Editor Lynne Willingham talks with AMCtv.com about her Emmy nomination for Breaking Bad's first episode and the brutal beating that just had to be the finale.

Q: How did you get involved with Breaking Bad?

A: Vince Gilligan and I had worked together on The X-Files for five years, and I was lucky enough to do a couple of things he had directed. We just had a really nice working relationship -- if you're lucky to have a relationship with a director when you're an editor you have a shorthand and it makes things all that much quicker. You're not learning each other, you can get into their head with them, and take it one step further and create a project together. Vince is so good that if you're lucky enough to get a call from him, you make it work.

Q: What in your mind makes the Breaking Bad pilot unique?

Continue reading "Q&A - Lynne Willingham (Editor)" »

The star of Breaking Bad took a moment from production of the second season in Albuquerque to discuss his Emmy nomination and his hopes for the future of Walt White.

Q: Congratulations on the Emmy nomination. That's wonderful news.

A: Thank you! If you think it's wonderful, how about from my point of view? You just do your work and go along and then someone taps you on the shoulder and says, "Hey guess what," and then you can honestly be surprised and happy about it. And you know, it would be great to win. It would be wonderful for the show, and hopefully that would translate to allowing us to be on the air for a few more years and to tell our story.

Q: How do you feel sharing the nomination ticket with Mad Men's Jon Hamm?

Continue reading "Q&A - Bryan Cranston (Walt White) on the Emmys and Season 2 of Breaking Bad" »

When two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer John Toll (Braveheart, Legends of the Fall) read Vince Gilligan's pilot for Breaking Bad, he decided to return to television for the first time in nearly 20 years. Not surprisingly, his work on the first episode has garnered him an Emmy nomination. He shares his experience launching the show in AMC's exclusive interview.

Q: How did you get involved with Breaking Bad?

A: I've known Vince for quite a while. I met him through [Executive Producer] Mark Johnson and really liked him and thought he had great ideas -- he had a unique style, sort of dark and irreverent humor, but not offensively so. Then out of the blue he sent me this script for Breaking Bad and he came to visit me to talk about a look. Vince had been talking about an interesting style where the whole story takes place in the Southwest. I wasn't sure I wanted to do it because I hadn't done television for a long time and at first I thought I might be out of touch with it. But we started talking about a visual style that was rich in contrast and stark. I've got a library with all kinds of visual reference materials, so I pulled some off the shelf and we started looking through it, and within a half hour we were talking about when I would come to New Mexico with him and start looking at locations .

Q: Did that style carry over to the actual shoot?

Continue reading "Q&A - John Toll (Cinematographer)" »

Raymond Cruz talks about the inner workings of Breaking Bad's most volatile character then deconstructs a beat-down in AMC's exclusive interview.

Q: You're on this show called Breaking Bad, and you're definitely the baddest dude on it. How does that feel?

A: Yeah. I have to out-break Bryan Cranston. It's a big bad breaking contest. It's a challenging character, not easy at all. That's the reason I wanted to do it. I'm not going to make a judgment and say Tuco is out of his mind, but his parameters are definitely a lot further out there than other people's. To try to pull this character off, it's such a high energy level. It's not necessarily fun, it hurts, man. You get drained physically, emotionally and mentally. You get exhausted just doing one scene. There is no finesse. And I'm not that kind of person at all. I'm pretty quiet and easy-going.

Continue reading "Q&A: Raymond Cruz (Tuco)" »

Series composer Dave Porter uncovers the geographical influences on his music and his uncanny ability to predict the season's ending through sound.

Q: It feels as though the Southwest is a big influence on the score.

A: Definitely.

Q: Have you spent much time in the desert?

A: I actually haven't, outside of a few solitary journeys to Joshua Tree. But that plays into how I feel about the desert. I'm an East Coast kid, and what I love about the use of the desert in the show is that it seems so beautiful, and yet so inhospitable and alien at the same time. It's similar to how I feel about the ocean. It's an easy conduit to internal self-examination because you're forced to go there by the magnitude of what you're surrounded by.

Continue reading "Q&A: Dave Porter (Composer)" »

Emmy-award nominated cinematographer Reynaldo Villalobos (who also shot Risky Business) talks about shooting bright vistas and dank basements for AMC's exclusive interview.

Q: How did you enjoy shooting Breaking Bad?

A: It's a funny question you say "enjoy" because that's my work. When you're working you don't enjoy you're working. You're just always solving problems and trying to make the lighting fit the story, etc. Enjoyment never comes until maybe months later and you look at the product and go, "Oh yeah, that worked," or "Man, that didn't work."

Q: Was it intimidating to take over for Oscar-winning cinematographer John Toll, who shot the pilot?

