It’s undeniable at this point that Bob Odenkirk was the perfecting casting choice to play Saul Goodman, the conniving attorney from Breaking Bad who serves as the personal attorney for meth makers Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). When the character was first introduced in the second season of Breaking Bad, he instantly became a hit with viewers, resulting in the show’s writer’s keeping him around for the rest of the series. He’d go on to have his own spinoff series in Better Call Saul, which wrapped after six seasons last year.
In a new video posted online by WIRED, Odenkirk answers some of the internet’s most burning questions about him and his career. The question of his casting in Breaking Bad came up, at which point Odenkirk divulged the story behind how he came to join the hit AMC series. He says it basically comes down to having Gilligan and Breaking Bad writer Peter Gould recognizing him as perfect for the role based on his work on the sketch comedy series Mr. Show with Bob and David. While Odenkirk admits he questioned the casting at first, he notes how Gilligan is someone who always knows what he’s doing.
“Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, who wrote the character of Saul Goodman into the first script that he was in in Breaking Bad, were both fans of Mr. Show, and both thought I was the guy to play the part. I don’t know why. Vince Gilligan is the smartest guy in the room. But, he pretends not to be. He’s got this performance that he does. You could call it the ‘aw, shucks’ guy. He secretly knows that he’s working really, really hard, and he’s also smart as sh*t. So, he listens to people, very, very politely. He’s never, ever rude. And then he does what he’s gonna do, and it’s the right thing every damn time.”
Bob Odenkirk’s Scheduling Issues Created Mike Ehrmantraut
Odenkirk’s Better Call Saul co-star Rhea Seehorn recently spoke about how there was a scheduling conflict when he joined the show that created the need for a new character to be written. That character turned out to be Mike Ehrmantraut, played by Jonathan Banks. Odenkirk further spoke about this story in the new WIRED interview as well, confirming the scheduling issues and noting how very grateful he is to have had that spot on How I Met Your Mother, know it resulted in all the work he’s done with Banks on both of the TV shows.
“The final four episodes of the second season… I was only in three of them, because I had to do How I Met Your Mother, and because I had to do How I Met Your Mother, they had to invent another character to pull that plot along. And they invented Mike Ehrmantraut. So, thank God I was on How I Met Your Mother, ’cause they could invent Mike, and then me and Jon Banks could do Better Call Saul.”
You can watch the full video below.
