You might not know Jennifer Bryan’s name (though you should!), but you almost certainly know her work. The costume designer has created the wardrobe for some of the most famous and beloved characters of all time, from Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad to Saul Goodman and Kim Wexler in Better Call Saul. In addition to being a longtime Vince Gilligan collaborator, she’s also the mastermind behind the clothes in fantasy phenomena like The Vampire Diaries, The Acolyte, and the upcoming season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
Fanversation got a chance to talk to Bryan at San Diego Comic-Con about her work in Pluribus, Gilligan’s newest show and Apple TV’s most-watched series of all time. During the conversation, Bryan discusses how Carol’s wardrobe evolves alongside her relationship with Zosia, Zosia’s subtle methods of seduction, what Carol would have been wearing as a teen in the ‘80s, the unexpected parallels between Pluribus and Better Call Saul, accidentally cracking the show’s marketing, and more.
FANVERSATION: I find it so interesting and brilliant that Carol seems to dress up in a more traditionally feminine way when she’s interacting with others at the book signing and meeting the other survivors, but then her outfits when she’s alone tend to be a little bit more laidback with a slightly more masculine bend. I’m curious if you can talk about that a little bit.
JENNIFER BRYAN: Her closet is very basic and practical, but she also had a public figure facade when she would go on her book tours and to gala events. For example, when she goes and has this dinner — this high-end dinner by herself — there are some dresses that she probably had for some book award or something. Helen, her wife, really managed her. But Carol, left up to our own devices, would be just as we see her: sweats, jeans, a basic top. It’s interesting, because it’s a bit of a challenge to do ordinary clothes — the nondescript kind. We all have sweatpants, jogging pants, and a bunch of old t-shirts for the daily functional stuff like grocery shopping. These are clothes that are not necessarily highly styled, and in this show, it’s important to show that practical ordinariness of herself. And I actually do carry that through to the background, because when the joining happened for them, it was whatever they were doing at that time, whether he was a DHL delivery guy, or if he was cycling up in the hills, or if it was the mayor of Albuquerque.
As Carol starts to get the lay of the land, she’s a quick social study. She’s trying to figure out, “What makes Zosia tick? How sincere is she? Is she playing me?” So what she does is she very subtly plays her. You see her clothes soften up and become a little bit more feminine, because she wants Zosia to think that she is beginning to buy into this. So I changed her clothes to look softer and more feminine. She’s not so armored with a hoodie and is more vulnerable to an idea that somebody is pitching to her that is very weird. She couldn’t be this defiant all the time. You have to show that the character is beginning to be open to this idea. Whether the character accepts the idea, that’s a whole different thing, but I had to put some openness in the costume choices.
I love that you mentioned that gold dress. That’s one of my favorite outfits. Can you talk about her decision to wear that? Was it a nostalgia thing for her, do you think? Do you think she actually wore that with Helen at a fancy dinner?
It was. That’s why, in the scene, you see her go to the closet, and she looks from one ball gown to the other, and she decides on that one. All the events that she went to, Helen was always the one who was the social director. Carol wouldn’t do any of it because she thinks it’s bullshit, and a farce, and not like her. Helen was the one who managed her: “You have to have this kind of clothing for when you go on your book tour. You’re going to have some gowns for when you go to your awards, galas, and events.” Carol chooses one of those because it is reminiscent of a good time that she had with her wife, and then she goes and has dinner by herself.
But as she opens up every dish, consequently, the others do the same thing. They’re trying to win her over, and they know every single thing. They know what dinner she really enjoyed when they went to Taos, or when they went to Paris, or wherever these trips were, and they replicate those dishes. So when she lifts off the cover, she recognizes that it was a fabulous steak that she had at some restaurant.
I read in another interview that the only time we really see Carol wear black is at the very end of the season, which I thought was so interesting. I feel like the easy thing would have been to dress her in black the whole time since she’s in mourning. I’m curious why you really wanted to avoid that.
Black is a very hard color to sustain over long episodes. It’s very hard, and it has so much emotional significance: mourning, danger, violence, subversiveness, anti-society, military. It has so many connotations. I would never have done that, because I knew the journey, and it would have been too one-dimensional. I saved it for the end so that when you looked at those clothes — when you looked at the black — you go, “Oh my god.” She’s going to ask for an atom bomb, so she wants to appear tough and unrelenting. And now, she clearly is going to be at war with them. She’s going to take them down, so she has to put on the uniform. She’s not going to take them down in little polka dots.
I know that Vince loves to do a flashback. I’d be so curious to see a flashback to Carol’s childhood. What do you think teen Carol would have been wearing in the ‘80s?
Oh, wow. I’m gonna start from the bottom. I think she’d be wearing Chuck Taylor Converse — high-tops. Not feminine. Gender neutral. Acid-wash jeans. I wonder if she would do t-shirts. She probably would do t-shirts. The ‘80s, punk would have already started. I think she might have been punk influenced, because even as an adult, you see she’s anti-conventional. I think it would have started in her teens. She probably colored her hair.
