Jonathan Banks’ character on Breaking Bad, Mike Ehrmantraut, is central to the plot, but the character was never planned for the AMC series. In fact, the character was only created after Bob Odenkirk, who plays the slippery and dubious lawyer Saul Goodman, was unavailable due to a scheduling conflict.
Rhea Sighorn, who plays Kim Wexler in the prequel series “Better Call Saul”, told about it in a new interview with the publication Rich Eisen. She said the original plan was for Sol to come in and clean up the mess after Krysten Ritter’s character, Jane, dies of an overdose in Season 2. But Odenkirk was filming Nebraska at the time, so he wasn’t available. Thanks to this, the writers created the character of Mike Ehrmantraut, and the rest is history.
Sieghorn believes that this change was for the better, because originally Saul had to clean up the scene “coldly, callously” and this would mean the beginning of a new, darker path for the lawyer. “This is where his character was supposed to develop,” Sighorn said.
“(But) he just wasn’t available. So they invented the character of Mike Ehrmantraut. Thank God!” Sighorn said. “And Jonathan Banks played (him) and now he’s invaluable to the show, that character. Also, I’m really glad we got to see Saul in a different way. It would change the way we saw him forever.”
In Breaking Bad, Ehrmantraut is the driving force behind the criminal enterprises of Gus Fring and Saul Goodman. He is eventually killed by Walter White (Bryan Cranston) at the end of Breaking Bad. Fans of the character got to see more of him in Better Call Saul, which further revealed his backstory.
As for Zehorn, she will star in Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan’s new TV series for Apple.
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