Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn take you inside the final days of the mesmerizing Breaking Bad prequel/sequel.
And one that’s good.
Death has visited this show often in the final season R.I.P.
‘Better Call Saul’ stars Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk.Joe Pugliese/AMC
“Goodbye, mustache,” say a few crew members with a mixture of amusement and dolefulness.
He is the misguided, eager-eyed, corner-cutting attorney who devolves into flashy lowlife whisperer/Walter White consigliere Saul Goodman.
Together they became the beating, cheating heart of the show.
‘Better Call Saul’ stars Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk.Joe Pugliese/AMC
And then they were…done.
He taunted her and told her to turnherselfin.
She hung up on him.
Peter Gould, Bob Odenkirk, and Vince Gilligan.Greg Lewis/AMC
That phone call jarred something loose in him, too.
(You saw it in black and white, but they’re orange in person.)
Kim has shown up as a visitor.
Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut and Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman on ‘Better Call Saul’.Greg Lewis/AMC
Showrunner/co-creatorPeter Gould who wrote and directed the finale maps out this captivating scene with Seehorn and Odenkirk.
Problem is, Seehorn is having a little trouble with the lighter.
“You didn’t light that thing very good,” Odenkirk ribs her after a rehearsal.
Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler and Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill on season 3 of ‘Better Call Saul’.Michele K. Short/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
“It’s a s—ty lighter,” she responds.
“I had to get the safety down.”
Odenkirk and Seehorn will struggle a bit with this herbal prop cigarette, coughing and tearing up.
Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler on ‘Better Call Saul’.Greg Lewis/AMC
There’s still a little bit of a spark left there where you still are thinking about the characters.
It’s not all completely tied up.
That’s what we’re aiming for.
Michael Mando on ‘Better Call Saul’.Nicole Wilder/AMC
Let’s see if we pull it off."
“It’s going to be very upsetting.”
Upsetting in some ways.
Giancarlo Esposito as Gus Fring on ‘Better Call Saul’.Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
Upending in other ways.
Uplifting in still others.
That’s howBetter Call Saulclosed the (prison) door after six seasons on Monday night.
Michael McKean as Chuck McGill and Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill on ‘Better Call Saul’.Michele K.Short/AMC
“I was more than a willing participant, I was indispensable,” he said.
(Shades of Walt’s “I did it for me.
I was good at it” admission.)
Patrick Fabian as Howard Hamlin on ‘Better Call Saul’.Greg Lewis/AMC
But there was more to confess.
The cost of his being honest for once, and in court, no less?
Just 79 additional years at a much scarier prison.
Tony Dalton as Lalo Salamanca on ‘Better Call Saul’.Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
With good behavior, though…
What was Odenkirk’s immediate reaction when he read that final script?
And he’s embodying who he is the best part of himself is coming out finally.
And that he’s not a victim.
Gene (Bob Odenkirk) finds himself behind bars on ‘Better Call Saul’.Greg Lewis/AMC
And not a broken snake."
Gould saw justice being served in that courtroom, poetic, karmic, moral, etc.
But he does have agency and he makes this choice when he hears about what Kim has done.
Bob Odenkirk on ‘Better Call Saul’.Greg Lewis/AMC
I don’t think it’s a choice from the head.
And she was heartened to witness Jimmy’s embrace of radical honesty.
Plus: elder law!
Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk.Greg Lewis/AMC
It began as a joke.
As a wacky what-if.
Gilligan tried not to worry himself about the perils of spin-offs, or the imposing shadow ofBad.
Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman on ‘Better Call Saul’.Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
“I think Peter started to get nervous before I did,” he quips.
“I remember it as a time of idyllic blissful ignorance.
When you’re not thinking every minute about the pitfalls, you could stumble into great things.”
Gilligan was right, Gould was nervous.
So there was a little suspicion.
Of course, the third reaction was excitement."
(Gilligan did have one concern: How do you create a drama around a glib, self-assured character?
That required a serious archeological dig into the soul of Saul, ne Jimmy McGill.)
But his kids persuaded him to reconsider.
(Giancarlo Esposito’s impenetrable meth lord, Gus, was added in season 3.)
