The Prestige TV Podcast - The Oral History of 'Better Call Saul'

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

Alan Siegel interviews the cast and creatives behind 'Better Call Saul' and discovers what it took to get the iconic show made. You can read the written version of this piece at theringer.com. Host: Alan Siegel Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. A lawyer named Saul. Goodman? Bob Odenkirk didn't think he was right for the role. When Breaking Bad creator, Vince Gilligan called to offer it to him during the second season of the show in 2009, he almost said no.

Here's how Oden Kirk remembers it. He starts talking about the character and I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Saul Goodman, I said, yeah, just, you know, I'm not Jewish. And I said, there's a lot of pretty good Jewish actors in Hollywood. I think he can find somebody. And then he goes, oh, well, he's not Jewish either. He's Irish. And I go, oh, okay, well, so am I.

I'm half Irish. My real name's McGill. The Jew thing I just do for the homeboys, they all want a pipe member of the tribe, so to speak. Once Odenkirk learned Saul's true heritage, he moved on to more important matters. producer Peter Gould was also on the phone that day. Then Bob started talking about his hair.

Bob is just a genius at thinking about how his character looks, that especially hair. Saul Goodman had a toupee. He wore colorful suits in a pinky ring, and he drove a Cadillac. On the surface, he was a cartoon attorney, the kind that may have popped up in the 90s on Mr. Show, the sketch comedy series Odenkirk created with David Cross.

Yet there was much more to solve than that. But at the beginning, no one could see it. Originally, Saul Goodman was only guaranteed to stick around Breaking Bad long enough to get future Meth Kingpin Walter White and his partner, Jesse Pinkman, out of a legal jam. After that, it was unclear where he'd end up, maybe in a shallow grave in the New Mexico desert. In fact, Gould even remembers Odin Kirk asking him if the writers were going to kill off Saul quickly. I said, no, I think we like this guy.

There's something about Saul, there's something a little bit throwbacky about Saul. There's something a little bit classic Hollywood, classic scamster, a little bit of martini glass and Playboy magazine kind of quality to the guy. Not long after Saul made his debut midway through season two of Breaking Bad, it became very apparent that he was more than just comic relief. Even before the AMC series wrapped in 2013, Gilligan and Gould were talking about a Saul Goodman spin-off. Breaking Bad star Brian Cranston, for one,

was excited about the possibility. He was able to plant his flag in an established show written by a team of writers who were so compelling and convincing and intriguing. Once they saw Bob, And this character that he was bringing to it, they opened up to it and said, oh, there's more. Oh, there's still more. Oh, there's even more.

And it just kept widening. And that was the birth of Better Call Saul. Nearly a decade later, Better Call Saul is about to start its sixth and final season. Now is the time to tell Saul's origin story through the eyes of those who brought him to life. This is the ringer oral history of how Bob Odenkirk. turned Albuquerque's favorite criminal lawyer into one of the most iconic characters on TV. Part one. Well, you call a lawyer. By the time Breaking Bad premiered in January 2008, Odenkirk had long since established himself

as a legendary comedy writer and performer. He'd also piled up credits as an actor, director, and producer. But he was still looking for the kind of passion project that had alluded him since the days of Mr. Show. My agent called and said, they're going to offer you a role on Breaking Bad. Don't say no. It's the kind of role that someone wins an Emmy for. And I said, all right, well, let me think about it for a minute. And then I called a friend, Reed Harrison.

I said, do you know anything about this show Breaking Bad? And he was like, oh, my God, it's the best show on television. The best show. Harrison, a comedy writer and friend of Odin Kirk's, remembers the conversation well. My immediate reaction was kind of like, all right, first of all, hang up. You shouldn't be talking to me. You should be calling back right now and taking it. Here's Breaking Bad producer Peter Gould, who went on to co-create Better Call Saul with Vince Gilligan.

Pretty early in season two, the idea came up that Walt and Jesse would have to sell drugs themselves. They didn't have Tucco to just hand them a bag of cash for the drugs. And of course, the next thing you think is, well, if you start having Jesse's idiot friends selling drugs on the street, they're going to get caught. And what happens when one of them gets caught? Well, you call a lawyer. And so it started off very much as a piece of story problem solving. One day Vince walks in and says, you know, what if the lawyer they go to is like a guy named Saul Good. you know, and he's kind of a, you know, a little bit of a scammer himself.

