“Better Call Saul” had a record-breaking debut on Sunday, followed by a second episode on Monday. So far we’ve seen what Saul, née Jimmy McGill, was up to in Albuquerque circa 2002, from hustling as a for-hire defense attorney to wooing clients at a local diner (which will look very familiar to “Breaking Bad” fans).
But besides Saul (and the surprise return of another “Breaking Bad” favorite) we also got to see Jonathan Banks reprising Mike Ehrmantraut and a new main character, Michael McKean’s Chuck Thurber. HuffPost Entertainment sat down with the two actors to find out if we’ll eventually see Mike meet Gus Fring in the “Breaking Bad” spinoff series and what’s up with Chuck’s mysterious illness.
Spoiler alert for the first two episodes of “Better Call Saul.”
What was it like to go back and see Jimmy before he becomes Saul?
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I was doing “All the Way” with Bryan Cranston last year. We were about to go on and Bryan turns to me and goes, “You know, you really should play Saul’s brother.” So then after [the show] he says, “Yeah they’re doing the prequel. You should play his brother. Hopefully you could shoot more than one show at time because your [character is] stuck in [his] house.” And that’s all I knew about the character. So the next day they offered me the role. I said, “Of course.” I was a huge “Breaking Bad” fan.
Would you say that you’re still in the dark with the show or do you know where it’s going?
McKean: No, I know where it’s going. Before the ninth show, Peter Gould and Vince called me up and said let’s talk about this. They kind of laid out the structure of the episode in which certain aspects of my character are revealed that were not known before. And I was really glad I didn’t know them before because it helped maintain the darkness. Other than that, it was script by script. But as far as the broad strokes go, every episode I learned a little bit more. It was fun working that way.
“Better Call Saul” airs Monday at 10:00 p.m. ET on AMC.
