Pluribus creator and executive producer Vince Gilligan learned a big lesson about saying too much about a series when he answered questions about the meaning of his first big hit, Breaking Bad. “I was always talking about ‘this is what this means. No, you’re wrong and don’t interpret it that way.’ And that was a mistake on my part. I want the people who watched the show to tell me what it means. I really think they know better than I do,” he says now.

“We make the show. I can’t see the forest for the trees when we’re making it, but I like the idea of other people interpreting it for me. I think everyone else’s interpretation of this thing is way more interesting than mine is.” And indeed it is a rich concept that has viewers wondering if it is saying profound things about the effects of the pandemic, AI, immigration and other topics of the day. The fact is Gilligan came up with the idea 10 years ago and has been refining it in his head ever since. He welcomes every interpretation.

Gilligan joined his cast for a conversation Sunday at Deadline’s Contenders Television: The Nominees Studio to talk about Pluribus, his latest series following massive hits Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. This one is a genre-breaking science fiction drama in which a global virus has turned almost all human beings into a hive mentality of shared bliss. A few have somehow missed catching it and are now fighting back, notably Carol (Rhea Seehorn), a novelist who must try to save the world from this newfound happiness.

Gilligan and Seehorn participated in the Contenders discussion with co-stars Karolina Wydra, who plays Zosia, Carlos-Manuel Vesga as Manousos, and guest star Jeff Hiller as Larry. All have received Emmy nominations along with the series, which landed 18 nominations overall including for Gilligan in the writing and directing categories.

Watch their conversation below and scroll down for photos from the event.

Originally, Gilligan’s thought was for the Carol role to be a man, but when he started actually writing it was Seehorn he had in mind. For Seehorn, who had an acclaimed supporting role in Better Call Saul, and for whom this is her first starring role on a series, it is especially sweet, even being called by her character name on the street.

“Yeah, it is my first lead role, and it’s been so much fun. And yes, I got a couple of ‘Hello, Carol’s now and then in grocery stores, which is pretty funny, but the fans have actually been amazing,” she said. “And the fact that the show, including what Vince is saying, that it is open to interpretation and has engendered really nuanced conversations and these amazing wild swings that take some tone from having comedy to having deep psychological drama and questions and stuff, just makes people actually come up to me with really interesting opinions about the show, and they feel very invested and they feel very invested in the character. And I feel very lucky that it is something that we made, that we’ve made to the best of our abilities, and so we were all so proud of it.”

Wydra felt an immediate connection with Seehorn’s Carol. “What I love about it is that Zosia is there to provide for Carol everything that she needs. I’m there to protect you. I’m there to make you feel seen and good. And it was great to play someone that doesn’t have the full spectrum of emotion, someone that you know is joyous, unflappable, and you know have these beautiful scenes with you where you have these feelings,” she said.

Rhea Seehorn

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Vince Gilligan

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Karolina Wydra

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Carlos-Manuel Vesga

Anthony Avellano for Deadline

Vesga, the first male Colombian actor to be nominated for an Emmy, plays a man, like Carol, who has not been infected and feels very much alone. It is something he has felt in his own way being someone from another country suddenly in America and playing a role like this. “I would love to say that I was dreaming about this, but I wouldn’t even allow myself to dream this. It wasn’t a possibility. I’m just saying that this doesn’t happen to a Colombian actor, and it did,” he said, praising on Gilligan making it happen for him.

Jeff Hiller, who won an Emmy last year for Somebody, Somewhere and co-stars in another big nominated show this season Widow’s Bay, also from Apple TV, was to say the least surprised by his Guest Male Actor in a Drama Series Emmy nomination for Pluribus since the role doesn’t last more than seven minutes of screen time, and he says he really had no idea what it was about when called in to play it. He gives much credit to Seehorn and some behind the scenes artisans for being so generous.

“Well, it’s always hard to be a guest star, and it’s especially hard to be a guest star on a show that has this complicated of a premise. And the only way that it worked is because Rhea gave up a Sunday, a very precious day off on this very grueling shoot, invited me over, and we rehearsed for, like, hours.” he said, also noting other women on the team who helped that dya. “It was the gift of of those three women on a Sunday afternoon that made the performance.”

While taking creative liberties when making a television show is par for the course in Hollywood, that doesn’t always mean the real-life counterparts to the source material are OK with it. That’s the case with Taylor Sheridan’s “Lioness.”