And then one of the other writers said, well, saw a good man. And then somebody else said, well, what if the license, what if he had a lawyer-up license plate? And we just started having fun talking about this character. In fact, we had a lot of fun talking about it. And pretty soon the idea of, you know, the bus benches and all the different things that he gets into started materializing. but they were all in service of the Walter White story. Everything about Saul really served the story of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. We weren't adding him in because we thought it would be a fun spinoff character.

The Star of Breaking Bad, Walter White himself, Brian Cranston, had a good idea of who Saul Goodman would be. This dubious lawyer and fast-talking, slick, unctious, kind of character. We came with a list. My wife put at the top of the list, Bob Odenkirk. And, you know, who else put the name at the top of their list was Biali Thomas, our casting folks. And Vince and I were both huge fans of Bob's from Mr. Show, especially.

There's a few scenes in Mr. Show where I could point to and say, I show some chops as an actor, some ability to lose myself with a degree of. of modulation and sensitivity, but not much. I mean, mostly it's sketch comedy, and you can be pretty goddamn broad in sketch comedy. You can even break in sketch comedy, and the audience doesn't mind. To that point, here's Odenkirk's version

of getting serious on a Mr. Show sketch. He plays a boss who likes it when his employees stick up for themselves, except when David Cross's character tries to do it. Well, I'm glad I'm fired, because this company is wrong. Run by a lunatic! You've got guts.

The guts of a man who's fired! Fine, man. I'm out of here. That's fine. You know, you need help, and I really hope you get it. Wait, don't go. Now go.

You're fired. Comedian Bill Burr, who plays henchman Patrick Kuby on Breaking Bad, recalls going to a taping of Mr. Show in the 90s. Because I watched sketch comedy my whole life, and I never saw one sketch leads into a... another sketch and there was singing. I remember David Cross singing as this redneck.

He was all of a sudden in a studio singing. It was just like, it was such a good thing to be exposed to like the bar being that high. What surprised me is that they gave me the part because of Mr. Show. I thought, and I never said a word about it because I didn't wanna create a perfuffle, I thought they gave me the part

because I played Stevie Grant on Larry Sanders. And I was sure that one day Vince would tell me the story of how he saw me and Larry Sanders, and that's what gave him the idea. But the truth is, Peter wrote the first episode that featured Saul, and he wrote a lot of the characters' runs and a lot of the ways in which Saul talks and is funny. There's a lot of comedians getting dramatic work now, and I feel like Breaking Bad was at the forefront. I mean, there was, I remember one time we were doing a scene.

It was me, Lavelle Crawford, amazing stand-up comedian, and Bob Odenkirk. And we were in his lawyer office, which was iconic. To me, that was the Seinfeld diner. I couldn't believe I was sitting there. We had the top of the scene. It was just the three of us before Mr. White came in. And I remember sitting down and thinking to myself, you know, for the first 30 seconds of this scene, three stand-up comedians

are going to be holding down the best drama on television right now. And I was like, how fucking cool is this? There's always a comic element to both shows. And we always say that, you know, it's a little bit like peanut butter and chocolate. They make each other

taste better. If there is a secret sauce to both shows, I think that's certainly part of it because the drama makes the comedy funnier. I don't think the comedy on either show would stand by itself as comedy, but the comedy certainly makes the drama more dramatic. Part two. Look at what we get to do. Saul Goodman was a true original, but to fully get into

character, Odenkirk needed a bit of inspiration. He drew it from Hollywood producer Robert Evans' 's memoir. The Kid stays in the picture. I would still rehearse by doing the Evans' voice in my trailer doing Saul's runs. Once I knew the lines, I would do it as Evans. And I don't know how much it informed my own performance in the end because I didn't try to do a Robert Evans impersonation. I had read his book twice. I'd listened to his book on tape twice all the way through. This is a guy who could talk and talk and really entertain you.