That’s exactly what I thought as well. I’m so glad to hear that validated.
You’re the first person to ever ask me that question. Wouldn’t it be crazy if Vince did a flashback? I have no idea what’s in Season 2. All they keep telling me is, “It’s going to be insane.” What does insane mean for a costume designer? It could mean ‘impossible’!
I know Karolina didn’t want to know anything about who unhived Zosia was. Were you told anything to inform your choices for her, or were you also completely in the dark?
In the dark. All I do know is where she came from. She came from Morocco to New Mexico, but we don’t know if that is her original home base.
I know you have a little cameo helping her get ready in the airport. That’s your first onscreen credit.
Second.
Oh, really? It was the only one listed on IMDb! What was your first one?
The Originals — the Vampire Diaries spinoff. It was actually a stunt. I fence, and one of the characters had taken a young boy under his wing back in an 1800s flashback. He was a young Black slave boy, and he decided he wanted to teach him the gentlemanly skills of the time, and fencing would be one. The stunt coordinator could not find a stunt person who was small enough or Black to stunt him. We’re doing the production meeting, and he’s moaning about how he can’t find anyone. They said something about fencing, and I stupidly said, “No, they wouldn’t have had that kind of mask back then.” They were like, “How do you know that?” One person at the table remembered that I had told him that I had started taking fencing lessons. So I doubled. I had to bind so I looked like a boy. The 14-year-old kid was my exact height and skin tone.
Vince knew Zosia would be nude, and he’s a very considerate person, so he wanted to have people she was comfortable with. He chose myself, the hairstylist, and the makeup artist. I was a pilot, and the makeup artist was a chef from the kitchen at the airport, and the makeup artist was a ticket taker, so that’s how I got the part. We actually shot it at Albuquerque Airport.
I know eagle-eyed fans have noticed that Zosia wears some very similar outfits to Helen. Can you talk about the intention behind that overlap?
The idea was to have Carol — very quietly and without realizing it — be seduced and undercover attracted to her. It’s like somebody’s love bombing, but you really don’t know it. Zosia knows everything about Helen, and Helen might know Carol even better than Carol knows herself. We wanted to create a look that Carol could emotionally relate to and that would remind her of the qualities that she was attracted to in Helen in the first place. So that’s what we did.
Also, you’ll remember that Zosia’s facial features were very close to Raban’s in the book, so all of those scenes are kind of creating a comfortable puzzle for Carol to feel that she can somewhat relate to this person who is going against every single thing she wants. Zosia is on the other side, but she’s also the only conduit she has to get any kind of explanation as to what’s going on. Both of them have to be visually approachable to each other. It goes back to the first question that you asked, and the mirror question to that, for Zosia, is that she cannot be off-putting to Carol. The Others are so smart. They don’t overdose you — they just microdose until you drink the Kool-Aid.
I wanted to ask about the sweaters in the finale scene. Those are two more of my favorite costumes. My interpretation of it, at least, is that Carol’s wearing this colorful rainbow, which could be symbolizing happiness and her embracing aspects of herself. Meanwhile, Zosia’s wearing pinks and reds, maybe to symbolize love but also betrayal. Can you talk about your motivations behind those outfits?
[Nods] Exactly. You just said it. Carol is now consciously playing Zosia and pretending that she’s considering this. That’s why they have that very serious conversation on the couch. We shot that in Montana at a fantastic ski resort. We really did it up in the ski lift after we came back from the Canary Islands in Spain. It was amazing.
I went through so many options of sweaters and ski gear for them. On the practical side of what I do, it was really a challenge. We had finished shooting, and we were back in LA, and we had to do this new segment that had been rewritten. We decided to shoot a ski scene instead of the rest of it in Spain. Originally, that was not in the script, so I didn’t have ski clothes. So here we are now — in April, in LA — trying to find ski gear. It was very challenging. I went to REI, and they had hiking stuff out. There was no ski stuff on the floor. I had only about a week and a half to prep, and I can’t do it online — it’s risky. It’s gonna come, and it’s not gonna look like what I wanted. Finally, we found a ski outlet in Arcadia somewhere outside LA, and we drove there. It was important to go to a ski shop like that, because I needed multiples — the bane of my existence.
One cool thing with Carol’s sweater — and when I found it, I was like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe it’s in here” — was that there is a yellow zigzag like her yellow jacket. But there were so many fittings and options. We did so many variations, and I had to send them all to Vince before we ended up in Montana. And then we had the ski socks, too. People don’t understand or acknowledge how much work goes into it. There were so many pairs of socks I had to present, because I knew the socks were going to be on camera, since they take their boots off. So there were sock fittings and sweater fitting.
Did you work with the production designer and cinematographer? Because the colors alone are so cohesive and bright with the clothes and environment.
Yes, you have to. Especially for the ski lodge. Because we’re shooting practically, I had to make it pop against the snow.