“We don’t know what it is yet.
And when we find out what it is, it’ll be neat.”
Kim was abettinganddiscouraging Jimmy’s questionable rackets while deep-diving into interstate banking law.
To recap: On one side of the show, the biggest danger was death by cartel.
On the other, it was being stuck in doc review.
In extended sequences worthy ofPopular Mechanicsdeconstruction, Mike would systematically take apart a mysterious machine or construct one.
To some frustration, Chuck clung to mylar for the bulk of three seasons.
“Nothing is as important as understanding the character’s mindset,” says Gould.
Seehorn puts it this way: “Peter likes ‘kicking the tires.’
Is thatreallywhat the character would do?
Is it the deepest thought that person might have?'”
And along the way, Odenkirk revered in the sketch comedy world forMr.
(In any given episode ofSaul.
But also in his career.)
He invited his costars to his house for rehearsals.
He believes that stress caused him to lose his voice a few days before the first day of shooting.
“And that was because I was scared of letting everyone down.”
I think that takes away from the amount of work he’s doing.
Incredible attention to detail.
He is tireless in pursuit of the best way to do a scene.
And he will take big swings and big risks.
He allows himself to be changed by the other person’s performance, which not all actors do."
Gould also lauds Odenkirk’s versatility and accountability.
He took on the challenge from day one in such a serious, focused way.
What we realized was that we could write anything anything for him, and he would run with it.
The same could be said of Seehorn.
As Jimmy’s scams got bigger and his moral fissures deeper, another transformation was transpiring on the show.
(They also said they’d riot if she didn’t make it out of this series alive.
Kind of an unruly bunch.)
Seeing Rhea Seehorn play Kim Wexler is quite an achievement."
If Seehorn’s enigmatic expressions as Kim were art, decoding her face and motivations became a science.
She’s going to play it.'"
“There’s a paradox at the heart of her performance,” observes Gould.
She has a poker face.
And yet somehow at the same time, you’re free to read every emotional beat.
I don’t know how she does it.
you could see that it’s costing her.
It’s like a painting."
was perhaps its most tantalizing mystery.
“We all loved Rhea from the get-go,” says Gilligan.
“She’s just a breath of fresh air.
Odenkirk says that the chemistry was not earned; it was justtherein the audition room.
“There was no big learning curve.
You share that world.
And that was right off the audition readings that we did together.
And while Seehorn and Odenkirk love to fastidiously prepare, they live to be surprised by the other.
The onscreen high-wire act that was Jimmy and Kim was predestined to snap, based on his future inBreakingBad.
Was Jimmy corrupting Kim?
Was Kim steering Jimmy?
“She is sullied beyond repair at this point.
And I think that’s where she is in that moment.
There’s just no light anymore.”
It also sent a devastated, shame-soaked Jimmy into full denial and darkness.
And then he’s Saul.”
Just a few episodes from the End, that split was deeply mourned by more than just the audience.
“It feels very real.
It felt like a real breakup.”
emotional intelligenceabout each other,” says Seehorn.
There’s no way you wouldn’t know that!'
We got to be completely honest in those moments.
They knew each otherdeeply."
(“86 years.”
“86 years, but with good behavior, who knows?")
It was a beautiful scene to get to play.
I think we’ve always struggled with the two characters not being able to see their own shortcomings.
Seehorn was trying her darndest to tune out the magnitude of the moment their final scene together!
the final scene that the show will film!
but also commune with some of that energy.
“And I seldom stay in character between takes.
She can’t let Jimmy see how scared and worried she is…. And I found that just so touching.”
Gould wanted that understated reunion to radiate with honesty and bittersweetness.
“I find it very sad because the question of the show is: What might have been?
What might have been if they’d both had more belief in themselves than in their relationship?”
“But they both come out of this.
It’s a very grown-up moment.
I think they still love each other in some way.
There’s so much regret and so much connection in that scene that it really touches me.
I don’t know if he’s redeemed himself; that’s a big word.
I don’t know how you redeem yourself after the things he’s been part of.
But he has won his humanity back and he is truly Jimmy.
And she’s the only person there who’s calling him Jimmy.