And what I found was a kind of a sing song that doesn't get repetitive. Like he's very good at breaking things off and cliffhanger pause. and moments. And if you're going to listen to me, talk for five pages, I've got to be doing something interesting, saying something interesting, but also working it, working that material. So Evans was to me an entertaining speaker, and he knew how to sort of choreograph his words and his tonal shifts to intrigue you. And so I think I got something from that.

At the very least, I entertained myself. Here's Jonathan Banks, who plays fixer Mike Ermentrout on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. My first impressions of Bobby, I thought he was a little nervous. But that went along with the character. You know, that was definitely Saul. Brian Cranston was immediately impressed with what Odenkirk brought to the character. Bob had that to pick up and that kind of fast-paced, you know, slick kind of character. And there were the little hooks, little connector lines that he was able to add,

bring him to trapeze himself from one line to the next line to the next. That's always really good for an actor to feel confident and being able to connect thoughts. And in his character, which was always the gift of gab, you know, he was able to bring that. I love it when Bobby plays the, you know, the bewildered put up on, and I don't know what I'm ever going to do. How do I get out of this character?

No, it serves me well because then all I have to do is stand over and say, if you do that again, I'm going to break your kneecaps. And it makes my job easier. Let's put it that way. You know, the first thing I shot was the commercial, which was a lot like a Mr. Show moment. I mean, it was a loud commercial. I mean, Saul is being outrageous.

He's playing a part of a loud lawyer, and he's doing it. purposefully and consciously. Hi, I'm Saul Goodman. Did you know that you have rights? The Constitution says you do, and so do I. I believe that until proven guilty, every man, woman, and child in this country is innocent.

And that's why I fight for you, Elmerkirky. Better call Saul. So that's allowed to be almost comic-level performance because it's self-aware in its bigness. Producer Peter Gould says that the show's writers loved dropping Saul Goodman into the world of Breaking Bad. He was very useful in the Walter White universe. He could explain to Walt, anything we needed to explain to Walt.

He could introduce ideas like The Disappearer. He could act as kind of a connector with Mike and ultimately with Gus Spring. He was super handy. He was a skeleton key. You know, I talk about how I hadn't seen much of Breaking Bad before I acted in it. only a few minutes on the plane. One of the first things that Bob said to me, I think he started in our second season.

And I think the first thing he said to me was, I've never seen the show. So it's like, well, okay, you've never seen the show. All right. Fair enough. And so I'm kind of giving him a lowdown on what it is. Odenkirk and Cranston's first scene together takes place in Saul's office. Walter, who's trying to keep a low profile by wearing aviator sunglasses and an Albuquerque isotopes cap, is posing as the concerned uncle of Jesse's dupist buddy Badger.

He's been busted for dealing meth, and Walter wants to make sure he won't confess to the DEA. Mr. Mayhew, nice of you to come down, please. Oh, look at you. Should I call the FBI and tell him I found D.B. Cooper? Joking. I do remember that situation. I remember especially when Jesse Pinkman introduces me to him outside his office, his cheesy office. He said, you don't want a criminal lawyer.

You want a criminal lawyer. And it's like, ah, yes. He really helped me just know the show just by sitting with him. Like I said, I hadn't seen much of it. I knew it was a drama. I didn't know how heavy it was. It was all about just tuning into Brian, which might tell you a little something

about my own approach to acting, which is to read the room as best I can. Something Bob said to Vince and me when we started, he said, don't go easy on me. Make things life as difficult as possible. Put me in physically uncomfortable positions. There was one scene early on in Breaking Bad when we kidnap him and we're out there

and it was freezing that night. and the wind was whipping and the cold wind just cuts under it was, I don't know if it was single digits, but it was close to it. What I loved about that scene was the outrageousness of the scenario and how we got to do it so

realistically we were out in the desert. We weren't some green screen. We were in the middle of the night. I was kneeling in front of a freshly dug grave, you know. You can't tell from the footage, but it was a full-fledged sandstorm. And the actors were all getting sand up their noses in the back of their throats.

