At the Writers Guild Awards earlier this year, Vince Gilligan made waves when he proposed to the room that they focus on writing stories about heroes over villains, as bad guys “have become aspirational” in the current political climate.

He seems to have taken his own advice with Pluribus, his new highly secretive Apple TV series that stars Rhea Seehorn as Carol Sturka, the only person immune to an unexplained virus that transforms the rest of the world into happy citizens.

“I was getting a little weary of writing bad guys — I was looking around at the world and it just feels like a lot of people, not naming any names, but a lot of people seem to publicly take a lot of delight in taking the way they behave in life, taking their cues from people like Tony Soprano and Michael Corleone and Walter White, even,” the Breaking Bad creator told *The Hollywood Reporter *at the show‘s L.A. premiere on Tuesday. “I can’t speak for those other show and movie creators but for me, Walter White was always meant to be a cautionary tale; he’s not aspirational. I would never tell any other writer what they should be writing and there’s a lot of good bad guys left to write and I’m sure there will be a lot of great ones created from here on into eternity, but I figure for me I was ready to write something a little different.”

After working together for years on Better Call Saul, Gilligan wrote the role specifically for Seehorn; she said when he first told her about the new project, “I started crying because he said, ‘I wrote something for you’ and then he was like, ‘I’m not ready to give you the script and I don’t want to pitch it’ and I was like ‘That’s fine, just yes.’ He was like, ‘No you can think about it’ and I was like, ‘That’s fine, just yes.’”

The star gushed she had “never read anything like it, which is also exciting because there’s 500 shows on the air so how is that possible that this is original and new?” as Gilligan plays with genres of horror and sci-fi along with comedic tones. “I was like even if I wasn’t in this, I would want to watch this because what a rollercoaster ride,” she added.

Better Call Saul alum Bob Odenkirk, Carol Burnett, Patrick Fabian and Michael Mando were all on hand to support the pair at the premiere, as Seehorn said that as she embarks on this show without Odenkirk, outside of her family and her team, “I don’t think there’s anybody that roots for me more. [Odenkirk] could not be happier for me.”

Pluribus, which also stars Karolina Wydra, Carlos Manuel Vesga and Samba Schutte, starts streaming Friday on Apple TV.