Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose in 2008 the Cable Network a. M. C. Took a chance on a television approximate fixed by xfiles writer Vince Gilligan it was about a middle aged chemistry teacher diagnosed with terminal canneser who turned to cooking crystal meth to provide for his family. Five years and countless awards later the gamble paid off big time. Breaking bad is widely considered one of the great a dramas in the history of television. This year it was nominated for 13 emmy awards including outstanding drama. On sunday august 11 breaking bad returns to a. M. C. For its final eight episodes. Here is a teaser to those episodes. 2 w w. What do you figure that as . Woodrow wilson . Walter white . Willy wonka. Im scared because of you. How many more people are going to die because of us. What are you going to do to stop it . Say my name. Eisenberg. Youre damn right. Rose joining me now brabs creator Vince Gilligan and three of the shows stars and emmy nominees. Aaron paul, anna gunn and the man who plays walter white himself, Bryan Cranston. Im very pleased to have them at this table. Welcome. Great to have you here. This is something. Indeed. Rose take me back to when you first had the idea for this. I was coming off of seven years writing for the t. V. Show the xfiles. That was a wonderful job. That was a close second as far as great jobs go to breaking bad. This one has to take the cake. But i was talking to a good buddy of mine who i went to n. Y. U. Film school with and he and i had written together on the xfiles and we were bemoaning the fact that we couldnt get another great t. V. Job. Rose laughs that life was over. And we talked about being greeters at walmart because maybe wed be good at that. And he read an article in the New York Times about some children who had gotten sick from a meth lab that their mother put in their bathroom. I dont know what the particulars were but my friend tom joked in his dark humored way that maybe we should build our own meth lab in the back on an r. V. And drive around and make money on the side while were in between film jobs. And youd have to know him. We have an idea. Suddenly this idea goes book and pops into my head for this character who at this point i do not have a name for who would do such a fact. A character who became known as walter white. But i think really what was going on at the time was i was about to turn 40 years old, back in 2005 or so, and reverse engineering looking back in hindsight on it i think i was really interested in writing a story about a guy having the worlds worst midlife crisis as i was probably about to embark upon my own. Rose so you had an idea, then you pitched it. And you pitched it as mr. Chips becomes scar face. Its always good to have a one sentence pitch when you talk to the powers that be and the basic franchise, the basic idea for the show was to take the protagonist and turn him into the antagonist good guy to bad guy. Which seemed somewhat fresh and original to me. So the pithy pitch, as it were, were mr. Chips into scar face. Luckily it was rose sf. Rose it didnt sell to everybody. Some people said not right for us. Which is very often the case to be fair. Any t. V. Show, any movie youve ever seen that youve loved or hated most likely had a history behind it of 10 or 0 or 30 people saying know before that person the right place at the right time said yes. Rose let me go to the next thing you have to do is casting. You need a walt white. So what was in your mind . This man was right here in my mind. I was very fortunate to have worked with Bryan Cranston in about 1999 on the xfiles. We had a tricky to cast ektor. That was two hander. Agent mulder had to be riding for a car in a car for 45 minutes straight with a bad guy holding a gun to his head and being very nasty and repellent and antisemitic and a nauseating character who nonetheless when he expired at the end of the hour the audience needed to feel sympathy for him. To feel sad for his demise. And it was very hard to cast that. Very easy to find very scary bad guy actors in hollywood. But to find the packages who could embody nastiness and yet also have some sort of underlying core of humanity that could show through intermittently when the moment called for it, very tricky and bryan came in, i didnt know him from adam, i didnt realize id already seen him in saving private ryan and from the earth to the moon and seinfeld because hes such a chameleon and he came in and just nailed it and as soon as he walked out of the room i looked to the other producers and said o. T. W. Which is trade speak for off to wardrobe. And lo and behold he was great and i wanted to work with him in the future and the moment came. Rose and the moment came. You got a script . I got a script from my agency that said you know Vince Gilligan, he wrote the episode of xfiles that you were in. I thought oh, great, breaking bad, i wasnt familiar with the title, i didnt know that it was a colloquialism and first page pair of trousers falling from the sky, bright blue, the red rock hitting the dirt. Out of control r. V. Runs into it. Interior r. V. , a man in Tighty Whitey underwear and a respirator drives madly next to him another man is passed out also in a respirator. He looks behind him, theres two dead bodies sliding up and back and a sea of chemicals and glass. That was page one. laughter i was getting nervous. So he got you right away and i just blasted through the entire script, i was overwhelmed by far it was the best