We’ve all heard how Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan first thought that his beloved crime drama would tell the story of how a Mr. Chips-type everyman would turn into Scarface.
But during a South by Southwest Film & TV Festival panel on Saturday morning titled “Albuquerque Aftermath: From Breaking Bad to Pluribus,” Gilligan said he found a notebook which had the very first conception for the show — and it was only nine words.
“I found this old notepad in my office a few years back, and it was the very first idea for this,” Gilligan said. “And who knows where ideas come from? But it said: ‘Good guy does something bad to save his family.’”
Then Gilligan retold the story of how he fleshed out his idea of a high school chemistry teacher with cancer who cooks meth to provide for his family and then pitched it to Sony Pictures Television. Gilligan says a top executive, who is no longer with the company, told him, “‘That’s the single worst idea I’ve ever heard.’” Gilligan quickly added, “To his credit, he’s a good man, and he acknowledged [his mistake later].”
Of course, Sony would eventually embrace the show and then AMC came on board as distributor. Gilligan also famously pitched Breaking Bad to HBO, which he’s described as one of the worst meetings of his life, with then-HBO executives exuding “a toxic gamma radiation of disinterest” to his pitch.
Gilligan, who aw-shucked his reputation for being a famously nice showrunner, was also asked about working with a writers’ room and how he decides whether to go with one of his own ideas or somebody else’s.
“The best thing to do is very quickly learn to not pay attention to whose ideas are whose,” Gilligan said. “I’m not keeping score in my head. The moments I’m the most proud in [my] shows, I don’t remember who [suggested the idea]. The best idea wins. There’s a lot of ways to do this job, and we could be dictatorial, and that maybe works for some, but at the end of the day, I’m so proud of the work. We’re not curing cancer in our respective TV shows. There’s no reason for people not to enjoy coming to work. Once they get there, they’re going to work hard. But there’s no reason they have to make it tough on each other.”
Later in the panel, Pluribus star Rhea Seehorn pushed back firmly when an audience question suggested that her character on the show, Carol, was “unlikable.”
“I understand the question, but the question behind the question with the word ‘unlikable,’ I think, is a misuse, or overuse, about female characters,” Seehorn said. “Because how people have been defining what’s likable in a woman in a very, very restrictive way to play a character. It’s much more important that that character be accessible in some way, and for me behaving truthfully and honest a moment when people would say, ‘Wow, she’s really not polite when they bring her things.’ [The Others] killed my wife. My career is gone. I might die alone watching Golden Girls, so sorry if I’m a bit chirpy … Carol is allowed to be the full spectrum of human behavior … I find her complex and difficult and challenging.”
Gilligan then added that given The Others are so crushingly and uniformly nice, it’s “Drama 101” to have a protagonist that balances that out.
Seehorn was also asked by an audience member when she figured out what Pluribus was about.
“It’s really wonderful that I’m playing a character that doesn’t understand what’s going on,” she said. “I don’t know. Is it about human nature? What it means to be human, and redefining the pursuit of happiness? How do you find success, love and relationships?”
Gilligan said he was going to dodge the question of the meaning of Pluribus, but noted, “This is the hardest [show] of all of them to explain. I’m going to try to let other folks tell me what our show is about, because I learn stuff all the time when people tell me. What is any show about? What is According to Jim about?”
The participants included Gilligan, Seehorn, composer Dave Porter, costume designer Jennifer Bryan and producer Trina Siopy.