Jonathan Banks’ Breaking Bad character, Mike Ehrmantrout, is a central figure in the storyline, but the character was never intended for the AMC series. In fact, the character was only created after Bob Odenkirk, who plays the slippery and dodgy lawyer Saul Goodman, was unavailable due to a scheduling conflict.
Rhea Seehorn, who plays Kim Wexler in the Better Call Saul prequel series, revealed in a new interview with rich iron. She said the original plan was for Saul to come and clean up the mess after Kristen Ritter’s character Jane died of an overdose in season 2. But Odenkirk was filming the movie Nebraska at the time, he wasn’t. therefore not available. For this reason, the writers created the character of Mike Ehrmantrout, and the rest is history.
This change was for the better, according to Seehorn, as Saul was originally supposed to clean up the scene in a “cold and insensitive manner” and it would have marked the start of a new, darker path for the lawyer. “That was going to be where his character started going,” Seehorn said.
“[But] he just wasn’t available. So they created the character of Mike Ehrmantraut. Thank goodness!” Seehorn said. “And Jonathan Banks played [him] and now he’s invaluable to the show, that character. Besides, I’m so glad that wasn’t how we saw Saul. It would also have forever changed the way we see it.”
In Breaking Bad, Ehrmantraut is the muscle of the criminal enterprises of Gus Fring and Saul Goodman. He is eventually murdered by Walter White (Bryan Cranston) at the end of the Breaking Bad series. Fans of the character got to see him more in Better Call Saul, which further fleshed out his backstory.
As for Seehorn, she will star in Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan’s new TV series for Apple.
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