‘Breaking Bad’ Producers Almost Cut Saul Goodman from the Show Because He Was ‘Too Silly’
You can’t call Saul if there’s no Saul to call.
And Saul Goodman came thisclose to never making it into Breaking Bad. According to Alan Sepinwall’s new book, Saul Goodman v. Jimmy McGill (excepted in Entertainment Weekly), network executives at AMC wanted to deep-six the character before he ever appeared.
Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, writer/director Peter Gould and “an executive who shall remain nameless” were on a conference call, according to Gould. “And the question came up, basically, ‘We don’t like this character. Could we start again and come up with a different story for this episode?’”
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It wasn’t like the show’s creators had invested a lot in Saul Goodman at that stage of the game. “His creation was all in service of Walt’s story,” said Gould. “We weren’t thinking, ‘Here’s an independent character who’s going to have a life of his own.’”
The point of Saul was to provide a counterpoint to Walt, someone who represented what the lead character was not. “He enjoys himself. He’s very transactional. He’s not violent, obviously,” noted Gould.
But while those traits make for a fun character, he also wondered if they were going too far. “As I was writing the episode, I got very nervous,” Gould remembered. “I got scared because I was worried that we were going to break the show by making a character that was too silly — that he was going to be just too big for what I thought was a very grounded show.”
The AMC executive had the same apprehensions. But Gilligan put his foot down when asked to come up with another storyline. “He was strongly advocating for the script and for the character. And, to their credit, the person or persons on the call backed down, because they had to trust Vince.”
Adding to the silly worries was the actor hired to play Saul Goodman. Up to that point, Bob Odenkirk was best known as an icon of the ‘90s alt-comedy scene. “I was maybe the biggest Mr. Show fan,” explained Gould.
Odenkirk had his own apprehensions about playing Saul, mainly because he wasn’t Jewish. Gilligan explained that Saul was only pretending to be Jewish for his clients, giving him more credibility with the underworld. Odenkirk ultimately said yes to the role, assuming the character would be killed off quickly.
That didn’t happen, though it was some time before anyone considered Saul Goodman as a potential protagonist for his own show. “It was a gradual thing,” said Gould, who would go on to co-create Better Call Saul. “Whenever we came up with something in the room that was just too silly, occasionally someone said, ‘Well, that’s for the spin-off.’ I really restrained myself from thinking about it too much, because it seemed too good to be true.”
Plans for Saul’s spin-off were well underway as Breaking Bad was ending, but there was always a chance that the AMC execs would finally get their way. “Even during that final season, we would pitch Saul Goodman getting killed,” Gould said. “Absolutely. And, if it had been the right move for Breaking Bad, we would’ve killed that character.”