drama pilot i ever read and called my agents right away and i said when is this scheduled in and they said we have it next wednesday or tuesday, Something Like that. This week, this week. You have to get me in this week. A script like that is like catnip, you scratch it and you want it and i said ive got to go in there because i know theyre going to go after this as soon as they read this. And i wanted to go in and mark my territory with the man. Rose skyler, tell me who she is and how you felt when you first saw the script and what you could do with it. Well, i had the same feeling as bryan. It gripped me and i immediately i was i had just had my second child five months before and i was sick and my friend sharon, our wonderful casting director sharon she was trying to get know come in for it and i was so tired being a new mom. I had another child as well and i canceled a couple of appointments and she called me at home and said what is wrong with you . laughter and i said im sorry. Rose thats what you want a friend to do. She said sit down and read the script right now. And i said all right. And i got off the phone and read it and i closed it and i said that is by far the best script i think ive ever read in my life. And i called her back and said ill be in tomorrow. laughter and so i went i went in and i just thought it was extraordinary and i called vince to talk about the character of skyler because there wasnt a huge amount about her in the pilot and i just wanted to know a little bit more about her and vince said to me one line. He said she will be carmella soprano but she will be in on the crime. Rose wow. laughter rose transformation in character and all that. Absolutely. And she starts off, you know, in one place and i knew that she would go to that place and i thought i dont know how it will happen, when, where, and i dont care and im in for that ride and it was rose a five year ride. A brilliant five year ride. Rose i should explain aaron, you did not get the dress memo for this interview, did you . No, im so sorry. I was a phoner and i looked i had a suit laughter hes aaron hall i had a nice tie picked out. I really i apologize. Rose well, were pleased to have you just the way you are. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Rose so tell me about jessie and a sense of your own connection to this. You know, im with everybody else, when i got breaking bad said to me i read it and it was hands down the best id ever read. I went in and my first meeting was with vince and our wonderful cast of directors. We just i had actually done an episode of xfiles years ago and thats where we first connected and tom wrote that particular episode. So it was very much a warm room walking into this meeting and the pilot i just saw jesse as kind of just the burnout drug give. And i didnt see much more. As the series went on, more and more layers were rose you were worried at one time you might not make it past year one. Right, that was the plan, i think. Year one we were not going to have jesse around so thank god you change your mind. Rose so thats how it goes. You see how characters make your place and you say you cant peel them off. Absolutely true. Sarin a prime example of an actor that is too good to kill off. Not that there was ever an intention to kill off walter or skyler, but its wonderful in television, this wonderfully collaborative medium how much the actors bring to it, how much the crew brings to it from the director of photography on down, the directors obviously the writers, all these people get together and we writers, my six writers on the show, the seven of us together learned about these characters from the actors as much as anything. Layers of complexity as aaron just said. Essentially jesse was a bit of a drug give burnout and not much more in my initial gript but these layers of complexity get added to the characters in large part once the writers get to know the actors and know who they are and what theyre capable of in our situation blessed with these these actors have the range of pag nebny, these paganini. These amazing ranges. Rose we have good scripts, great actors yet a series like this has to have something else. Whats made it considered one of the Great Television dramas thats made an interesting antihero that rivals what happened in the so pran knows with tony soprano . Well, from my standpoint this has never happened before in the history of television. Usually television is about stasis where you come to depend on consistency in a character and theres comfort in that. And theres no theres room for that. Theres much more complex toy these characters. Conflict. And when vince told me in that first meeting that he wanted to take the character because in the script it doesnt indicate how long hes going to go on this binge. For all i know, this was it and he got scared and went back to teaching after that pilot episode. Didnt know. But he told me he wanted to take this character and make a good person into a bad person completely change his the way he operates by the end of the series and i thought i dont believe thats ever happened before. Rose the character has to have his same identity. Its a good rule of thumb in television historically that you you rose suggesting rules ought to be broken. Well, yes. After how many millions of hours of television weve had since the creation of the medium Marshal Dylan is the same person in gun smoke in every episode. Which is what you want. But i figured there was room in the medium for sort