Recently interviewed on The Rich Eisen Show, actress Rhea Seehorn recounted how the excellent character of Mike Ehrmantraut was incorporated into the “Breaking Bad” series when he was not originally supposed to be there.
Masterfully played by Jonathan Banks in Breaking Bad (then in Better Call Saul where we discover in particular his sinister past in the police), the formidable henchman of Gus Fring, Mike Ehrmantraut, is one of the most charismatic characters and the most tasty from the television franchise created by Vince Gilligan.
However, as we recently learned Rhea Seehorn, interpreter of Kim Wexler in the spin-off series, this protagonist who has become essential did not appear in the initial script and was created solely with the aim of filling the absence of another actor.
Indeed, it is in season 2 of Breaking Bad that we meet Mike for the very first time. In the last episode, he goes to Jesse, whose girlfriend has just died of a heroin overdose, to clean the apartment.
Authoritarian, monolithic and deliciously nonchalant, the character immediately fits into the universe of the series. However, originally, the sequence had not been written for him but for Bob Odenkirk (Saul Goodman) who could not go to the set that day.
Sony Pictures Television
“Bob wasn’t available for Saul Goodman to come and clean the body, and that’s how the Mike Ehrmantraut character was created”told Rhea Seehorn at the microphone of The Rich Eisen Show.
“Bob was shooting something else [ndlr : un épisode de How I Met Your Mother], and they had written that when Krysten’s character died, he had to come and cleanse the body in this very cold and insensitive way. His character was supposed to start going in that direction, and he just wasn’t available, so they came up with the Mike Ehrmantraut character.”
Today, after having admired the performances of Jonathan Banks in 25 episodes of Breaking Bad and in 59 episodes of Better Call Saul, we can only thank Bob Odenkirk for having had an impediment during the filming of said sequence.
(Re)discover the trailer for “Better Call Saul”…