How exactly does one dress the end of humanity as we know it? Pluribus costume designer and frequent Vince Gilligan working partner Jennifer L. Bryan told Deadline that it was all about abandoning flashy and banking on practicality, stripping away any personality or cultural markers.

 “I remember watching I Am Legend and The Walking Dead and during my outline it just occurred to me, why do these altered people have to look different? The fact that they have a hive mind, they should, at first glance, look like regular modern people in modern times. You shouldn’t be able to distinguish them from another guy who’s not infected by the virus,” Bryan said. “So, I drilled into the fact that they have a hive mind, they all think alike. They don’t even have to communicate with each other because they talk on a mental plane to have a conversation. They speak to each other, but they don’t have to. Their intellect is the highest intellect of any human being on the planet. So, I thought I would strip away the things in clothing that identify us as far as our geography, our culture, where we’re from, our social status and adornment.” 

The nine-episode drama sci-fi series follows Carol (Rhea Seehorn), a pessimistic woman who must try to save the world from an infectious virus when a mysterious alien collective possesses human bodies and their consciousness on a global scale. Here, Bryan speaks to Deadline about weaving a unique tale through the absence of styling and the excess of styling during the end of the world. 

DEADLINE: You’ve worked with Vince Gilligan since the last season of Breaking Bad and through the entirety of Better Call Saul. Can you talk about when you first heard about Pluribus? 

JENNIFER L. BRYAN: So, Better Call Saul was ending, and the crew was like, well, what’s next? Is he doing anything else? Then there was this rumor, but no one knew what the project was. Then we went on hiatus, and I got a call from one of his producers and she told me there’s a new show. And I was like, “Wow, OK. So, is it like another sequel to a prequel?” They were like, “Absolutely not. It’s going to be completely different.” That’s when I learned that what Vince had done is going back to his roots. He was a head writer on X-Files and always had a deep sci-fi interest as a writer and had this story of Pluribus in his head apparently for years. And then, of course, having worked with Rhea Seehorn as his female lead for so many years, apparently, he had it originally as a male in the lead and changed it just to work with her again. We were so happy to find out about this new project because it was like the backbone of the family continues, but now the story that we’re all going to tell is something completely different and it certainly is. 

DEADLINE: There’s a lot of ways sci-fi can go. Usually in film and TV there’s a lot of monochrome or uniformity when depicting an alien race. But Pluribus is not like that.  What did those conversations look like to depict the look of the series? 

BRYAN: What happened was in my first costume meeting with Vince after I got the outline, he said, “OK Jen.” They call me J.B. sometimes or J-Bling because one day, I put some rhinestones on something, and they were [in awe]. [Laughs.] So, it stuck. But he told me that he didn’t want the Others to look like dystopian zombies walking around earth. They’re not in tattered clothing; they’re not dragging their knuckles. He wanted them to look like nothing else you’ve ever seen for this type of show, and he suggested a couple of films for me to watch. I remember watching I Am Legend and The Walking Dead and during my outline it just occurred to me, why do these altered people have to look different? The fact that they have a hive mind, they should, at first glance, look like regular modern people in modern times. You shouldn’t be able to distinguish them from another guy who’s not infected by the virus. 

So, I drilled into the fact that they have a hive mind, they all think alike. They don’t even have to communicate with each other because they talk on a mental plane to have a conversation. They speak to each other, but they don’t have to. Their intellect is the highest intellect of any human being on the planet. So, I thought I would strip away the things in clothing that identify us as far as our geography, our culture, where we’re from, our social status and adornment. 

They don’t need jewelry, they don’t need earrings, they don’t need adornment because they don’t need to impress, they’ll be impressing themselves. It doesn’t serve a purpose. And everything is so stripped down, the clothing then becomes strictly functional, strictly just to protect the body where it needs. Like you won’t see any hats unless it’s like a guy on a telephone pole, a guy on a line or a construction worker. Everything is mixed. For example, if you think of the concept of say a Mongolian jacket or shirt or Indian top it will be mixed with a pair of jeans or a kilt from Scotland because the point of the clothing is not to signify status because they are of one mind. That’s what we did. 

