Bob Odenkirk On How ‘Accidentally Being The Right Guy’ Brought Him From Comedy to Drama by Liz Shannon Miller (Indiewire)

It was Odenkirk’s first big Breaking Bad scene, though, that led to the idea of Saul beyond a one-off character — it’s something Gould told IndieWire about in 2015, calling out a very specific moment in the action:

There was a moment that told me that there was more to Saul, and basically what happens in the scene is he walks in and there’s a cop interviewing his client. And he more or less chases the cop out, ‘You can’t talk to my client without me! Go get a juicebox, baby face!’ And then the cop leaves, and Bob added this little moment where he takes this little breath like ‘Whew, I’m glad I got away with that,’ and then he gets down to business with Badger. At that moment I knew, well, there’s more to this guy than I thought. He is not just a slickster, there is an inner life to him.

Two years later, Odenkirk’s reaction to that observation was a bit stunned. “What a neat thing to notice,” he said. “That’s pretty cool. I guess if there was any way to characterize that, potentially — I don’t want to speak for Peter, but it suggests that Saul’s bravado is a front, and he has to make an effort to put that front on, and as a result it means he’s a person making a choice that isn’t entirely organic to his entirety of his being.”

Better Call Saul by Oscar E. Alonso in Florida