Aaron Paul: Breaking Bad, El Camino, and finally saying goodbye to Jesse Pinkman
Written by News on 18/10/2019
*** Warning – mild spoilers for El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie ahead ***
Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul has told Sky News he believes the new follow-up film about Jesse Pinkman is the character’s final goodbye.
El Camino starts from the moment the record-breaking series ended, with Pinkman escaping from the neo-Nazis who had been keeping him prisoner – and from his long-time crystal meth-making partner and former teacher Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston, who died in the final episode.
“I was ready to say goodbye to this guy so long ago,” says Paul. “But, you know, here we are doing a movie.
“I think the purpose of this film was to give Jesse and the audience a proper goodbye – and we did just that, and so I think this is goodbye.”
Paul says that when filming wrapped ahead of the final series of Breaking Bad in 2013, he never expected to return to Pinkman.
“You know what? I thought it was such a great goodbye and so I thought if I ever returned to Jesse, it may be an episode of [Breaking Bad spin-off] Better Call Saul.
“But I am obsessed with that show and I kept thinking to myself, you know what, there’s no way that Jesse would fit into this story.
“So I really didn’t think that I would be playing this guy again.”
Was it strange to return without Cranston, his co-star since the series started in 2008, for what is effectively an extended episode of Breaking Bad?
“It was beautiful, I was surrounded by so many of our same crew members that we had when we shot the pilot of Breaking Bad,” says Paul.
“It’s just going home, you know, with Jesse Pinkman, it was revisiting an old, kind of tortured friend in a way, and it was great.”
Referencing a flashback scene which did see Cranston on the set of the film, Paul said it was good to team up again.
“That scene with Bryan towards the end of the film and also towards the end of the shoot, it was just something to really look forward to, and it was great.”
In September last year it was reported Paul had signed up for another TV show known for its obsessive fans – Westworld.
Joining for the sci-fi show’s third series, he said he can’t wait for people to see it.
“It’s very exciting, I was such a huge fan of the first two seasons of Westworld,” he says.
:: Listen to the Backstage podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker
“And so, you know, I was a new kid going to school, a school that I really loved, and I loved everybody in the school.
“This season, it’s just even more ambitious than the previous two so I’m very excited for the world, the public, to see what we’ve been doing.”
He admits, though, that what he really wants to do is make more independent films.
“It’s really where my heart is. Right when I finished Breaking Bad, literally the day after I finished Breaking Bad, I jumped on to a very large, big-budget film where it was hard to get to know everybody.
“I just love independent filmmaking. You know everyone’s name going on the set, you’re telling a small, sort of intimate story. I love it.”
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is out now on Netflix
(c) Sky News 2019: Aaron Paul: Breaking Bad, El Camino, and finally saying goodbye to Jesse Pinkman
