Rhea Seehorn
Deborah Rhea Seehorn is an American actress and director. She is best known for playing Kim Wexler in the AMC legal crime drama series Better Call Saul and Carol Sturka in the Apple TV science fiction thriller series Pluribus.
Seehorn's performance in Better Call Saul won her a Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama, in addition to nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and three Critics' Choice Television Awards. For Cooper's Bar, which she also co-created and directed, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series. For Pluribus, she earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama and a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series.
Early life
Deborah Rhea Seehorn was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on May 12, 1972. Her mother was an executive assistant for the U.S. Navy, while her father was a counterintelligence agent in the Naval Investigative Service. She has an older sister. Her family moved frequently during her childhood, living in Washington, D.C. and Arizona, as well as Japan. Her parents divorced when she was a child, and she lived with her mother and sister in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Her father died when she was 18. Following in the footsteps of her father and grandmother, she studied painting, drawing, and architecture from a young age. She continued pursuing the visual arts, but had a growing passion for acting and was introduced to theater while attending George Mason University.Seehorn has used her middle name Rhea since childhood, due to feeling a "disassociation" with her given name Deborah. She said, "The Deborahs and Debbies that I knew or saw on TV always seemed to be really attractive cheerleaders, and it was not my lane at all in school". She was also bullied for her name and switched to Rhea for "a fresh start".
Career
While in college, Seehorn was looking to get into theater after the encouragement of her acting teacher, and worked many jobs in the theater industry of Washington, D.C. to try to get noticed. She ended up getting some major roles in local theater productions, but still needed to take odd jobs to make ends meet, as well as taking on roles in various corporate instructional videos.Seehorn soon started getting parts in more television productions, often playing roles that she considered as "very wry, sarcastic, knowing women" similar to her idol Bea Arthur. However, most of these roles were short-run series cancelled after one or two seasons. Among her early roles was the lead in a pilot for an American version of the Argentine telenovela Lalola entitled Eva Adams, about a womanizing executive who is turned into a woman by witchcraft as revenge for his treatment of women. It was filmed for Fox in 2009 and co-starred James Van Der Beek. The show was envisioned as a dramedy in the vein of the telenovela Yo soy Betty, la fea, which was itself adapted for American audiences as Ugly Betty, but it was ultimately not picked up for a regular series.
Seehorn's film credits include roles in the independent films Riders and Floating and the short films The Pitch, The Gentlemen, and A Case Against Karen. Her theater credits include her Broadway debut as an understudy in the production of 45 Seconds from Broadway, as well as well-received roles in Marat/Sade, Freedomland, How I Learned to Drive, Stop Kiss, All My Sons and The World Over. She was part of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.
In May 2014, Seehorn was cast in the Breaking Bad spin-off prequel series Better Call Saul, created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. Seehorn portrays Kim Wexler, a lawyer and the love interest of the titular Jimmy McGill / Saul Goodman. The series premiered on February 8, 2015. For her role, she has received widespread critical acclaim, winning two Satellite Awards for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film, one Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress on Television out of two nominations, and one Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama out of three nominations, also receiving two nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and three nominations for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. TVLine named Seehorn "Performer of the Year" in 2022 for her work on Better Call Saul.
In 2021, Seehorn starred in the horror-thriller film Things Heard & Seen. In 2022, she made her television directorial debut with the fourth episode of Better Call Saul final season. That same year, she began appearing in the AMC web series Cooper's Bar, which earned her an additional Emmy nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series.
Seehorn stars in Pluribus, Gilligan's next series after Better Call Saul, which was picked up by Apple TV+ for a two-season order and premiered on November 7, 2025. Her performance as Carol Sturka, a cynical fantasy romance author who discovers that she is one of 13 people in the world immune to an alien virus that turns the rest of humanity into a hive mind, garnered her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama and a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series.