Everyone else in the prison is calling him Saul.
She truly sees him.
And I think he sees her, too.”
(Especially once he got out of that damn parking kiosk.
“So that meant that when it was 100 degrees in the summertime, it wasshaded.
What’s not to like?")
“Good one, bad one?
That’s up to you.”
But even this grumpy ol' wise man wrestled with his own code.
“I’m so thankful for a scene like that,” says Banks.
“Because there are many different levels.
It’s not just readingThe Little Princeto Kaylee.
Mike gets to be…safe.
It’s like watching a caterpillar become a butterfly.
And realizing that this guy became everything he wanted to be in that moment.
I mean, he puts the fear of God in all these guys and they’re just left stunned.
Because they’ve seen what true power is, and power is not intimidation.
They see the power of his love and they have no words.”
One of those men a man of very few words was Gus Fring.
That was on display in season 6’s “Fun and Games.”
“I wanted to dig deeper to find the connection.
Alas, the awakening was short-lived.
It would be irreversible if I were able to, so why now?'”
A man desperate to reverse his condition was Jimmy’s brother.
“Chuck is a very self-focused man,” Michael McKean observes.
The worst thing in his life you’re able to imagine is something he doesn’t understand.
In the end, you’re going to hurt everyone around you.”
(Jimmy ultimately embraced a different version of that.)
If Chuck did speak some uncomfortable truths, they were filtered through a warped perspective.
Maybe I’ll find a way to make him destroy himself.'
And like Chuck, Howard did clash with Jimmy before winding up in the grave, too.
“The writers opened a window every season to more of Howard,” says Fabian.
“We found out that Chuck was more manipulative than we expected.
Unfortunately it came at the exact wrong time.
“For him to come and nail them to the wall also answers questions for the audience.
Howard uncomfortably tells them who they are, what they really look like.
Ah, yes, Lalo.
Odenkirk remained curious and relentless, though.
“Bob kept saying to me, ‘When are we gonna find out about Lalo?
When are we gonna find out about Lalo?,’ recalls Gould.
“And I said, ‘Maybe we will, maybe we won’t.
We don’t have to address everything.’
And he would shake his head: ‘I think we want to know.'”
“So how do we make things worse?
And it was: ‘What if Lalo shows up?
(“Wait, wait… you’re going to die.")
And he made up for lost time with a grin so frightening that the Joker would run for cover.
While Lalo possessed exemplary deduction skills and extraordinary jumping abilities (on only one hour of sleep each night!
), he was one-upped by Gus in the superlab, laughing up blood in his final gasp.
“They were just sobad.
And I figured, ‘What happens if we flip this around?
What if you see a charming guy that you like?’
And I thought ofPulp Fiction, watched it, and I said, ‘That’s it!
Yeah, that’s the kind of guy!’
with a smile, and it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah!
“What’s the point of bringing upBreaking Badif we are not doing something different with it?”
So what’s left?
But the other part of it is these two are really important in Saul’s journey.
It’s an escalation of something that Saul has already done.”
Deaths of the soul.
Walt and Jesse’s return.
The final season was momentous, adventurous, and treacherous.
Bob Odenkirk will tell you many times that he’s lucky to be here.
Bob Odenkirk will tell you he’s also lucky to be here in thegreatersense.
He collapsed suddenly and his traumatized friends shouted for help as the life drained out of him.
If he had been in his trailer, he’d be dead.
By the time we were back on set, the absurdity of it all just came home to roost.
We’re like, ‘Wait a second.
Weren’t you dead on this very spot, like, six weeks ago?’
And we just sort of giggled a little bit.
We’re like, ‘What an incredible gift.
We all get to see this thing go to the finish line, which is a miracle.'”
“It was kind of a blank space for me.
I have no memory of the thing, or the week in the hospital.Zero.
It’s hard to conceive, but more impacted were Rhea and Patrick and Vince.
I mean, they were standing there, watching me die and fast.
I was dying fast.
“I just didn’t see myself as somebody who impacted people.
I think of people like Tom Hanks, Nick Offerman.
These are people that are lovable.
I think I’m a little bit more of a prickly character, you know?