Samba has said that the first time he really found his character was when he put his costume on. I’m curious, what is your process of working with the actors? Do they have any input? Are there any little Easter eggs that you weave in for them?
They do have input. And the input, for me, tends to be conversations with them. I need to know how they view their character because, obviously, they have to take on that personality, and it might be different from how I read it on the page. So I do have conversations with them. They may also say, “I want to have a pocket” or “I want to have a collar, because I’d love to play with it in the scene.” I pull those little acting notes out of them, and if it applies to a costume, then great — I’ll be conscious of it when I’m shopping.
I want to ask a little bit about Better Call Saul. I just binged that and Breaking Bad, and I loved it so much. They’re very different characters, but I feel like Diabaté and Saul both have those very cool, loud, colorful suits going on. Did you find any parallels between their wardrobes?
You know, you’re the first person who has kind of brought those two ideas together. But yeah, they’re almost the same — a little slick. They would be the kind of guys who, if they came to Comic-Con, would try to sweet-talk to get to the front of the line. But the premise of Better Call Saul is different. For Saul, it was about being loud, getting attention, and elevating himself to a certain level of legal practice where he wasn’t quite there yet. He wanted to be like Hamlin. He wanted to be respected like him and also his brother. That’s really where his angst was from.
For Diabaté, it’s more about pleasure than show. It’s about living a fantasy, and everything has to be like, “If I could, I would. I would like to wear this, and I would do that.” The intent is different, but visually, yeah, there are some similarities. It’s a really good question. I never thought of that before.
On the subject of Better Call Saul, I’m so curious about designing the wardrobe for Kim during those last episodes, because she changes so much as a person, and then obviously, you have it in black-and-white, which is, I’m sure, its own challenge because you don’t have a color story to lean on. I’m just curious if you could talk about designing those looks for her last arc.
It was almost like designing for a new character, because she had changed so much. She’d lost so much of herself. She sold out her principles for her husband, and I think she was feeling really bad about herself. She wanted to cut those ties, get away, and start all over.
I think Vince did a very brilliant cinematic technique by literally draining her of color while draining her of all her energy and ambition. He dropped it out to black-and-white, which was brilliant, but it presented a new set of hurdles that I had to get over because I’m very much a colorist. I couldn’t use that, so what I did was, as we started to shop for those clothes and build things, we had to camera test every single thing — everything that I intended to use — in black-and-white to see how it related. I had to pre-test all of the costumes for the black-and-white segments. And then for Kim, what I did was I made her clothes look more dated. Her denim skirt was this dated A-line figure, and any professional structure that she had as a lawyer, we pulled out.
I read another interview that the yellow jacket you designed in the pilot really influenced the marketing and branding of the show.
That is the craziest thing ever. The most flattering thing — that my costumes and my choice of a color in an item of clothing that you only see in the first episode made such a visual mark. I didn’t know until one of my producers said, “Jen, do you realize that the whole marketing campaign is based on the yellow of your yellow leather jacket?” I was like, “What the fuck? Really?” The poster, the petri dish with the smiley face. Some people think it has to do with the yellow of Breaking Bad, and it didn’t. It was completely unrelated, even when I was picking that color.
Deciding that was more for practical reasons, because she goes to the country Western club at night. They land from the book tour, they drop their bags, and then they go to the bar to hang out and be their real selves. That’s the first time you start to see their real apparel and wardrobe — what they wear in their real lives. Carol’s a tough girl in a leather jacket. Of course, I knew what was going to happen in the upcoming scenes: Helen’s gonna drop dead, the guy in the pickup truck’s gonna pass out, she’s gonna have to drag that guy across to the passenger seat, then she’s gonna have to drag Helen across and get her into the bed of the truck. So we had to put her in jeans.
Then she needed an outer jacket that was going to be sturdy, because I knew she was going to be stunting. With stunts, we want to give them a little extra padding to also help disguise and make it look like it’s the actress when it’s the stunt person. So you always try to do a top layer when it comes to heavy stunts. It helps with blending these two different bodies together. But Rhea did a lot of it herself. She did pull Miriam off the thing and shoved her around in the back of the truck. The stunt girl did some of the lifting, but Rhea did a lot of it.
Because it was going to be in the dark parking lot and then at the hospital emergency entrance late at night, I had to put her in a color that was visible. We knew whatever leather we chose, it had to pop, so we chose yellow for that reason. Then, from a storytelling point of view, yellow is a color of caution. That’s why we have yellow lights. You don’t want to go yet, and maybe you should stop. It’s a transitional color. So that’s how the color came up. It didn’t have anything to do with the hazmat suits in Breaking Bad. That’s just pure coincidence.
I think that poster is off the chain. It’s a fabulous poster, and it’s a poster in demand. I went to an event somewhere, and they were giving out swag for different Apple shows. I got a bag and a poster, and I’m walking, and this girl comes up to me and says, “Excuse me.” She wanted to know if I would swap. I said, “I’m not the one to ask!” [Laughs]
Pluribus is streaming on Apple TV.
— Taylor Gates