Karolina Wydra Almost Didn’t Audition for ‘Pluribus.’ Now the Once-Typecast ‘Femme Fatale’ Is in the Emmy Race

The casting team for Vince Gilligan’s “Pluribus” had searched the world for the actor who could play the key character of Zosia. The alien “hive mind” sends Zosia to work with the resistor and rebel Carol (Rhea Seehorn) and must be beautiful, smart, calm and patient. It’s a tall order, and when they couldn’t find her, they went back to the cabinet.

The casting team behind every Gilligan series, from “Breaking Bad” to “Better Call Saul,” keeps a physical archive of handwritten notes on every actor who has ever auditioned for them. Months into the hunt, with their other resources exhausted, casting director Russell Scott pulled out an old folder and started flipping through it — stopping on Karolina Wydra. “He came upon my picture and went, ‘Let’s see her. Whatever happened to her?'” Wydra recalls. After giving birth to her son Atticus during the pandemic, the Polish-born actress, known to genre fans from HBO’s “True Blood” and Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” stepped away to be a stay-at-home mom. Her representation dropped her, and she had her second son. By the time she felt ready to return to work at 42, she had no agent, no manager, and no idea how to get back into the room. Then an audition request arrived through an old commercial agency that still had her on their roster. “I just saw it was Vince Gilligan, Apple TV, and literally my body went into utter shock,” Wydra says. “I wasn’t going to do it. And then there’s that other voice in me that said, ‘Give it a try. You have nothing to lose.'”

Spoiler alert, she got the part. And after a decade-plus of fighting Hollywood’s perception of her as a femme fatale, Wydra has emerged as the breakout of “Pluribus,” Gilligan’s sci-fi drama in which Wydra’s enigmatic Zosia serves as the only point of contact between Seehorn’s Carol and the rest of humanity, which is connected by a single consciousness. Carol is among 13 people on Earth who are not infected by the hive mind. Wydra says, “I’ve always wanted to be great at acting. It was never about fame.” And now she sits, among the notable names in contention for an Emmy nom for supporting actress in a drama.

Imposter syndrome lingered even after she landed the role. Wydra remembers an early day on set when she was nervous, trying to find the character, and Gilligan looked at her between takes. “He said, ‘You belong here.'” It was the affirmation that every artist seeks, especially when they feel like they may not necessarily belong.

Born in Poland, Wydra immigrated to the United States in 1992 at age 11 after the fall of communism. Her family settled in Costa Mesa, far removed from Hollywood despite the relative proximity. “My parents wanted me to have a stable job,” she says. “Being an actor was not something that was nurtured.” Modeling found her first and acting came later, after years of secretly nurturing ambitions inspired by European auteurs such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Luis Buñuel and Federico Fellini. She immersed herself in New York’s indie film scene, haunting theaters like the Angelika and Film Forum before finally pursuing acting professionally in her mid-20s. Even then, breaking free of typecasting proved difficult. “You get very easily put in a box,” she explains. “People say, ‘You’re too pretty, you can’t get that role.'”

The exception, she remembers, was David Lynch, who cast her in the 2017 revival of “Twin Peaks.” “It was the first time somebody took me and made me really busted,” Wydra says. “He painted my teeth, made me a drug addict and stripped all the things away where I’m always painted to look pretty.”

On the set of “Pluribus,” she found a similar creative refuge with Seehorn, whom she describes as one of the hardest-working performers she has ever encountered. The two rehearsed scenes together on weekends and bonded over a daily on-set ritual, eating a plain donut, split between them. “She doesn’t like anything inside something,” Wydra says, laughing. “She refuses.” Eventually, Seehorn told Gilligan she wanted the other half, too. “So next year we’re going to be fighting for donuts,” Wydra says.

The bigger point is the work ethic. “She takes this seriously. She knows every nuance of her character,” Wydra says of Seehorn. “Vince will give her a note, and sometimes I might not understand the note, but she would execute it like that.”

The series also represents proof that Wydra’s long, nonlinear journey was worth it. “I’m living beyond my wildest dreams,” she says. “I get to work with Vince Gilligan, who is not only a brilliant artist but an incredible human being.”

However, she also remains deeply reflective about this time in the U.S., particularly as an immigrant who grew up believing in the country’s promise. “My parents lived the American dream,” she declares. “They came here, bought a house and built a great life. Watching what’s happening in this country now is heartbreaking.”

She remembers being in New York City the night Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. “The whole city went silent when he spoke. Everybody came together, and you felt as one. It felt like the American dream was alive,” she says. She misses that time.

But for now, Wydra is focused on the work. She has returned to acting classes recently as Season 2 is currently being written; she hasn’t read a single word of it. She has taken improv courses and wants to tackle theater in the future.

“The imposter syndrome? Maybe the gift in it is that I will never settle.”