- Hi, I'm Bob Odenkirk.
You're watching In Studio with The Hollywood Reporter.
(upbeat music)
- Well, congratulations on your Emmy nomination.
- Thank you so much. - Outstanding Lead Actor
in a Drama Series for Better Call Saul.
- Hot damn.
(Marya laughs)
I'm pretty special.
- You are pretty special. (laughs)
But I did wanna say something.
You predicted Michael McKean's Emmy nomination this year.
- Well I sure felt certain he deserved it,
and I'm thankful that he got this nod
because he has been a source of power and gravity
and wonderful acting on the set of Better Call Saul.
And I know that he's done so many things over the years.
I did not know it was his first Emmy nomination.
In fact, - Wow.
- That's hard to believe. - Yeah.
- And I wrote to him with a sarcastic like,
I bet you don't really, it's no big deal to you.
And he was like oh my God, no, it's a huge deal to me.
I'm thrilled to be nominated.
So Michael McKean as Chuck
is a powerful performance, and I hope that he wins.
- Speaking of powerful performances,
you have this amazing karaoke scene in season four.
- He and I, yes. - Yeah.
- We do a scene where you see the brothers McGill.
We play brothers on Better Call Saul.
He's my older brother and the person
that I most in the world wanna please
and whose respect I'm trying to earn
and never, never, never can earn and never will.
And there's a scene where we're singing karaoke together,
and it's a
fun, beautiful shared moment where the two brothers
are on the same page, which is extremely rare.
- Yeah, the show does such a great job
of giving us a little bit of heart
and then pulling the rug out from under us,
(laughs) emotionally. - Yeah.
Well, Peter Gould and the writing staff,
not unlike Breaking Bad in every way,
which literally many of the same people,
are just good at doing that,
like getting you to like someone enough
that they can do something bad and you still will like them.
- So with the four seasons, you're coming up on season five.
- Yes.
- You've really been able to take your time
with the transformation,
- Yeah.
- that you've been given-- - They've been building it
slowly but it's turning.
Now it's turning rapidly,
I would say. - We're here, we're here.
- Yeah, and that's similar to Breaking Bad, too,
this very slow buildup as we go up the rollercoaster ramp
and then (makes boom sound),
and once it starts going downhill, it just cannot stop.
And that's where we are in season five,
which we're shooting right now.
- Wow. - Season five is just
everything's on fire, and it's just burning down around us.
- It's a dumpster fire.
- It's a dumpster fire, and yeah.
It's fun to be a part of that.
It's fun when things go crazy and aren't gonna stop.
All that buildup was fun, too,
but I worried about the audience staying with us.
We asked people to watch closely
and to understand on a deeper level the characters
and the plot, and you know what?
They did.
The audience really impressed the hell out of me.
But I do think that it was all because of Breaking Bad
and not just because of the success of Breaking Bad
but because people who watched Breaking Bad knew
that oh, every detail matters,
the eye floating in the water,
it means something, it is something.
And so by getting a large audience
to watch on that level, then, when Better Call Saul started,
they immediately were hooked into watching closely
and not worrying about it getting somewhere
but trusting that it would.
- Well, one of the things that maybe fans
can be really excited about is
that the Breaking Bad movie is going to come out
and that will come out on Netflix first and then go to AMC.
- Is that how it will play?
- That's what we've been told here
at The Hollywood Reporter. - I don't even,
I've heard so many different things about it,
but I am excited about the Breaking Bad movie.
I can't wait to see it.
- [Marya] Is there a lot of secrecy around it?
- Unbelievable secrecy. - Yeah.
- I'm surprised you mentioned it.
I don't know what people know and don't know.
I find it hard to believe you don't know it was shot.
They did it. - Wow.
- You know what I mean?
How is that a secret?
But it is.
They've done an amazing job of keeping it a secret.
- Well, one of the things that I think fans
are really, really crazy about
and crave more of is the present-day Saul Goodman storyline,
which we only get a little taste of
in the beginning of every season.
- You mean after post Breaking Bad,
- Exactly. - where his character
is named - I feel like we're in--
Gene Takovic. - Right, yes (laughs) Gene.
- Very sad fellow.
- We're in some real Back to the Future territory,
- Yeah.
- like present past and past present.
I know that you don't like to know too much ahead of time.
- Yeah, I don't, I don't.
- So do you know anything about the Gene storyline?
- Once a year, I sit with Peter Gould,
and if Vince Gilligan wants to join in, he can.
But I won't kick him out. (chuckles)
(Marya laughs)
But we talk about just general thoughts about the series.
