Samba Schutte has been promoted to series regular on “Pluribus” for its second season. Deadline reported the move on November 13th, 2026 and TheWrap carried the same news that day. Schutte played Mr. Diabaté as a guest star in Season 1. Production on the new season is already underway, so the promotion arrives with cameras rolling.
Vince Gilligan created the Apple TV series, which premiered on November 7th, 2025 and follows “the most miserable person on Earth”, who must save the world from happiness. Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) stays at the center of it, and Apple has not announced a premiere date for Season 2. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “Pluribus” through the Season 1 finale.
Production on the new season is already underway, so the promotion arrives with cameras rolling.”
Deadline’s report says Schutte “has been upped to series regular” for the second season. Gizmodo reads the move as a step up from guest star and expects the role to grow, though it calls its own guesses “purely speculative”. The reports do not say how many episodes Mr. Diabaté will appear in or where his story goes, so the credit change is the whole announcement. The show has not said what it plans to do with him.
The guest-star credit already had awards attention when Schutte received a Saturn Award nomination for best guest star in a television series for the role. He is a Dutch-Mauritanian actor and comedian who was raised in Ethiopia. In the Netherlands he won the Jury and Audience Awards at the Leids Cabaret Festival and worked as a writer and correspondent on the Dutch version of “The Daily Show”. His other credits include “Sunnyside” on NBC and HBO’s “Our Flag Means Death” and he has written for the video game “Battlefield V”.
The series he is joining full time did well at the Emmys. Season 1 won six, including best lead actress in a drama for Seehorn and best writing in a drama for Gilligan. Sony Pictures Television produces the show for Apple TV and Gilligan executive produces with Gordon Smith, Alison Tatlock and Jeff Frost among others. Season 2 is the first season in which Schutte is part of that main cast.
Filming started in Albuquerque at the end of October, in the city where Gilligan shot “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul”. Production List had the start scheduled for October 31st, 2026 and Comic Basics reports a 225-day shoot. Albuquerque is also where the story is set, so the cameras are back in Carol’s city.
The scripts are still being finished and GamesRadar reports that Gilligan said at the Emmys in September that Season 2 was “not technically all written” although the plot of every episode is worked out and the first two scripts are finished. “We know what the whole season is”, he said. Actors such as Schutte do not always want to know more than that and sometimes prefer to be surprised.
Mr. Diabaté arrives in Episode 2, when Carol meets other people who are immune to the Joining. He has made peace with the new order because the Joined will give him nearly anything he asks for and he takes full advantage. He flies on Air Force One with a group of supermodels in place of family. Before Las Vegas he treats the end of the world as a very good vacation.
Episode 6, “HDP”, gives him the spotlight. Carol drives to Las Vegas and finds him in the Westgate penthouse that was once Elvis Presley’s suite, where he plays James Bond and the Joined play along. Schutte began filming with this episode, so the Las Vegas scenes were his first days on the show. Carol arrives with video proof of what the Joined have been eating, and she never gets to deliver it as news.
Mr. Diabaté already knows. John Cena appears on his television to explain that the Joined feed on human-derived protein, which gives the episode its title, because their rules forbid harming anything living. Mr. Diabaté calls Cena a friend and Carol insists the figure on the screen is not really Cena. Schutte and Seehorn were reacting to a recording of Gilligan reading Cena’s lines. Mr. Diabaté also has news that matters more to Carol, which is that the hive cannot convert the immune humans without their consent because it needs their stem cells. Then he tells her that the others have been meeting without her.
A breakfast scene carries the episode’s warmth. Carol builds an open-faced sandwich of avocado, egg and bacon and Mr. Diabaté copies her as if he had never seen one. Schutte told The Hollywood Reporter that, like Carol, his character “does not want to sacrifice his individuality”. That explains why he stays on her side. Of the immune humans he is the most sympathetic to her and on a phone call he says she is “so lonely”.
The name has its own story, because Koumba is a woman’s name in Mauritanian culture, given to a man whose mother died in childbirth. Schutte told The Hollywood Reporter that Gilligan “had no idea” and had simply picked an African name that sounded good. He added that Gilligan explained the long casting search by saying it was “so hard to find an actor who could play this character not as sleazy or creepy, but with a child-like wonder and sweetness to him”.
The finale gave Carol bigger problems than a lonely trip. She learned that the Joined are working on a way to convert her using stem cells from eggs she froze with Helen. The immune loner Manousos Oviedo (Carlos Manuel Vesga) traveled to Albuquerque to find her and pressed her to choose, and A.V. Club’s recap has him asking whether she wants to “save the world or get the girl”. The girl is Zosia (Karolina Wydra), the Joined envoy at Carol’s side. The season ends with a crate delivered to Albuquerque, and the crate holds an atom bomb.
That is where the promotion starts to make sense. Carol heads into Season 2 with a bomb and with Manousos beside her, a man who treats the Joined as the enemy, while Mr. Diabaté is the character who argues for the other road. Schutte told Awards Focus in an interview published June 15th, 2026 that his character’s attitude is “let’s find a way to live in harmony”. He added, “I really hope there are scenes with Manos because I think the dynamic between Mr. Koumba Diabaté and Manos is going to be amazing.” Manos is Schutte’s name for Manousos. A.V. Club says the promotion “suggests some pretty exciting things about where the show intends to go”.
Most of Season 2 is still unannounced. Apple has not given a premiere date, an episode count or a storyline for Mr. Diabaté and what exists so far is a credit change, a camera schedule and a few hints from the people involved. Schutte told Awards Focus that the writers “won’t tell us anything” even when he visits their office with “Vegas treats” and he has pitched Gilligan on sending the cast to “Hawaii or Japan for Season 2”. Seehorn, Wydra and Vesga are also in the cast. For now the one firm fact about his future is the new line on the cast list.
What Do You Think? Should Mr. Diabaté stay a charming outsider, or does he end up on Carol’s side? Do you want to see him meet Manousos? And is a series-regular job the right way to grow a character built around one penthouse?
See you on the next binge!
