drown in the ocean. So as soon as I had that rule played out, we just went into it so easily, and it was so much fun for us.

I keep coming to this analogy of what happens when you’re working with Rhea is it’s playing a tennis match with Federer or Djokovic, you know, you have a top-notch player against you. But you don’t play the match to win, you play the match for the pleasure of playing the match, and that’s what it is with Rhea. You have someone who is gonna throw the best and hardest balls at you, but it’s not because they want to beat you, it’s because they want you to come back with a better ball. She’s the kind of partner that will never let you fall. She has your back, and you always feel safe with her, and that made the scene so much fun.

The Contending: Manousos gives Carol an ultimatum about what kind of life she can live. And now she is back and she has a nuke. How do you think he’s going to react to all of this?

Carlos Manuel Vesga: You know what I’ve been thinking? What are they going to use that atom bomb for? How are they going to use it? Would they meet the other survivors to set that thing off, or to fly it and drop it somewhere? Maybe they’re gonna take the uranium for something? I don’t have an answer for that. We know that he understands science to a point that he reads physics books, and he knows about radios and frequencies and all that kind of thing. So, he definitely understands the dimensions of having an atom bomb in your driveway. I’d like to think that Manousos’s reaction would be that this is probably going too far. I know I was talking about solving the problem, but this is probably a bit radical. But it was a lovely ending for the finale. I think we’re all wondering what’s gonna happen.