Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan took some time off from increasing Cinnabon awareness to answer all your important questions during a Reddit AMA session yesterday. It was for a good cause, too: one lucky fan who donates to benefit theater arts will get “the chance to join [Vince] in Los Angeles and talk more over lunch.” Would your first question at lunch (with no Stevia in sight, obviously) be about what happened to Huell?
WAY ahead of ya.
Is Huell okay?
Yes, I believe Huell is just fine.
What other characters from Breaking Bad might we see in Better Call Saul?
Anybody and everybody. The sky’s the limit! That’s the beauty of this format. The story takes place six years in the past, where all the Breaking Bad characters are alive and well, but that’s not to promise that you’ll see every character that we introduced in Breaking Bad. We’re still feeling our way through Jimmy McGill’s format, discovering how and why he becomes Saul Goodman — and in the process, there’s any number of directions our story can take. So I couldn’t really tell you even if I wanted to who will show up, or when. Better Call Saul is still very much a work in progress.
Why did you pick Saul for a spinoff? (Will there be others?) I would thought that spinoff with gustavo and how he became a respected business man and how he came to know gale, etc would have been fascinating too (Could you answer those questions in Better Call Saul!!? that would be awesome!)
I have to admit, a spin-off series about Gus Fring would be a good idea. There’s no perfect answer to that question, other than to say that creating a spin-off series related to Saul Goodman was an idea that we batted around pretty much since the creation of the character. We always loved writing for Saul Goodman throughout the run of Breaking Bad. Now we find writing for Jimmy McGill, he’s so good with words that writing his dialogue is great fun, too. But you’re right, Gus could carry his own story. I wish there were more hours in the day, so that we’d be able to do ALL these shows!
What inspired you to come up with the idea for the show?
I was on a phone call with my best friend, Tom Schnauz, whose name you may recognize as a producer, writer and director on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. This was about 10 years ago — he and I had been writers on The X-Files and we were both looking for writing jobs that were as good as that job, as we were both out of work at the time. He made the joke that we should put a meth lab in the back of an RV and travel America — he was making a joke, but that really stuck with me. The idea of doing a show about a character that would do that seemed fun to explore — and that was the inspiration, as it were.
Have you ever thought of opening a Los Pollos Hermanos?
Believe it or not… there is talk of a Pollos Hermanos becoming a real restaurant. This is not an idea that I generated personally. But it’s one that’s been presented to me, through the good folks at Sony, and the idea came to them from a businessman who has an interest in doing just that. Speaking for myself, I’d love to see that happen!
As long as the company motto isn’t “it’s so Bad, it’s good,” I’m in. Check out more of Vince Gilligan’s answers here.
(Via Reddit)