The Paramount+ series kicked off its highly anticipated third season on Sunday. It stars Zoe Saldaña and Nicole Kidman and follows a top-secret CIA task force that uses female soldiers to befriend the wives and daughters of terrorists in an effort to stop major attacks from the inside.

Sheridan based the show on the real-life Team Lioness, which was formed by the U.S. Marine Corps during the Iraq War in 2003. The group had nothing to do with the CIA but was made up of mechanics, engineers and combat medics who joined male soldiers to protect translators and assist in searching women. At the time, the U.S. Department of Defense had a policy that excluded women from certain combat roles. Despite this, the women became some of the first female service members to engage in offensive ground combat operations in U.S. military history.

“It makes me mad that it doesn’t follow what we did at all,” Ranie Ruthig, one of the original Lionesses, told The Telegraph in an interview published Sunday. “They took the Team Lioness name and twisted it into a spy thing. I like Taylor Sheridan’s writing – I’ve watched his other shows – but he took our history and kind of corrupted it.”

According to Kate Guttormsen, a captain and the only female company commander in the 1st Engineer Battalion, the Lionesses “would do anything from going to schools and handing out soccer balls to finding intel.”

“The term Lioness is now honorific,” Daria Sommers, who co-directed a “Lioness” documentary about the team, said while discussing the “complex feelings” the show has created for the veterans. “The key thing is it has no basis in reality.”

She continued: “I’m not critiquing Nicole Kidman or Zoe Saldaña – they should get all the kick-ass adventure roles they want. But if Taylor Sheridan had called the show something else, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“It feels like appropriation,” Michelle Dallocchio, part of Team Lioness in 2004 and ’05, added. “I see a really complicated women’s wartime history repackaged into something safer and sanitized for mass consumption – while erasing the actual women who lived it.”

TheWrap has reached out to Paramount for comment.

Sheridan has never purported that the show is a real-life adaptation, but rather that it was inspired by a true story. “The fun thing about ‘Lioness,’ which is, I can’t say ripped from the headlines, because I’ve tried to guess what’s going to happen politically and then fictionalize that,” Sheridan said during a July interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “The fact that I’ve managed to be right is pretty [expletive] wild.”

Donald Trump fumed at CNN‘s Kristen Holmes as she tried to ask him about his communications with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un.

In the Oval Office on Monday, Trump had been defending his relationship with Kim, saying that “I understand him. He understands.” The president posted on Truth Social on Sunday that he was ordering the military to reduce joint military exercises with South Korea.

Holmes attempted to ask a follow up, but Trump lashed out at her. “Quiet, quiet. You’re very disrespectful in front of this young man.”

The president gestured at Nathaniel Rai, a 10-year-old who was rescued from rough surf in Santa Cruz by lifeguard Ryder Williams, who sat across from him in the Oval Office.

“Okay, don’t you find her disrespectful?” Trump said to the boy. “He understands. Quiet.”

Trump asked Holmes which outlet she was with. When she said CNN, he said, “Fake news. You’re fake news. You’re a loud, boisterous person. You’re fake news. Be quiet…You’re a fake reporter, and you report fake news.”

Holmes is CNN’s senior White House correspondent.

Earlier in the Oval Office availability, Holmes had asked Trump about a comment made by Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), who said that the president would rather travel with your aide, Natalie Harp, and build the ballroom, than do his job as president.

“What is your response?” Holmes asked.

Trump called Ossoff a “Pee Wee Herman lookalike” before defending the ballroom.

The White House’s rapid response account, though, blasted Holmes and called her “a disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession. @POTUS hosts a hero lifeguard in the Oval Office and she uses it as an opportunity to take a cheap shot about one of President Trump’s staffer.”

In another post, the White House wrote to Holmes, “Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question. They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling.”

The network said in a statement, “Kristen Holmes is one of the most respected and accomplished journalists covering the White House. This afternoon, she did her job and asked the President of the United States a tough, relevant and newsworthy question on behalf of the American people. Public officials are free to challenge reporting they disagree with, but personal attacks on journalists for asking question are beneath the office and inconsistent with the principles of a free press. We stand firmly behind Kristen and reject these attacks in the strongest possible terms.”

Trump said that the North Korean leader had responded to his request to have a conversation. ” get along with him. He didn’t like Biden. He didn’t like Obama. He didn’t like anybody. But I get along with him very well.” He criticized South Korea, the U.S. ally, for not helping with the war with Iran.