A: No. He's a friend of mine. We used to work together so we came from the same place. And I know exactly what he's doing when I look at the show, and I do the same thing. We have the same way of looking at things already. So I just looked at it, great, and then you're off and running. Theoretically you're kind of doing the same things, but then the show is changing, so you've gotta change with it. The harder part is that pilots usually have twice as much time to shoot. So you try to maintain the quality with less time.

Continue reading "Q&A: Reynaldo Villalobos (Cinematographer)" »

Director Adam Bernstein has worked in comedy (Scrubs and 30 Rock) and drama (HBO's Oz) so he was the perfect choice for the gnarliest (and arguably funniest) episodes of Breaking Bad. He details the experience in AMC's exclusive interview.

Q: How was your experience directing Breaking Bad?

A: I have to say that was probably one of the more interesting experiences I've had working in TV. But I knew it was going to be really interesting going in because I had worked with Vince, and he is such an incredibly original guy. He's so funny and he blends suspense and dark humor and a certain amount of humanity -- it's all kind of mixed in with the same stew. And the other thing I love about his writing is that he's an incredibly visual writer. I feel guilty saying it but as a director it's an amazing advantage to have someone who writes that visually, because there are going to be all these fun moments and fun shots that he's actually crafted into the script. It's not that I'm lazy, but if someone is actually giving me that much to work with and it's all completely appropriate to the material, of course I'm going to use it.

Continue reading "Q&A: Adam Bernstein (Director of Episodes 2 and 3)" »

Anna Gunn talks about wearing a prosthetic pregnancy outfit and shares her secret desires for Skyler to "break bad" in AMC's exclusive interview.

Q: How do you see your character?

A: I think that Skyler is grounded and she's tough and smart and she's driven. She has run the White household, she has devoted herself to Walt and to the raising of Walt, Jr. But I think that she has plans beyond taking care of the household that she would like to pursue, and one of those happens to be the eBay scheme that's introduced early on, and the other thing is that she's a writer. And I think that's her biggest dream -- I think she really deep down yearns to be an artist and to be creative and productive. Everybody in the show has a shadow side and has darker sensibilities, and she certainly does, and we just haven't seen what those are. And I'm really excited to see where her "breaking bad" comes and what happens with that, because she's got complexities and dreams and hidden secrets that would be so rich to explore.

Continue reading "Q&A: Anna Gunn (Skyler White)" »

Breaking Bad's music supervisor Thomas Golubic talks about finding the perfect song and Walt's secret room for listening to R&B.

Q: How did Gnarls Barkley end up premiering a song for the finale?

A: I went to Sundance for a DJ gig and bumped into a friend. He mentioned in passing that he had just finished work on the new Gnarls Barkley record -- I didn't even know there was a new Gnarls Barkley record. So I basically reached out to the Gnarls Barkley management and ended up getting a copy of two tracks way way before the release. One of them was "Who's Gonna Save My Soul." And when I heard it, I thought: My God, the lyrics are absolutely perfect. We needed something that was going to end the series on a big note and really capture that feeling of Walt and Jesse having just got into something really really deep. It was like the heavens dropped the song in my lap.

Q: Do you ever hear a song and think: I have to get it in the show?

I'm very wary of falling in love with a song and being convinced it should go in the show. I hear songs where I think "Oh that's completely Walt", or "That's something Jesse would have," but there are many different flavors in this show. A lot of the music doesn't effect Walt or Jesse -- music of the outside world, whether it's the shoe store or the clothing store -- it's very pretty and a little bit numbing. It's very easy, soft, a solipsistic quality to the world outside of them. The world outside is a drugged up world of its own. Everything's a little bit too slick and too pleasant. Then you have this world of Walt and Jesse, which is ragged and bursting with awkward enthusiasm. It's the dichotomy of the two different worlds.

Continue reading "Q&A: Thomas Golubic (Music Supervisor)" »

After the live chat on Sunday, March 9, Bryan Cranston stuck around to answer more of your Breaking Bad questions. SPOILER ALERT: Some questions refer to later parts of the season.

Kathy55: Happy belated birthday!
Bryan: Thank you Kathy55. Yeah I just had a birthday on Friday [March 7]. Wasn't a big birthday, just went with my family up the coast and spent the weekend there. We just got back to Los Angeles, so I'm ready for my next job. No turkey bacon, thank God.

Moviegirl365: I love the fact they treat Walt's son normally even though he has cerebral palsy! Having the disease myself, that is awesome! Thanks to the writers and Bryan!
Bryan: I think that's really important. The actor who plays my son, RJ Mitte, has terrific instincts, great presence, he's a nice kid and he happens to have CP in real life. And we treat him on the set like we would any other actor. We don't give him special treatment, we give him the respect that we would give anybody. And that carries on into how the characters treat him on the show -- not with kid gloves, but with the expectation on him like any other teenage son: chores, homework, etc. And that was Vince Gilligan's idea and it's great.

Continue reading "Bryan Cranston Answers More Reader Questions" »