Yahoo Finance Better Call Saul stars share the most challenging scenes to film
Over the course of 63 episodes, Better Call Saul burrowed into fascinating nooks of the human condition in the New Mexico desert and tested its checkered characters via all types of scams, murders, legal hearings, self-reckonings and self-immolations. The characters weren't the only ones being put through their paces — so were the actors who inhabited them. Here, the stars of AMC's ambitious Breaking Bad prequel share the scenes that required the deepest preparation and the most stamina — mental or physical.
After you revisit key moments from the show's six-season run through these selections, challenge yourself to a longer stroll down memory lane via EW's Better Call Saul digital cover.
AMC/SONY PICTURES TELEVISION Michael McKean as Chuck McGill on 'Better Call Saul'
MICHAEL MCKEAN (Chuck)
If he were choosing from a physical standpoint, Michael McKean would select a sequence from the season 3 finale, "Lantern": After being forced out of HHM, Chuck slowly goes mad looking for the last electrical current in the house, ripping apart the walls (before kicking over a lantern and setting the house on fire). But McKean approaches this exercise from a mental perspective and points to an earlier episode in season 3, "Chicanery," which featured Chuck's showdown with Jimmy at a bar association hearing. "That was like, 'This is you on the stand. And we would love for this to be one take of this enormous speech,' which is in the middle of a scene, which is also very lengthy,'" he says. "I think the scene worked really well, but that was tedious in a different way [than tearing apart the house]. It was just kind of locking your brain into one thing, but that one thing consists of everything you've got, of every bit of information you're imparting, and with every bit of this obstacle course you've already gone through with your brother. Those are really complex things."
In the episode's final scene, Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) checkmates his supposedly electromagnetically sensitive brother, pointing out that Huell (Lavell Crawford) slipped a cellphone battery into his pocket that didn't seem to be affecting him. Chuck begins to lash out defensively at Jimmy before noticing the hearing board staring at him. He concedes defeat and looks up at the sizzling EXIT sign that he'd tried to have turned off earlier. Chuck's tragic day in "court" held extra poignancy for McKean. "Without knowing it, Chuck is also staring death in the face; he just doesn't know it yet," observes the actor. "So it's kind of fraught. It was difficult and it was very rewarding, too."
Greg Lewis/AMC Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler and Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman on 'Better Call Saul'
BOB ODENKIRK (Jimmy/Saul/Gene)
Bob Odenkirk has trouble isolating one scene in particular, but he quickly singles out a type of scene that would occasionally crop up in Jimmy and Kim's (Rhea Seehorn) relationship: One of them had to shield his/her true feelings from the other. "Those are the hardest scenes because those two characters pick up on such small details from everyone around them," he explains. "It's very hard for them to lie to each other. Rhea and I would have to go over [those scenes repeatedly]. A lot of times we would try to figure out ways for the character not to be looking at the other character when they told the fib. Like when Jimmy says he's going to go to the desert, he's going to get this money, and 'Trust me, it's going to be great. It's going to be fine.' And then he hugs her and then you see his face drop, over her shoulder. Trying to lie to each other in those characters was really hard, because we just were playing these two characters who were sharp as s---."
Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television Tony Dalton as Lalo Salamanca on 'Better Call Saul'
TONY DALTON (Lalo)
Tony Dalton returns you to the superlab for his most challenging scene — specifically, the showdown with Gus (Giancarlo Esposito) in season 6's "Point and Shoot" that required the actor to do some impressive multitasking with slightly outdated technology. When Lalo took Gus hostage after he showed up at the commercial laundromat, he was recording evidence of the superlab for Don Eladio (Steven Bauer). "I had to [film with] the camera while I'm pushing Giancarlo down the stairs, and it was actually me filming, and then [I had to] point the gun, and the gun had to be in the shot with the camera," Dalton explains. "So I'm playing photographer there. And then I can't be too far from Gus because he gets out of focus because it's one of the old cameras because it's supposed to be 2003 or whatever. And then I had huge lines like, 'There were 2,000 cubic cylinders of...' and I had to switch from English to Spanish the whole time and then turn my camera to myself and go, 'Hey yeah, wasn't that cool?' and then go back to him and kick him. That was a little complicated. But it was fun."