But people have somehow decided I’m a good guy.
His working hours were adjusted accordingly.
“I would get tired after about eight hours and when they said ‘Cut!’
I would sit down in that set,” he recalls.
“Really, I didn’t have the energy for a full day.
The producers adjusted things for me, but slowly I gained my energy back.”
He’d need it.
There was a lot to accomplish in those final hours.
Especially in the final one.
“Three different flavors of this character in one episode.
Wait, four!”
Right now, he is Gene, about to morph into Saul.
And itisliterally wall-to-wall Bob: Gene is locked in a holding cell after being apprehended in a dumpster.
(Nope, not Jimmy’s first time in a dumpster.)
Odenkirk and Gould are discussing how to calibrate the intensity of his pleas to make a phone call.
“Excuse me, another phone call,” says Odenkirk as Gene, knocking on the cell door.
The actor turns to the co-creator.
“‘Excuse me’ is good.
What do you think, Peter?
A little softer?”
“Your logic is right, take it down even further,” says Gould.
Soon “excuse me” turns into shouts of “Hey!
I need another phone call!
I need another phone call!”
Now Odenkirk is whaling the hell out of the door.
“Thisis how they get you?
Jesus, what were you thinking?”
“I’m going to get up quicker,” announces Odenkirk after the cameras stop.
“Something about the energy.”
He nails the next take.
And the next one.
And the next one.
“I thought it was good,” he tells Gould.
“But let’s do another two.”
Gould is thoroughly pleased with Odenkirk’s showcase.
Then he notices something: “Did you ruin our nice door?”
“He goes a little cuckoo crazy in this season,” says Odenkirk after wrapping this scene.
I’m right where I should be.
I can use everything I’ve learned and be myself again!
I’m in jail, but I’ve been in a worse jail.’
Now he’s out of it.
Even though he is in jail, he’s free.
He’s free to be this guy again.”
Similar toBreaking Bad,Better Call Saulwas plotted season by season, with few long-term plans.
How long have the writers known the end of this journey?
“We really didn’t know where we were going to take this,” says Gould.
It was really an image.
It wasn’t exactly what we did.
But it gave us a direction to go in.”
“We all discouraged it,” confesses Gould with a laugh.
“We all said, ‘Oh, we like this other idea you have much better!’
A very nice trilogy.”
The finale shoot, which took a month, had its share of challenges and delays.
The producers struggled to find a real courtroom that could double as a federal courtroom.
“I turned to Peter and I said, ‘And can I re-shoot the entire scene?’
And people who’d been there all day watching me do this were like, ‘What?
You’re going to do it again?
You did it so great!
No, no, you don’t need to do it again!’
And I said, ‘No, I think I do….
I think I went too quickly, too easily to the well here.
And I’d like to do a more restrained version.’
We came back a week later, we got the set back.
And you know what was great about it?
It made more sense.”
A giant snowstorm stranded the crew at one location.
“Last season, we shot in the desert and it was way too hot.
We could never get it right.”
Until they did, according to Odenkirk.
But now that it’s here, how is he feeling?
“I love where Peter took it,” he says on that final day of filming.
“These things are very hard to land, right?
This is completely grounded.
And for me, playing this guy, I’ve struggled with the blind spot he seems to have.
He’s a very emotionally intelligent guy, especially when it comes to other people.
He can tell what they want.
He can tell how to manipulate them.
And I really love that.”
“And the emotional stories of all the characters?
I wasn’t quite sure how he’d be able to do it.
Then when I read it, I just thought it was so thoughtful and thought-provoking.
So in that way, I found it perfect.
It wasn’t easy for Gould to decide which image on which to end the series.
He considered the final smoke.
“It felt incomplete to me to leave them against the wall,” he says.
“For one thing, it felt like maybe there was more story there in a weird way.
(And in one version of the scene, Kim even returned finger-gun fire, but it was left .
How did the man who actually pulled the trigger interpret that moment?
Was it a last reminder of their wild ride and undeniable connection?
A playful indication of more to come?
“I think it was a, ‘And the scams were fun, too,'” offers Odenkirk.