It's like we're freezing. I'm holding a gun on him. My body's shaking. I knew he was a part of the brethren. He was part of that ilk of people. When I was saying, and it's like, look what we get to do, man. We're out here freezing our asses up,

but this is how we make a living. And I'm thinking, can we believe it? He was really excited about embracing the difficulty of it. The momentary uncomfortableness is accepted because the long-term gift of being able to be storytellers for a living always prevails. It just was one of the best production scenarios I've ever been a part of that wasn't all cheated in faith and short-handed. but actually played out with this grand and very real feeling, because it was real. It all lent itself to this big and glorious drama that I was suddenly a part of. That night in the desert, Walt and Jesse officially become Saul Goodman's clients.

Okay, you're now both officially represented by Saul Goodman and Associates. Your secrets are safe with me under threat of disbarment. Right? Take the ski mask off. I feel like I'm talking to the weather underground here. Part 3. The worst thing it would be is a failed experiment. Walter White may not have survived Breaking Bad's five-season run, but Saul Goodman did. After all, he's someone who can talk his way out of almost anything. As the show exploded in popularity during its later seasons, talk of a Saul

spinoff began. First as a bit, then seriously. Initially, Odin Kirk wasn't convinced it would work. Better Call Saul co-creator Peter Gould remembers the idea. being tossed around. It was sort of a joke in the room that, you know, oh, this idea is too silly. We'll do that on the Saul Goodman spin-off. And I didn't take it seriously at all because Breaking Bad already seemed like a gift from the gods.

And it seemed like hubris to keep going or to think that that might be real. But Vince really did want to do it. I think he had a lot of reasons for it. I mean, we both love the character. We all loved working with Bob. Here's Brian Cranston. You felt what Bob was able to bring to it in Breaking Bad.

There was a sense of history of a broken person. There wasn't enough real estate to get into a deep background discovery of him in Breaking Bad. And I think that's what Vincent and Peter felt is that I think we have an iceberg situation. You know, we've just tipped it. We've got a lot of real estate down below that hasn't been discovered. We go for a walk through Burbank and often ended up getting a couple of beers. And we just talk about what this thing could be. And we had so many ideas that did not end up working out.

In fact, the first time we talked to AMC and Sony about it, we did say, it's a half hour. We think it should be a half hour. I never felt completely comfortable with making it a half hour. for one simple reason, which is that true comedy writing is an art and a craft of its own. And those real comedy writers are breed apart. They have a whole different skill set, certainly than I do. And I was concerned that if we went for the half hour, we'd essentially be in competition or compared to the really funny half hours.

Vince and Peter were after something different from Breaking Bad, but working in the same area. The question was whether he was willing to do it. Because Bob, he's made no secret of the fact that he felt torn between his responsibilities as a father. And he's a super, super involved father. It seemed like in his mind there was a conflict between the two being away in Albuquerque so much. The first lunch that we had to talk about it, I could tell he was, that was a hitch for him when he found out that we were not going to shoot it in L.A. They were young, 13 and 15, and then the next six years their dad was gone for half a year or more,

but they grew to like visiting me in Albuquerque. We would get kind of stop and go signals. We would meet him and feel that we were going to do it, and then hear through the grapevine that maybe he wasn't. When my daughter asked me if it's bad, how bad would it be? And I said, well, it wouldn't be bad. The worst thing it would be is a failed experiment. Of course, I knew that if it was a failed experiment, there'd be a certain amount of people who, in retrospect, in relation, I should say, to Breaking Bad, would consider it a big bomb. But the truth is, I just didn't think it would be done in a sloppy way without integrity or purpose.

It may not work, but you'd have to give it some credit, I thought. You know, that would be the worst it would be. Before shooting Better Call Saul, Odenkirk asked Cranston to meet. Here's how Odenkirk described the scene in his new memoir, Comedy, Comedy, Comedy, Drama. It was cold in L.A. It can happen. But still, we sat outside, because inside the coffee shop were 10 people writing screenplays. And it's not good to be around that if you're a recognizable face. But here I was going in to being the lead, and it wasn't a character part, it wasn't a small part. And I just needed to hear from Brian something that sounded like work that I could do.

