Interview: ‘Breaking Bad’ 10th Anniversary

Writers reunite to reflect on what they learned and that final season.

Variety brought together some of the writers of the vaunted AMC TV series ‘Breaking Bad’:

On a sunny day in Beverly Hills almost exactly a decade after the show’s debut, “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan met up with Peter Gould, Thomas Schnauz, Moira Walley-Beckett, Sam Catlin, George Mastras and Gennifer Hutchison, the core team of writers who cooked up the saga of Walt, Jesse and their memorable friends, families and criminal associates. During an hour-long conversation, they shared memories of the show’s early days, its characters’ intense journeys and how it all came together in that spectacular final season.

Here is an excerpt:

Let’s start at the end. Have any of you seen the finale since it aired?

Gilligan: Because they have the marathons on AMC, I happened to catch not just the finale but quite a few of the episodes. Man, I remember the pain leading up to the [final season].
Walley-Beckett: It was excruciating.
Schnauz: That whole season — I had trouble watching. There’s fun in it, but the story is painful.
Gilligan: Yeah, that is true. I get asked a lot what would I change about it. It sounds like a joke answer, but I wish Jesse’s teeth weren’t so perfect. I’m not kidding. The kid smokes meth and gets the living s — beat out of him.
Walley-Beckett: At least we didn’t kill him in season one.
Gilligan: Yeah, we were going to kill him in season one and we didn’t.
Gould: I remember being on set in season one, and [Vince] said, “Aaron, come over here.” Aaron came over, and he’s holding his tray. You said, “Hey, Aaron, I just want you to know: I thought we were going to kill you at the end of the first season, but good news — we love you so much, we’re not going to kill you.” [Gould mimes Paul holding a tray and shaking like a leaf.] Aaron — he’s an open book.
Gilligan: Yeah, I think I knew [early on Jesse wouldn’t be eliminated]. Before we really had a writers room convened, I just thought he would serve his purpose in a meat-and-potatoes, logistical sense. The character would give Walt his entrée into the business, and then, what do we need him for anymore? It’d be impetus for drama in season two for [Walt] to get revenge on the guys who killed his partner. But the kid was too good to kill.
Hutchison: As the story naturally progressed, it came out more and more that Jesse did actually have this moral compass. You know he’s not a good guy, obviously, because he’s in this world — but he does have a stronger moral center than what Walt was showing. Of course, he kept getting it wrong, and Walt exploited those bad aspects of him.

When did you know the fate of each character?

Gilligan: Late in the game. We went through every possible permutation.
Catlin: There was no possibility that Walt was going to live.
Gilligan: Yeah, we all knew that.
Hutchison: Walt had to die.
Gilligan: There was a hive mind with these wonderful writers, where I don’t remember who said what, and it doesn’t even matter whose idea was whose. But I remember one afternoon, somebody said — and I was kind of into it for a while — “Wouldn’t it be really ironic if Walt is the only one to survive this?” Because it does seem so obvious that Walt should expire at the end of the final episode — but maybe he’s the only one left alive. Maybe he still does have a death sentence, but we go out on him alive, and maybe his whole family’s been wiped out. That would have been really f — ing dark.

More videos from the conversation:

For the rest of the interview, go here.

For 100s more interviews with screenwriters, TV writers, filmmakers, and industry insiders, go here.