Michele K. Short/AMC/Sony Pictures Television Michael Mando as Nacho Varga on 'Better Call Saul'
MICHAEL MANDO (Nacho)
Michael Mando spent much time working on Nacho's legendary farewell speech in season 6's "Rock and a Hard Place." But he chooses a scene much earlier in his struggles with the cartel — that study in tension when he searches for the right moment to swap out Hector's heart medication pills in hopes of killing him in season 3's "Slip." (Alas, when Mark Margolis' Hector does collapse, Gus surprisingly saves his rival to keep him alive so he can exact his own revenge when the time is right.) "To me, that pill switching is equivalent of the Al Pacino scene in The Godfather when he murders the police chief and the mafia boss in the restaurant," says Mando. "And the reason why I say that is because it's a moment in Nacho's life that is so monumental. If he fails, it's immediate death for him and his whole family. And in that particular moment, he becomes his own man. And he embarks on this journey that he can never turn back from."
Viewers saw Nacho fastidiously rehearse this high-stakes sleight of hand the previous night. During the command performance, the moments of truth/deception are two quick flashes of action — plus some on-the-fly pill counting and swapping in between — and the sequence required a lot of plotting by Mando & Co. "If you look at it, there's not a lot of words that's being said, but there's a tremendous amount of beats that are happening," explains Mando. "There's a lot of things going on. You can feel it as an actor. It's a long scene, and I think it's almost a whole act dedicated to that moment. You know inherently as an actor that this is an important moment, but when you read it, you go, 'He just switches the pills and that's it.' It happens literally within two meters with two people and no guns, no nothing. It's all psychological. It's a monumental feast because you're going, 'On paper it doesn't feel like much, but on camera, it's this kind of epic moment and how do we capture that?'"
Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler on 'Better Call Saul'
RHEA SEEHORN (Kim)
Rhea Seehorn is torn between two scenes: Kim's almost breakup with Jimmy before asking him to marry her in season 5's "Wexler v. Goodman" — and then the actual breakup in season 6's "Fun and Games" that occurred in the wake of the Howard tragedy. "They both were very, very tricky, very challenging," she says. "And it was important that the emotions there be authentic, but not take over the scene. Many, many, many different nuanced ways to do those scenes." The painful severing of their relationship required a meticulously choreographed dance of rising and falling emotions: "Bob and I were running it at the home that we shared, as we always do, a gazillion times and realized not only is it loaded, it has really infinite possibilities about how it could be played," she says. "Where it is a hot argument. Where it is defensive. Where it is quiet. When is it loving? When are you trying to let somebody off the hook versus pinning them to the mat? What do these two different dynamics look like?" It looked like one of the show's standout, heartbreaking scenes.
Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
JONATHAN BANKS (Mike)
Jonathan Banks always felt challenged when he had to rattle off technical information as Mike. "When I'm just doing exposition, I want to chew my arm off and it doesn't come to me easily," he notes. The actor also recalls the more physical rigors of filming the final moment in Jimmy and Mike's desert adventure in season 5's "Bagman": A broken Jimmy walks into the road as bait for an ominously approaching vehicle while Mike lies in wait and sets his sights on the threat. "Taking the sniper rifle and getting it up there and laying against the rock — anytime you have to lie down against boulders, it's not that comfortable," he reports. "You gotta get that rifle set up there, and the rifle's heavy… But yeah, no, come on. 'I f---ing loved it.' It's just physical discomfort, that's all."
Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television Reed Diamond as David and Giancarlo Esposito as Gus Fring on 'Better Call Saul'
GIANCARLO ESPOSITO (Gus)
Better Call Saul saw Gus begin to ruthlessly mastermind all sorts of plans for his drug empire, but the scene that required the most thought for the man who plays him was much gentler. Yes, Giancarlo Esposito raises a glass to Gus' lengthy, flirty restaurant scene with David the sommelier (Reed Diamond). "I'm so used to walking into a room and controlling it," says Esposito. "And to be in that lounge and having to think about, 'How do I play Gus not like Gus anymore and have that moment of vulnerability?' To me, it's just not natural, you know what I mean? I found routes and different ways to control the chaos of any given situation. And I'm always inquisitive and ask a lot of questions. And then I judge them in my head and I breathe and I'm in my own brain, in my own body. I would have to say that scene was one of the most challenging."
Greg Lewis/AMC Patrick Fabian as Howard Hamlin on 'Better Call Saul'
PATRICK FABIAN (Howard)
It's small surprise that Patrick Fabian gravitates toward Howard's swan song, when the normally reserved corporate lawyer shows up at Jimmy and Kim's apartment to tell them that he's onto their scamming ways, only to wind up with a bullet in his head courtesy of Lalo. "At the end, all of a sudden it's chatty Howard," he says of his character's final stand. "After six seasons of one-liners, and listening to monologues, all of a sudden I've got everything to say all episode long. And I recognized how important it was and I didn't want to fail. I didn't want to let the writers or the show down. So that made me do a lot of thinking and meditation." Namaste, indeed.
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Better Call Saul co-creator Peter Gould on the finale's key moments
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