I wanted to hear if there was any clue or trick. I told him a story of when I was on Malcolm in the middle, the star of the show Frankie Munez was a boy. The next star was Jane Casmeric. And she really didn't want the mantle of leading the cast. So I saw there was a void. And I thought, well, someone has to do this. So I stepped in and kind of led the cast on cast meetings and things, issues that we dealt with. I think he thought I was just having second thoughts or needing a spiritual boost.

But really, I just wanted to hear something that sounded like hard work and the meat of doing the job. And that's what he gave me. Other people would be called, oh, you're a star. you're a star and I would immediately push back and deny it. I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just a working actor. No, no, no. What I didn't realize is that I was spending a lot of energy denying that position

from outside sources that wanted to place that title onto me. And as I regale this story and I tell Bob this, I told him, I said, I realized that I was spending maybe more energy trying to push away that title, that responsibility, that position in the industry. And then I just got in my own way. And so I stepped out of the way and just embraced it. Look, I hadn't gone to acting school. And Brian had presumably done that and been an actor his whole life.

He laid it out. He laid out a day in your life and a weekend in your life. And how you hit the script and you work and you rehearse and you feel. focus every chance you get, and that's how you're ready when you get on set. And I can do that. I can just throw hours at it. Part 4. Saul Goodman wasn't even his name.

The first episode of Better Call Saul, which aired in February 2015, opens where Breaking Bad leaves off. Odin Kirk's character, a wanted accomplice of Walter White, is now hiding in Nebraska and working as a Cineban manager named Gene Tachovic. Then the pilot flashes back. Aside from the occasional glimpse into the future, the series mostly focuses on the years before Saul Goodman is fully formed. At the start, Saul is just Jimmy McGill, a reformed small-time Chicago con man, who is now a small-time Albuquerque lawyer. There's plenty of crossover from the world of Breaking Bad. Fixer Mike Ermintrout, and eventually, drug lord Gus Fring, both appear. There was all

also a new cast of characters, including Jimmy's high-achieving older brother, Chuck McGill, and his confidant, Kim Wexler. Odenkirk, his co-stars and the writers, enjoyed fleshing out Jimmy's backstory. Here's Better Call Saul co-creator Peter Gould. We learned so much about Jimmy from watching Bob, and one of the things that you see is that Bob has this incredible energy and focus that's unlike anything I've seen from anybody else. As it turns out, it's In that first season, I got hit with so much material and so much saw a Goodman chatter that I almost couldn't do it. It was almost too much to even fit into a week. And at a certain point, after about four or five weeks, I asked for extra time and they did give it to me.

Jonathan Banks enjoyed watching Odin Kirk work. What I saw was, this is a guy who is committed, and Bobby Odenkirk is smart. I mean, the amount of dialogue that was loaded on him, and he was losing his voice. I mean, he was as nervous as a cat. And that's, again, my perspective. But my God, did he rise to the occasion? As we kept watching him, Jimmy being a failure didn't seem as funny. He started to have a whole Willie Lohman characteristic to him.

There's a pathos. When Brian Cranston began watching Better Call Saul, he could feel it too. He brought with it sort of a wounded bird mentality and sensibility to him to Saul Goodman. And then when I started watching Better Call Saul and realized, oh, Saul Goodwin wasn't even his name. And it was like, there's a whole history here. And it's like, that makes perfect sense. Now that he had his own show, Saul Goodman needed a partner in crime. Kim Wexler was the kind of role that Ray Seahorn had been waiting for.

I got the first script and then watched Bob literally create this like Arthur Miller or like Glengarry Glenross character. It just became this whole other thing that was beautiful to watch. Then when they announced they were going to do a spin-off, I had, like many people, I was not sure what the tone would be. If it was going to be more broadly comedic, or is he going to be, you know, this sleazy guy getting up to antics constantly? You know, Bob and Ray, you want to talk about chemistry? I would say we felt that chemistry right from the first rehearsal reading she did. It was the scene, I want to say episode three of season one,

him calling me and waking me up in the middle of the night and I'm in bed, and he's trying to get information. about the Kettleman case. I very clearly have a boundary about it. Like we're not discussing cases. There is an incredible closeness, whether that is a very long friendship or a used to be dating

or a might start to date. Like there's something going on there. But you never really know if that was a genuine connection or if it just felt right that day and it's going to be a problem down the line. But it did feel right that day. Bob was sitting there and he seemed

a bit aloof for a second, but we were then told to go ahead and rehearse just me and Bob that everyone would leave the room and we'll come back, like, why don't you guys go through the scene a couple of times just feel comfortable with each other? And when they left, I realized Bob was staring at his shoe.

