David Bianculli

Her most famous film roles include Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, in which she played the foul-mouthed Southern waitress Flo.

Here she is telling customers to leave the other waitress alone.

And David Lynch's Wild at Heart, in which she played a former beauty queen who hires a hitman to kill her daughter's boyfriend.

The boyfriend is played by Nicolas Cage.

Here he is, calling the house to talk to her daughter.

Ladd's real-life daughter, Laura Dern, played her daughter in the film.

They worked together again in mother-daughter roles in the film Rambling Rose, and both were nominated for Academy Awards.

They continued in that pairing in the HBO series Enlightened.

In 2023, Terry Gross spoke with Laura Dern.

The actress had just written a book about conversations with her mother.

It grew out of her mother's diagnosis of lung disease, when the doctor had given her six months to live.

He suggested that walks might help increase her lung capacity, so Dern began taking her mother on 15-minute walks every day.

Laura Dern speaking with Terry Gross in 2023.

Her mother, Diane Ladd, died Monday at the age of 89.

Coming up, I review Pluribus, the new Apple TV Plus series from Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad.

This is Fresh Air.

Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad and co-creator of Better Call Saul, has a new series called Pluribus.

It stars Ray Sehorne from Better Call Saul, and the first two of its nine episodes premiere tonight on Apple TV+.

Seven of the nine were made available for preview, and I've seen them all.

But I want you to have as much fun watching Pluribus as I did, so I'm going to say as little as possible about what happens in them.