NEW YORK, Dec. 7 (UPI) — Our Flag Means Death alum Samba Schutte says his Pluribus character Koumba Diabate is just a guy trying to live his best life in a post-apocalyptic world.
“What I love about him is that, ‘yes,’ at first sight, you think he’s a hedonist, but when you take a closer look at him, he’s actually very rational,” Schutte, 42, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
“He’s got these beautiful counter-arguments that make sense, right? He tells Carol (Rhea Seehorn) on Air Force One: ‘Listen, this is the world we all wanted. At the end of the day, there’s no crime, there’s no judgment, there’s no racism. This is what we want. It’s peace on Earth. Isn’t this what we always wanted?’ And in Vegas, too, he’s very rational. He’s like, ‘Yes, these people eat people, but, at the same time, if they don’t, they will starve to death.”
Streaming on Apple TV+, the sci-fi series from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan imagines what might happen if the world’s population is affected by a virus that not only links together their consciousnesses, but also makes them uniformly happy.
Diabate — along with Seehorn’s perpetually angry novelist Carol Sturka and a handful of others — is immune to the virus.
Carol isn’t enjoying the new normal anywhere near as much as Diabate is, however.
She is stunned at the collective loss of individuality and disgusted by the idea that those who have the virus cannot harm or kill anything — not even plants — to feed themselves.
This is why they must harvest produce that falls to the ground and, following that logic, consume humans after they die.
“[Diabate] understands Carol. She’s alone and lonely, and she wants to change the world back to what it was,” Schutte said. “So, there’s a side of him that understands, even though he doesn’t 100 percent agree with her.”
Schutte auditioned for the series, having no idea what it was really about.
“It was just an untitled Vince Gilligan show. Of course, I was a huge fan of Vince Gilligan, so I was like: ‘I’m going to audition for it. I don’t care what it is. I can play a toilet cleaner. I’ll still do it,'” the actor recalled.
“When I got the job — what? five, six months later — Vince calls me and he welcomes me, and then he tells me the premise, and I’m just trying to catch up, because it was so refreshing and unique and different,” he said.
“It was a thriller and a mystery and a sci-fi and a horror, but also very much a comedy,” he added. “It’s just so visual and tantalizing, the storytelling. And, so, I could not wait to dive into this world. It was just so thrilling.”
Schutte said Gilligan initially imagined his character as an African man who speaks French and is “dressed to the nines.”
However, once they got to talking, the writer told Schutte he wanted to inject more of Schutte’s own Mauritanian culture into the character.
“We came up with the name together because, at first, he was called something else,” Schutte recalled.
“[Gilligan] really was curious about Mauritanian culture and names and references and, so, we came up with the name Koumba Diabate, which was a lot of fun, because I was so happy that Vince was so collaborative and wanting to make this character actually Mauritanian,” he added. “I’ve never gotten to play a Mauritanian before. It’s nice to see a Mauritanian on an American TV show for the first time.”
Schutte said Gilligan told him his audition stood out because he played the character as being like a “child in a candy shop,” whereas most of the actors who tried out for the role played him in a “sleazy or creepy” manner.
“The world has changed. He did not come from a good life, did not have opulence, was never successful with women and, all of a sudden, the world is his oyster,” Schutte explained.
“So, he can have whatever he wants,” he added. “It was a lot of fun just to understand that’s who the character is. He did not come from this world of richness and, now, suddenly he’s surrounded by people who want to make him happy, will give him everything he loves. So, of course, he’s going to live his greatest fantasies.”
The show asks big questions about the price of peace at the cost of freedom.
Over the course of several episodes the virus is presented as an allegory for slavery, artificial intelligence or even conversion therapy.
Schutte loves that the series has people thinking and talking.
“It’s about human nature and the exploration of that. How do people deal with change?” he said.
“Some people want to turn it around like Carol, and some people are just going to embrace it like Mr. Diabate and, so, I love that these discussions are happening, and we kept talking about that on set, too. Like, ‘Who would you be?'”
Star Rhea Seehorn attends the world premiere of Apple TV series “Pluribus” at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles on November 4, 2025. “Pluribus” will make its global debut on Apple TV with its first two episodes on November 7, 2025, followed by new episodes every Friday through December 26. Photo by Greg Grudt/UPI | License Photo