I'm not a writer on the show, and it's an exciting thing
for me to see choices made that I
would never have predicted, and there are many of them.
So I don't wanna control it too much,
but I speak as a fan, as a person who watches the episodes
when they play and is kinda surprised by them
because I don't really read the whole scripts.
At least I don't read it closely.
I only read my parts 'cause I wanna watch it fresh,
like anybody.
I'll just tell 'em what I think.
But I would like to see Gene Takovic's story go somewhere,
and I think they do, too.
So I think maybe there will be some story
where that character post Breaking Bad
finds his way in the world, I don't know,
makes some peace with his past.
The question I have is Vince Gilligan,
who led the show for the first three years
and who still is with Peter, a partner in the journey
of the show, I don't think he's interested
in redemption stories.
I would love to hear him answer the question
do you think people can learn from their mistakes.
I'm not sure what his answer would be.
I think it would be no.
- Yes.
- And, of course, I like this guy
after years of playing him, and I'd love
to see him make different choices and be a better person
because of everything he went through.
But I'm not sure that fits with Vince's worldview.
- Has your feelings about him evolved
- Well, I didn't like Saul - as you've played him?
Goodman at all. - Yeah, 'cause
at the beginning, you were like, kick his ass, beat him up.
- Well, I still feel that way. - I'd love to see him in pain.
- I love to be in a physically
destroyed place because I think, first,
it engenders some empathy from the audience.
But part of the fun of acting is doing things
that you can't actually do in life
and go places you don't go.
I maintain
a even keel, I think, in a general sense, as a person.
So to play someone who's unsteady is fun,
and to play someone who says crazy shit
and gets in bad, bad scrapes and bad situations
is a adventure, so I do like that still.
When Vince and Peter and I met to discuss this show,
my first comment was...
Well, I had two comments.
One was I'm old, (laughs loudly) I'm 50; now I'm 56.
So whatever you do, don't try to make me too young
'cause it's not gonna work.
And my second comment was how do you make the guy likable?
I don't like Saul Goodman.
He's funny, and in the context of Breaking Bad,
he's a relief and a comic relief.
And for most of Breaking Bad, he doesn't have a gun pointed
at his head; nobody's trying to kill him.
So he can be a wiseacre, and you just know it's all skimming
off his back; he doesn't care.
He's either gonna make a lot of money
or he's not gonna make a lot of money.
And that's all he's got in the game.
But then, of course, later, he became a person in danger.
But just (claps hands) how do you make him someone you
wanna root for?
And they dug in on that question
and made Jimmy McGill someone I like
and I empathize with, even though his life
is still very, very different from mine.
But I think the struggle of that character
is something I like and I relate to.
So they made him someone I like.
And so now he's Gene Takovic.
Maybe he has a further growth,
a sense of who he could be or how he could use his skills
and not get dragged down. - Right.
I keep wondering whether Walter White--
- I just gave a 10-minute answer to that question
- No, but I love it. - and used up all our time.
- (laughs) I know, I know,
but I keep wondering whether Walter White
and Jimmy McGill/SaulGoodman/Gene Takovic,
I wonder if they are Shakespearean tragedy characters
or Greek tragedy characters.
I think the difference is fate.
It's fate versus human failings.
Maybe a little of each. - I'm going Shakespeare
- Yeah, I think so, too. - because I think Walter White
and Jimmy
and all the other characters on Better Call Saul,
but definitely Jimmy,
make choices that come from deep within,
choices that, when you get them in the script,
you can even ask this goes against everything he's
been saying or claiming he wants to be.
But they're all very related to a deeper part of the person.
My friend, Michael Mando, who plays Nacho
on Better Call Saul, great, great actor
and a very interesting fellow who thinks deeply
about character and story, said to me, it's his amygdala.
It kicks into gear every once in a while.
It's this lizard brain deep inside his brain
that makes him do things that are
intense and outrageous, and it's like Walter White, right?
There was a crazy asshole (laughs loudly)
(Marya laughs) deep inside this dad's brain.
- Well, we're all excited for what's gonna happen
in season five, we're excited for the Breaking Bad movie.
- Cool. - We have to wait
until 2020 for at least one of those things.
- You have to wait till 2020 for Better Call Saul,
season four, season five. (Marya laughs)
You gotta wait.
2020's gonna be awesome.
- Yeah. (laughs)
We hope so - Right now,
- in so many ways. - not so great.
- Yeah. (laughs)
Bob Odenkirk, thank you so much
for being here. - Thank you.
- Better Call Saul on AMC, and we will see you at the Emmys.
- Thank you. (boom)