QUICK TALK
Aaron PaulIn the midst of shooting Westworld,
Aaron Paul took a break to talk about
El Camino and returning to the role
that earned him three Emmy AwardsHow has your relationship with
Jesse Pinkman changed over the
years? In the first couple seasons,
I tried to stay within that skin. But
[co-star] Bryan [Cranston] taught
me that it’s O.K. to wash the makeup
off at the end of the day and just be
yourself. It was a bit of a struggle for
all of us—it was an emotional toll.
Playing Jesse was like revisiting an
old friend.Did you yourself ever fantasize
about what happened to Jesse?
People ask me that almost on a daily
basis. My response is: “I have no idea.
He’s probably on the run and in hid-
ing. His fingerprints were all over that
murder scene.” But I fantasized that
he was just living in the woods some-
where, working with his hands again,
creating things with wood.The ending of Breaking Bad is
widely beloved. Did you have any
trepidation when creator Vince
Gilligan asked you to star in a
continuation? Zero. I think any fan
of Vince trusts him. He’s not going
to do something for no reason. It was
this itch that he just had to scratch—
the one unanswered question that he
was living with.The movie picks back up
with Jesse in a raw and trau-
matized state. How difficult
was it to get back into such
a mind-set? Honest ly,
not at all. After I first
read the script, I in-
stantly felt all of
those emotions run-
ning through me.
Because I lived this
guy. Everything
you saw and didn’t
see—I lived through
these moments.
—aNDRew R. ChOwking and queen that arrived in theaters
last month, goes down easily enough,
as long as you have a high tolerance
for monarchist propaganda. But does
Lady Mary’s (Michelle Dockery) com-
mitment to preserving the estate really
need to be tested again? (Many viewers
thought yes: the film grossed a surpris-
ing $31 million in its opening weekend.)
The self- indulgent straight-to-Amazon
Transparent musical was too quirky and
niche to be a cash grab; it’s likelier that
it was a well- intentioned but artistically
bankrupt effort to move on without dis-
graced former star Jeffrey Tambor.
it seems relevant that these films
are sequels to shows that debuted be-
fore Netflix started spewing out hun-
dreds of originals each year. They sat-
isfy our nostalgia for the monoculture
of appointment TV, along with our lin-
gering affections for familiar characters.
Especially now that we’re all stream-
ing different things at different times,
there’s community to be found in going
to the cinema to watch Downton in the
company of others who’ve paid to laugh
at the Dowager Countess’s zingers.
That goes double for El Camino.
Written and directed by Gilligan, it has
an action-thriller scale that more than
justifies the theatrical release, elevat-
ing cinematography and sound design
whose artfulness was unparalleled on
TV. (Whatever you do, don’t watch it
on your phone.) The movie joins AMC’s
Better Call Saul as an expansion of a
Breaking Bad Televisual Universe that is
also a moral universe, weighing the soul
of each protagonist in turn. In Walt,
Gilligan illustrated how meekness
can conceal malice. Saul Goodman
is what happens when a person
with good intentions is incapable
of following society’s rules.
Going into El Camino,
Jesse’s soul still hangs in
the balance. And unlike
diabolical Walt or self-
saboteur Saul, we can’t
help but worry for him—
because we can imagine
ourselves behind the
wheel of that getaway
car. What choice do we
have but to see his story
through to the end?