Odenkirk on Landing Breaking Bad

Bob Odenkirk was at his desk in Hollywood when the call came in.

He'd been directing features, writing TV, and had just finished a pilot with his friend Reed Harrison about a minor league baseball team called the San Diego Snakes. FX was into it but the logistics were brutal, they wanted to shoot alongside a real private three-team league, and the hassle was killing the project.

His agent called. Instruction: they're about to offer you a part, don't say no. The show was Breaking Bad.

Odenkirk said no to a lot of stuff, so the warning wasn't unusual. Breaking Bad had aired one abbreviated season during the writers' strike, sitting in the shadow of Mad Men on AMC. Odenkirk's first read on it was, why is this show even still on. He called Reed. Reed told him it was the best show on TV and to take the part immediately.

Vince Gilligan sent the script. Odenkirk knew how to play the guy on first read. He also had a very specific reaction, this character talks way too much for television. He assumed they'd cut it. He didn't learn it. He didn't watch the show. He had little kids at home, knew it was violent, and was aware that any five-year-old in the house would walk into the room the second something inappropriate was on screen.

He flew to Albuquerque expecting the script to be trimmed. The blue pages arrived. One word had changed.

He spent the weekend scared and learned the dialogue. In the process he figured out what the character actually was. Not a guy running his mouth. A guy watching another guy's eyes, trying things, testing, pushing, looking for a reaction. That's what made Saul work.

Then Better Call Saul arrived and the job changed on him.

Odenkirk told Rich he tried to talk himself into it being a quantitative problem, just more lines, just more time on camera, don't be intimidated. It wasn't quantitative. It was qualitative. The depth and layering were fundamentally different. He lost his voice in the first week. He said Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway hit him the same way. He thought he was past being intimidated by work. He wasn't.

He framed the Saul arc in a way that explains its reach. America loves stories about people who find their voice at 21, 17, 23. Saul wasn't that. Saul had a gift, reading people, convincing them, moving them, but he couldn't find a place to put it. He wanted respect from his brother and from the woman he loved and couldn't get it.

That, Odenkirk said, is most people's story. Not the prodigy version. The stumbling-through-your-20s, figuring-it-out-in-your-30s, grinding-toward-confidence-in-your-40s version.

Rich told him he pulled it off. Odenkirk credited the fear. Fear, he said, makes you dig in and work hard.