One part of your brain wants to go like, okay, clearly he doesn't like me and this is going to go terribly and this is going to be the worst chemistry you read of my whole life, but another part of me was like, or the only fact present right now is that Bob is looking at his shoe.

So let's start there. And I did. I said, hey, did your shoes come without the laces or did you take them out? He looked up at me and he said, they came this way. My wife got them for me at the shoe department and ended up telling me how he had been concerned. He had never been the person that people have to do a chemistry read against where their job and their hopes and dreams are pinned on reading with him,

and he's precast. And he was very concerned about making sure he looked respectful, but not overdressed, but not too casual, and that his wife, Naomi, who's amazing and lovely, had helped him. And it was this wonderful moment where I was like, he was so honest, but it took me being honest instead of in my head about what I thought he was thinking for us to get there. And then that's where we started from to read the scene.

And it was great. It was just like, I mean, I don't know if I'll ever duplicate it for the rest of my whole life because I always assume everything is negative against me. I've had some pretty amazing relationships in my life, my wife, number one, Naomi, David Cross. And Ray and I are on that same level of we just fit together. Our priorities marry up enough for us to. spend those many hours and that much time and sweat and focus on this thing that we share and not trip on each other and not feel frustrated or annoyed or claustrophobic with each other.

It's a lucky thing. All we knew was she was a lawyer who clearly had a connection with Jimmy. And, you know, I don't think we got too deeply into it until season two. And my God, look where we are now. To show that we thought was a comedy about a goofy lawyer helping crazy clients turned out to be kind of a heartbreaking love story. Jimmy and Kim's partnership is the heart of Better Call Saul. But the key to what makes Jimmy tick is his relationship with his big brother. In the early 90s, a heinous prank nearly lands Jimmy in prison.

Here's Jimmy's explanation of what happened in graphic detail. So I saw that thing, and I had a few, like I said. And I climbed up top, and I may have defecated through the sunroof. How am I find a sour? I'll grant you that. Chuck McGill, a New Mexico attorney, offers to get his brother out of trouble under one condition. Jimmy straightens out his life. For a while, he does.

Jimmy moved to Albuquerque. First, he works in the mailroom at Chuck's firm. then he earns a law degree. He also cares for his brother, who's convinced he has electromagnetic sensitivity. It doesn't take long for the tension between them to rise. Michael McKean, a comedy legend in his own right, plays Chuck. McKeene remembers Gilligan and Gould explaining Chuck's condition to him.

They called, they talked to me about the character and generally about his affliction. I sounded very interesting. I did a little research on it, and I learned it was a real thing. and that I had to treat it like a real thing, no matter what happened down the line. And they did me the great favor, by the way, of not telling me that I was a man with mental problems at all. This was really happening to me.

We could see pretty early on was how Bob's character got under Michael McKean's character's skin. That was a little bit of a surprise. I think we thought that Chuck kind of tolerated Jimmy. And then McKin played the character with such pride. And Bob has this desperation about him to please his older brother. We started writing to that, to that scorn and desperation, and the constant running towards and running away that those two characters had. When two siblings are that far apart, and one of them is a big deal achiever,

One of them gets out of high school at 16 has his law shingle up when he's 23 years old. That's you are left in the dust more than, you know, more than you can imagine. I think it's a deep well of hurt that anyone could have. Late in the first season, Jimmy figures out that it's Chuck, not Chuck's partner Howard, that kept him from being hired at their firm. This leads to a confrontation where Chuck finally admits that he doesn't think Jimmy is a real lawyer. Chuck's honesty is crushing, both to his brother and the audience.

I know what you were, what you are. People don't change. You're slipping Jimmy. And slip in Jimmy I can handle just fine, but slipping Jimmy with a law degree is like a chimp with a machine gun. The law is sacred. If you abuse that power, people get hurt. This is not a game.