DEADLINE: I wanted to highlight one of the unaffected was a young Peruvian girl. Her village is all in their traditional garb. What went into dressing them? 

BRYAN: Dressing them was amazing. Because what we did is – it’s an isolated Peruvian village. If you were to go to their village even in modern-day Peru, they would still dress like that. They were little bowler hats, heavy sweaters and hats with little toggles. So, we kept that tradition as their society. Now, if it was a case where they were in Albuquerque or in a modern Westernized place, then there would’ve been a more distinct mix. So that was a unique thing. And then when the girl changes and she becomes one of them, she still has the regular clothes. Another note that I’ve pointed out in other interviews is that when the Joining happened, whatever the person was doing that day, whether they were in the Andes or Mongolia, whatever that moment was, that is the clothes that they were in on the day the Joining happened. 

As I go deeper into upcoming seasons, we might see an even more transformative mix of clothing culture that doesn’t signify anything anymore. I’m looking forward to that. 

DEADLINE: I loved the Las Vegas dressing with Samba Schutte who plays Diabaté. What went into building his fantasy? 

BRYAN: This was a big opportunity to do some bling. [Laughs.]  So, in the story, Diabaté has a very hedonistic personality. He’s literally the opposite of Carol’s character, which is the marvelous thing about Vince in him picking these 13 people who are unaffected by the virus. But one of the things about the hive mind is that they’re so hell-bent on pleasing you, they do not understand the word no. Whatever you ask of them, they deliver. And Diabaté very quickly figures out this flaw, or weakness, and Carol uses it too [but in a different way]. With his personality, he realizes they’ll give him anything that he’s ever wanted. It’s like he’s got his own genie in a bottle, and he wants to relive Vegas in the Rat Pack ’60s,’70s, Vegas Casino Royale. So that scene is him living out that dream and if you look in the background, you’ll recognize figures of that day. You’ll see a Frank Sinatra lookalike. I also did an Audrey Hepburn and an Elvis. By the way, we did shoot in the Elvis Presley penthouse in Vegas [at Westgate Hotel]. 

This shoot was so amazing for me because I was able to get vintage clothing from the ’60s and dress these iconic figures of the day and pepper them within the party goers, gamblers, the waitresses and the cigarette girls. So, for me that was just a real flip of doing the Others that are very mundane. And from a costume design aspect, what Pluribus afforded for me, is to do two extremes, in doing that strip-down of the Joining where clothes become absolutely a necessity and nothing else, like a snail in a shell kind of thing. It’s just a shell. And then on the flip side, the Others, like Diabaté, get the glory of the beautiful African tuxedo jacket and the fantasy and the flash of great clothes within his fantasy and everybody else are their normal wear. So that was kind of cool to get basically a flip side of a costume coin.

DEADLINE: You worked with Rhea a lot in Better Call Saul, how did that relationship enhance with Pluribus? Also, what did you want to get across with Carol’s clothing? 

BRYAN: First of all, I love that woman. OK?! She’s very open as an actress. And I’ve had the rare privilege where a costume designer works with an actress for six seasons dressing her in a particular character [Kim Wexler]. And then at the end of the sixth season, months later, we meet up again, and she is something completely different. So, we had conversations about putting Kim Wexler to rest and to reapproach this new project as something fresh. It was very interesting because we had a shorthand that we had developed over the years. She knew how I regard clothing on screen and what it sells and the messages and how it helps frame the character that the actor is playing. And we were very symbiotic.

And if you notice, Carol’s clothes are not uber fancy because she is a practical, conflicted, hard-drinking, gay woman that is kind of one foot in the closet, because she’s this romance novelist. So, I had to put her in [outfits that showcased] that aspect. In the first episode, we see her having her reading in Barnes & Noble. She looked very approachable. She looks like how her readers want her to be and how they aspire to be. And then, when that scene is over and she’s in the country western bar back in Albuquerque, coming back off the book trip, she is very stripped down. It’s jeans and a leather jacket. And after that, I have her in sweatsuits, basic stuff that just function, and that was cool to be able to develop that palette with her and not have her be either overdressed or underdressed. It’s a fine line, but I think I delivered it.