I think it’s important not to forget we had fun and good times together.
“We want to see people do thewrongthing.”
“It’s certainly poignant,” sums up Seehorn of the show’s end.
“But it is more hopeful in a human way than, say, [how]Breaking Badended.
It’s much more: ‘I wonder what the next conversation is.'”
Conversation on the set is increasingly turning to the End.
Executive producer Melissa Bernstein tries to wrap her head around the end of this decade-and-a-half franchise.
“It’s like, ‘Can we destroy these sets now?
‘Can we?I don’t know,” she says.
“That makes it feel very final.
And I’m like, ‘That seems preposterous!'”
“I can’t bring myself to write Bob’s card yet,” says Seehorn.
“I don’t know that I ever will.
I think he’s just stuck with me for life.”
“I’m an incredibly sentimental person,” she says.
“I’ve honestly been trying to trick myself into thinking it’s the first day.”
And how’s that going for her?
“It’s helping some.
In the excitement of today, it’s just too hard for me to think about anendingending.
I love all these people.
This is my favorite role in my life and the best storytelling ever.”
“Absolutely nostalgic,” says Odenkirk.
“This is heavy-duty stuff.
We’ll be talking about this for years to come.”
“I mean, it’s hard,” says Seehorn softly.
“And you don’t know what to do to appreciate it enough.
This will resonate through the rest of my life.
We’re very lucky.
We’re very lucky.
Odenkirk later recalls telling Seehorn in their final hug:Thank you for being so f—ing great.
And what did Seehorn say?
“I told him, ‘I think what you’ve done is incredible.
and drove home to the same house,” Seehorn says with a laugh.
“So it wasn’tthatbig of a goodbye.”
Harder for her was the next day.
Sometimes the actress ships her car back to Los Angeles at the end of a season.
Sometimes she drives it back.
This was a time for the latter.
“I cried all the way home,” she shares.
Odenkirk processes his morning-after thoughts.
And that’s what’s happening again.”
As everyone piled out of Albuquerque, they took something with them.
Memories of a lifetime, sure.
But also, a token of their desert adventure.
Seehorn left with Kim’s shoplifted earrings and necklace.
(But she didn’t steal them; she asked permission from costume designer Jennifer Bryan.)
Odenkirk took Jimmy’s Panavision director’s hat.
(“It’s the only time the character was really happy,” he says.)
Esposito scooped up a handful of pebbles from Gus’ showdown with Lalo in the under-construction superlab.
“To create that lab under the laundry is a brilliant idea.
(“It represented sort of that lion heart that Nacho has,” he notes.)
“That guy’s gone.”
Meanwhile, Dalton is never far from his memento.
In fact, it’s still on his face.
“I never had one before.
Maybe I’ll keep it for a little bit.”
“Maybe I played it a little too broadly, but it was just a loud lawyer commercial.
We shot that over there.
And then right here was the law office set.”
He points to the dismantled columns from the cathedral of justice.
My career hadn’t really groomed me for the drama ofBreaking Bad.
A little later, Gould also finds himself drawn to those pillars.
“I have such an emotional attachment to that set,” he says.
“That was my third episode of television that Saul Goodman showed up in.
We built that set.
And it’s a crazy set.
WhenBreaking Badwas over, I was sure that was it.
We’d never see it again.
So I don’t know.
You never know what might happen!
This is the end, but you never know, maybe not the end of the end.
“Sometimes it’s good to know when to leave the party,” sums up Gould.
The story already lives on in Odenkirk’s head.
Actually, he’s got it all mapped out.
He gets treated really well.
Seehorn delves into the mystifying mind of Kim one more time.
“I think she’s thinking two things,” says the actress.
That it is possible that I could actually give back.
For the record, Seehorn still holds a flickering candle for the daydream team that was Kim and Jimmy.
“I definitely think that she loves him,” he says.
“And I don’t just mean as a friend.
I think that she still deeply loves him.”
And, yes, because you keep asking, she’s totally game for the Kim spin-off.
“If they want to do one, I will do it!”
“But if we get to do it, I hope it’s not, like, 80-year-old Kim.
I’d like to do it while I’m still a little spry.”