You have to know on some level. I know I'm right. You know I'm right. I just think that the soul of the player, who is essentially what Jimmy is, and the Achiever, are just two different lives. I loved playing that scene. It was an important scene to me, the most important scene in the first season. And really an important scene for the whole series. It was the most I've been asked to reach inside myself and connect with this person.

this other character that I was playing, I don't have those feelings towards my siblings. We're friends and we don't have a rivalry that I can tell. I had also been in this character skin enough at that point in the season that I felt for him, just for his own real experience of making a genuine effort to win his brother over and discovering that his brother was the one who doomed him. And I think that was almost enough to work with, was to just be Jimmy and think about how that would feel. Part 5. Well, I'm not dead.

As the final season of Better Call Saul approaches, it's clear that Jimmy is the man that Chuck warned he'd become. After fully falling into a life of crime, Can Saul Goodman be redeemed? Will Kim Wexler be okay? Ray Seahorn understands that concern. First of all, it's warranted worrying about Kim. Whatever happens, one thing is certain.

The experiment that Odenkirk was unsure about was a success. I think we all were in the same place of like, we're going to make an honest effort. We're going to push ourselves, but this may not work. And if you've been in this business, enough you should be expecting that to be the outcome. So I'm more surprised that it just plain worked and that enough people were able to tune in

to the ways in which it's not like breaking bat. Odenkirk may have been surprised, but his colleagues were not. Right from the start, they followed his lead. The first thing he said to us at lunch, Vincent May, he said, you know, I don't think I need a folder. I think I can be in a two-banger. And by dint of an example, he said, He's not taking all his privileges.

He's there for the work. He said, I talked to Brian, and he said, if you have one, then other people should have one. And every time you add another trailer, add 15 minutes to a company move. And then tell me how much you wish you could get home in time to get enough sleep. And I was like, oh, that's so good. He immediately made it his business to befriend and open the door to actors who are only there for a day or for a week or for a small role.

You know, it's Peter DeSeth who plays ADA Oakley, who appeared in the second episode and has been one of our favorites all the way through as a local Albuquerque actor. And he told me this story about there was a day where he couldn't go and rehearse with Bob because he had to babysit his child. And so Bob came to Peter's house to rehearse. I think that he really liked being in a hit. And we all do and we all did. But I think there was something about, oh, this not only works, but other people think it does too.

And we got a good one here. There was one point where the late, incredibly great, David Carr came to do. His last media piece that he did was on Better Call Saul. And he had come to set and he had rolled up an office chair and was talking to Michael and Bob. and these guys are trading stories, but also a very real conversation. And Michael, like Bob doesn't try to, he's never looking for a place to do a bit.

He's never looking to one-up somebody. They were having this conversation that was comparing, I'm not kidding. It was like eight books of complete different genres from different time periods. And like, oh, that's like the article from blah, blah, blah. Yeah, remember when so-and-so did a sketch in the 1938 radio show about it? It was like insane the amount of illusions and references that were going on.

They were like, and I'm walking by and I can hear them. I'm trying to listen. They're like, Ray, roll a chair up, roll a chair. Now, I love the stuff we did in the desert too because it was more than that involved. You're doing a scene. You're both exhausted. You're both sweating. It really is hot.

And up comes a dog out of nowhere, a mangy dog. And she comes up and she gets under the bush with us in the shade. But Bobby took that dog. This is my affection for Bobby. He took that dog home. The dog was pregnant. So out pop ate puppies. And homes are found for all of them.

So that moment, that day, I promise you, is far and away. My favorite, because there were extraneous things going on, it was my favorite, favorite scene and moment. Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul led to more juicy dramatic roles for Odenkirk, who in 2021 starred in his first action movie, Nobody. But last year, it turned out to be an extraordinarily difficult time for him. In July, on the set of Better Call Saul, he collapsed. It was later determined that he'd suffered a heart attack.

