Talk to somebody in Vince Gilligan‘s orbit — or just one of his many industry admirers — and you’re likely to hear them marvel at his ability to always find the emergency exit when he writes himself into another dead end. “I’ve heard showrunners who make really good TV say, ‘I knew the final episode before we even made episode one,’ ” says Gilligan. “Well, more power to them. I’m just a dumbass who continually writes himself into a corner. I don’t recommend it.”

Humility is also part of the Gilligan brand, a trait the writer, producer and director seems to retain even after creating three of the most lauded series of the 21st century in Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and, now, Pluribus. The drama follows a misanthropic romance novelist named Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) who finds herself in extraordinary circumstances. She’s one of just 13 people left unaffected by an alien virus that’s transformed the world’s population into a Zen hivemind, and, at least at the outset, she’s the only one left who’s bothered by this development. Gilligan wasn’t sure where his high-concept premise was headed when he sold it to Apple (a two-season, straight-to-series commitment) in a heated bidding war. He says he still doesn’t know what path it will follow. Fortunately, he isn’t alone in his corner. Gilligan’s troupe of serial collaborators — Seehorn was offered her part after her six acclaimed seasons on Better Call Saul — also thrive under pressure, which might have peaked in the series’ second episode.

“It was the single biggest directing job I’ve ever had, and I got to do a movie — on a movie schedule, with a movie budget,” says Gilligan, who sat down in Culver City, alongside Seehorn, in early May. “This was one episode of TV, and we shot it in Albuquerque, the Canary Islands and northern Spain. It was a megillah.”

“Pirate Lady,” the hour in question, follows Carol from Albuquerque to Bilbao, where she’s requested an audience with as many of the uninfected as will take her meeting about how to potentially fix their odd scenario. “She’s going there hoping she’ll be assigned cups and plates at the revolution, not leading it,” says Seehorn, before turning to her showrunner. “Wait, isn’t that also the episode with Air Force One?”

In Gilligan’s script, one of the last unimpacted individuals (Samba Schutte) has chosen to use the apocalypse as an occasion to ball out and arrives at Carol’s Bilbao summit in the world’s most famous aircraft. Producers initially looked for a real 747 to rent, but making one from scratch, shockingly, proved more economical.

“The build just kept getting bigger and bigger,” says production designer Denise Pizzini, who also worked on Better Call Saul. She and her team had to engineer, stamp, weld and paint a section of the exterior hull to resemble the presidential plane. They also had to make it so it could be raised high enough off the ground to accommodate boarding stairs. There was even a tiny section of the interior, behind the door, for Carol to disappear behind. The larger interior was built on a set. Pizzini researched the decor from past administrations, but found them a bit bland: “Even the movie Air Force One, it’s always all of this tan leather. So what you see is probably what I wish Air Force One looked like: blues and rich, dark woods. Vince loves surfaces that reflect.”

Costume designer Jennifer L. Bryan, who created a yellow leather jacket so arresting for Seehorn to wear in episode one that Apple TV built the marketing campaign around the color (copycats keep popping up on Etsy), was tasked with figuring out how her muse would dress for the onboard meeting. “The idea is to deliberately not have her looking like a boss lady,” says Bryan, who worked on both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. “A chunky sweater. A mid-length skirt. A safe look because she has to be approachable but exude just enough authority that they listen to her … which they do not.”

By Gilligan’s estimation, Air Force One was the most expensive and elaborate set piece to execute in a nine-episode season that cost a reported $135 million all in. The spend was only part of the challenge. The shoot demanded that more than half of that episode be filmed out of sequence, at the very end of season one production. Seehorn says she initially had a difficult time getting back in that headspace — particularly when it came to her rapport with her primary co-star, Karolina Wydra.

Wydra’s character, Zosia, is introduced in the cold open of “Pirate Lady” as she flies a cargo plane from Tangier to Albuquerque to serve as the collective’s ambassador to Carol. (“My midlife crisis is flying,” Gilligan says of this emerging aviation trend. “I got my pilot’s license right before I turned 50.”) Wydra doesn’t get off easy. As the main “Other,” she’s tasked with portraying the collective consciousness of essentially every living person and having access to the memories of all who died at the onset of the virus. That includes Carol’s late wife, Helen, played in cameos by Miriam Shor.

Nearly every actor who strolls on camera in Pluribus, whether they have lines or not, is playing one of the Others. Given the specificity of their shared delivery, most don’t speak in complete sentences. It’s simply too tall of an order. Though there are notable exceptions, like a biker shorts-wearing Jeff Hiller, who makes a chipper appearance to reluctantly reveal that Helen wasn’t the biggest fan of Carol’s writing. (The Others cannot lie.) Still, the shared role is ultimately defined by Wydra’s take.

“I did a lot of research on high-intelligence humans,” says Wydra. “Inside Zosia are the greatest surgeons, the greatest pilots, the greatest lawyers. So, she speaks very lawyerly. She chooses her words wisely. She gives information, but only the information she wants Carol to have.”

For Carol, Zosia is introduced as an antagonist. But by season’s end, the two have a deceptively endearing rapport. So when they picked up filming episode two in Spain, Seehorn says she initially forgot how to work with her scene partner. “Carol had nothing but animosity toward Zosia in the beginning,” says Seehorn. “But her character had these tiny, nuanced evolutions. She initially didn’t have the ability to detect my sarcasm. By the later episodes, she is giving me shit and joking with me. She understands me.” (“Zosia also contains the world’s greatest therapists,” offers Wydra.)

When we speak in May, Gilligan says he’s just past the halfway point of breaking season two. He seems aware how keen his benefactors and his audience are for him to get back on set. Pluribus, after all, is Apple TV’s most watched series ever. And while he may not have scripts, the hardest part is over. Gilligan’s outlines are so thorough they contain almost everything but dialogue. Before he’d shot a frame of season one, he’d already instructed the crew where a drain would need to be placed on Carol’s cul-de-sac for a passing moment in episode nine. “I don’t think my brain fully absorbed how much information he gives people before he starts filming,” says Seehorn. “There were only two scripts, and Vince was asking if they’ve double-checked the distance between Carol’s bay window and driveway to make sure a grenade could reach a truck. ‘What grenade?’ ”

The lesson is clear: Don’t rush Vince Gilligan. “If they’re going to give me and my writers this much lead time to get it right and we’re still rewriting and reshooting on the fly, I’m not doing my job right,” says Gilligan. “There’s an old expression in carpentry, ‘Measure twice, cut once.’ Let’s get it right the first damn time.”

This story appeared in the June 10 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.