of ‘‘Better Call Saul’’ is that Jimmy’s truly unfor-
givable transgression isn’t that he behaves
unethically but that he does so as an uncouth
underdog: driving a junky yellow car, wearing
garish suits and lacking the decency to launder
his self-serving behavior behind a fancy law-
school diploma.
From behind his face shield, Odenkirk
explained that his fi rst impulse as an actor and
a writer is to search for layers of buried moti-
vation and stress-test the script for emotional
falsity — even when that material consisted of
him descending a staircase as quietly as possi-
ble, hoisting a makeshift weapon over his head.
But he acknowledged that there was ‘‘no sub-
text here.’’ When he was younger, he said that
he could be a ‘‘pissy guy’’ with a ‘‘chip on his
shoulder,’’ but after this many years of playing
Saul, he’d learned when to trust people like Gilli-
gan and Gould — to simply shut up and do what
his collaborators told him.
For fi ve hours I watched as he sneaked around the
house, engaging in a weird cat-and-mouse game
with another character. ‘‘This is optional,’’ Oden-
kirk told Gilligan after some sneaking, his brain
unable to resist subtextual probing, ‘‘but I think
part of him enjoys this? The romance of danger?’’
Gilligan nodded, by way of saying no: ‘‘I think
you need to play it more like, Ah, I gotta get outta
here,’’ he replied, ‘‘otherwise it’ll play weird.’’
Whenever a new shot was being prepared,
Odenkirk retreated to the bedroom to read, chit-
chat with the scene’s only other actor (rather than
risk a possible spoiler, I won’t name him) and
make phone calls. At one point he sent for me,
and I found him on his cellphone with someone
on the crew, proposing a plot that, I soon gath-
ered, involved hoodwinking Gilligan.
‘‘They say we’ll be done at 2 a.m., but it’s not
gonna happen,’’ Odenkirk said into his phone,
sketching out a subterfuge that he thought
would help ‘‘motivate Vince’’ to bring things
in on schedule. This required leveraging a
45- minute break in some mildly duplicitous way,
and I was amused to see that Odenkirk, making
his show about an inveterate schemer, wasn’t
above a little scheming of his own.
When the call went around the set for ‘‘lunch’’
— at 11 p.m., disconcertingly — there was much
left to fi nish. For some people on the crew, this
was a chance to nap, but for Odenkirk it wasan opportunity to read the script for the series
fi nale, which Peter Gould had written and deliv-
ered to him under strict orders to share it with
no one. An assistant on the show said, ‘‘I’m sup-
posed to take anyone out who tries to read it
besides Bob.’’
‘‘Peter’s coming to the house tomorrow after-
noon, and we’re gonna talk about it — you can’t
be there for that,’’ Odenkirk told me. ‘‘But why
don’t you come over beforehand?’’ODENKIRK SHARESa home in Albuquerque
with Rhea Seehorn and another actor from the
show, Patrick Fabian (who plays the manicured
law partner Howard Hamlin). I arrived the next
morning and found Odenkirk in the kitchen,
wearing jeans and running sneakers, show-
ing no signs of the all-nighter he pulled. The
house was built in the 1940s, Odenkirk said, by
a contractor who specialized in offi ce buildings,
which accounted for its slight resemblance,
from the outside, to a dental clinic, down to
a ribbon of ornamental glass bricks installed
beside the front door.
Photographs of his wife, the comedy manager
Naomi Odenkirk, and their two children hung on
the walls alongside pictures of his roommates’
families. (Seehorn got the master bedroom,
downstairs, while Odenkirk and Fabian claimedbedrooms upstairs.) Odenkirk decided to live
with fellow cast members a few years ago, to help
alleviate the isolation he felt when ‘‘Better Call
Saul’’ began. ‘‘It’s about loneliness,’’ he said, when
I asked if the roommate arrangement refl ected
some method-style immersion. Making the fi rst
season, Odenkirk lived by himself at a condo
owned by Bryan Cranston, the star of ‘‘Break-
ing Bad,’’ who vacated it when that show ended.
Odenkirk likened that experience to living ‘‘on
an oil rig,’’ his mind gnawing at its own edges
after draining shoots. ‘‘It gave me great sympathy
for someone like James Gandolfi ni, who talked
about how he couldn’t wait to be done with that
character, and I think Bryan said similar things:
‘I can’t wait to leave this guy behind.’ I fi nally
related to that attitude.’’
This surprised Odenkirk, at fi rst: ‘‘I always
used to scoff and roll my eyes at actors who
say, ‘It’s so hard.’ Really? It can’t be.’’ And yet, he
discovered, ‘‘the truth is that you use your emo-
tions, and you use your memories, you use your
hurt feelings and losses, and you manipulate
them, dig into them, dwell on them. A normal
adult doesn’t walk around doing that. Going:
‘What was the worst feeling of abandonment
I’ve had in my life? Let me just gaze at that for
the next week and a half, because that’s going
to fuel me.’ ’’
In Odenkirk’s case, this meant dwelling on
painful childhood memories, ‘‘putting myself
back to being a 9-year-old,’’ he said, ‘‘and my
dad wakes me up at 2 a.m. to tell me he’s leaving
and he’ll send me money to pay the bills, and
I’m thinking, I don’t know cursive enough to
write the check, so how am I going to pay the
bills? ‘Let me just make myself that kid again,
because I’ll take that feeling of loss and fear and
play it tomorrow!’ ’’ He added, ‘‘If there was one
thing that let me do this, it was some access I
have to the emotional, even traumatic spaces
inside me that maybe isn’t the most healthy
person to be.’’
Growing up outside Chicago, in the town of
Naperville, Odenkirk was one of seven siblings.
He readily discusses his father, and his loathing
for him, referring to him in his memoir as ‘‘a
hollow man’’ with a short temper, who spent his
days with drinking buddies when he was around
at all and who did an abysmal job of caring for
his children. ‘‘It’s not that I didn’t love my dad,’’
Odenkirk told me. ‘‘He just wasn’t around, and
he was a kind of a blank, shut-down guy, and
he did things that were tortuous to me and my
older brother, because he was drunk. He was
always telling us, ‘The family’s broke, I don’t
know what we’re gonna do and where we’re
gonna live.’ And we’re little kids! Like: ‘I’m 5! I
can’t help you with that!’ ’’
Odenkirk’s response was to dissociate, ‘‘read-
ing’’ his father as though he were some literary
grotesque out of Dickens. In his memoir, he
describes his father’s death — which came when30 2.13.22
‘YOU HAVE TO BE A GUY WHO DOESN’T
FIT AND SAYS, ‘‘I’M DOING M
Y OWN THING
AND YOU GUYS DON’T GET IT!’’ ’