His co-stars, Patrick Fabian and Ray Seahorn, watched him fall and called for a medic. Odin Kirk told the New York Times that it took three days. defibrillator shocks to bring his heart back into rhythm. An ambulance brought him to an Albuquerque hospital where he had a procedure to clear plaque in his heart. He spent a week recovering from his heart attack, an event he doesn't remember. It's a complete blank for me. It's like I fell through a time hole and came out about a week and a half later, kind of groggy, but pretty much myself, with no memory of any of it, and a kind of a strange, like, chipper attitude

that was like, let's go back to work. Hey, why's everybody so down? Because you almost died? Did I? Oh, okay, well, I'm not dead. I'm fine. You know, let's go to work. Let's go shoot the show.

If he had gone to his trailer, we would have a different outcome. But he chose to stay on set and was hanging with Patrick and I. Thank God. know that it was really upsetting. And just to everyone on the crew, the whole group was, I'm trying to find the right word, you know,

it's just upset, shaken. We didn't know to what degree he was in trouble. And then you worry about him. God, I don't, I mean, he's in the hospital. I'm calling him. Then you rely on the network of people who, you know, are friends of friends, and saying, have you heard from Bob?

And then you wait, you wait. And you wait to hear good or bad, what's going to go on. I contacted Ray, and there was, you know, stuff came down the pipeline from Peter and Vince and say, it was resting. I had to make an effort to hear about what happened, think about what happened, picture. my friends all gathered around me, pictured what that day was like, what my wife went through. The surreal part was everyone's tenderness and kindness towards me. And it's because they were traumatized, not me. And then when we found out that he was going to be okay, that was a glorious day. If you've ever lost someone and most of us have to come back the next day and go, never mind,

you can have a whole second chance is one of the most amazing things you could ever experience. There's no way to even like short change, like what a gift that feels like for sure. He is a gift in my life anyway. I'll try not to cry. I'm very close with him and his family. And it was traumatic and thank God he didn't leave set. For all of us to really be able to embrace him and say, I'm glad you're okay. And, you know, you dodged a bullet and by extension, so did we.

Boy, I don't know. Maybe it's just me. But I, once the initial crisis had passed, I knew he was going to be better than ever. And, you know, and just, he's one of those guys. He's very responsible, really takes care of himself. And when we found out that he was actually going to come back, I think it was a little worrying, you know, because you always worry, you know, is he coming back too soon? And knowing Bob, when I talked to him and he was in recovery, he was, he was calling me and say, send me scripts, I got time to read. And I hear in the background, Naomi, his wife, saying, no, they told you not to read.

You can't sit and read scripts. You're supposed to be quiet for a little while. So he was raring to go maybe before he should have been. We all felt close to each other after six years of making this show. We spent 14 hours a day together, maybe more. We get very exhausted together. We celebrate each other. We become very, very close in the crucible of making a show like Petter Call Saul.

The first shot you see of him this season actually was shot after. It cuts seamlessly. And what was wonderful was to see that he was absolutely himself. He had all his energy. He had all his goodwill. I'd say that he's always been a generous, kind person and a great class. collaborator, but I think there's an extra measure of generosity and helpfulness and openness to him now. I think the impact on my family and my crew and the castmates was so big.

It has affected me in retrospect, in like a weird kind of bounce back. That's what's been a bigger effect than the actual heart attack. And then the kindness that I got from the from people on social media and just from strangers and fans that's inexplicable to me. I still don't, I don't entirely grasp why. I'm thankful for it and I'm, I'm in awe of it and I don't know what to do except to try to live up to it.

Because I don't think I've been the kindest, most generous person. And so I got this outpouring of love, and I had to ask, you know, why don't deserve this? Have they got the wrong Bob Odenkirk? Yet again.

What? Did you think Saul Goodman would let someone else have the last word? No, and he'll tell you as much. I believe that until proven guilty, every man, woman, and child in this country is innocent. And that's why I fight for you, Elmerkirkie. Better call Saul.

Season 6 of Better Call Saul premieres on AMC on Monday, April 18th. This ringer oral history was written, reported, and narrated by Alan Siegel. It was edited by Justin Sales and Andrew Grudadadarro and produced by Steve Alman. Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you, and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Spring's calling. Ross, work your magic.

Thank you.