Warning! This post contains spoilers for the latest episode of Pluribus, “HDP.”
If you’re caught up with Apple TV’s Pluribus, you know that Carol (Rhea Seehorn) has been on a journey. That journey became literal this week when she drove to Las Vegas to talk with Diabaté (Samba Schutte) about her discovery that the hive collective have been slurrying up human body parts for nutrients.
Diabaté, however, already knew this. While he found it unfortunate, he accepted it as a necessity. Carol was less convinced, which the hive anticipated, so they put together a video featuring John Cena explaining why they’ve turned to becoming cannibals.
The John Cena cameo was equal parts informative and entertaining, and Gilligan has explained how it came to be. “He’s cool,” he told Men’s Health. “And he said yes, thank goodness. We just thought, ‘Who is, simultaneously, the most random person to explain the eating of human flesh to Carol Sturka and the most interesting?’”
For his part, Cena was very much on board, even though he wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about. Gilligan also recounted that when Cena left, he said, “I can’t wait to find out what the hell it was I just said.”
Cena and Seehorn also never met. They shot Cena’s video in Tampa, while Seehorn’s scene of watching the tape took place in Las Vegas. “I didn’t see [Cena] until the first time I saw that videotape [when] we were filming me watching it,” Seehorn told TVLine. “That was really fun. Not that I’d be surprised, but it’s just we don’t think of him as somebody that delivers news coverage about eating people. And yet there he was doing a great job at it.”
The Cena cameo was fun, and something I was waiting for on the show—the opportunity to see someone famous in our world as part of the hive. Pluribus nailed that scenario with Cena, making it one of the many, many things that make this show well worth a watch.
New episodes of Pluribus premiere on Apple TV on Fridays.