of a new way to take it. A new paradigm, a new opportunity to have a somewhat more finite and limited series. Although admittedly when it started i didnt know how long it would go but when you turn the good guy into the bad guy it suggests an a to z story telling that then has a finite ending. Rose this question always comes up and has come up in the conversation between you and me. When did walt go bad . Very good question. Completely open to interpretation station. Anyone elses take on it is just as valid as mine. I i think we have a little difference of agreement on this which i like. For my money it was not in the First Episode when he actually dipped his toe into criminalalty and even, in fact, killed a guy. It wasnt in the second episode when he killed his second rose how do you define that . Thats not bad rose happens to a lot of people i know. laughter there are kids watching at home my best answer is episode four of this season in which walt is presented with the deus ex machina moment in which former friends of his who are now very rich billionaire we never exactly know what it is precisely that they do, but they were just as brilliant in science as walt is and theyve gone on to Great Success creating a fortune 500 company and they find out through skylers intervention that walt is suffering from cancer and rose terminal cancer. Terminal cancer. And in purposefully deus ex machina fashion they come forth and say were going pay for the best of care, the best of oncology care, were going to get you well as humanly possible were going to do this for you. Were going to give you a job, make you complete and well and whole. And walt at the end of the hour says thank you very much but no. And he goes to Jesse Pinkman who at that moment he was on the outs with and he says lets cook. And thiss the moment for me rose hes engaging in fulltime participation in criminal activities. Because thats the moment that puts the lie to that begins to put the lie to this idea that walter white does what he does solely for his family. And thats the moment where he truly for me and i think for my writers he truly became interesting. Because before that you put its relatively easy to put a character under the box story wise and say, well, the old thing about the former special forces guy whos whose kids get kidnapped and so that hell go kill the president and hes got to go kill the president to save his kids. You know, those kind of wellworn kind of mechanistic mechanical story telling tropes are interesting and theyve made for a darn good story but really when walt does what he does, thats when i found it more intriguing. Rose and you think it came earlier. Oh, yeah. I think in response to that i would think that had he not already gone down that slippery slope that he may have accepted their care. But he had already turned to me. Any time person attempts to become someone theyre not for financial gain, whether its altruistic, hes going to take that money and give it to his family, hes still compromising his ethics in morality and he made a devil of a deal. He a faustian deal, really. And i think its that first step. Its almost imperceptible because you sympathize with what hes going through and you wonder i wonder if i would do the same thing. So you may not recognize that that is the step he cant hide the spiral of descent. The slippery slope or whatever it is. So tell me about skyler. How did you see what she goes through . Its been interesting of my learning about her. In the beginning it was hard for me to understand what was happening with her. We saw a pilot reading in los angeles last week and it was the first time that i had seen the pilot or heard it since, i dont know, probably in five years and i got tv point of view on skyler and walt and that relationship that also were almost revelatory to me in that they werent miserable, they loved each other they just life dealt them curveballs and dealt them things that they werent prepared for. They thought that life was going to be different. They had a child with special needs, he was working two jobs. Theyre a middleclass rose you do what you have to do. You do what you have to do to get by and they were putting their nose to the grindstone and trying to get through. And the way skyler was trying to get through things, she was a very, very practical, strong person. And the way she dealt with life was to order and manage and control everything and shes somebody whose emotions dont come up to the surface. Shes somebody who pushes them down even to herself. She doesnt allow them to come up because theyre too scary for her. And my back story that i created with her in terms of the thing with her relationship with marie is that is that she and marie only have each other. Their parents, i think we discussed that as well. So marie and skyler had each other as sort of war buddies and skyler had to be kind of a mother figure marie and so she learned to be in charge very early. And that relationship and the pilot was that kind of relationship. She was in charge in that household and there is something sort of controlling in that but its not in any bad way, she doesnt mean it to be controlling. Its just how she copes. Its how people try to deal with internal turmoil. And so when she gets into the whole thing, when its revealed that hes cooking drugs. When its revealed that all these things are going on she tries to deal with everything by saying okay then how do i go into action . Rose how do ill do with my reality . She doesnt sit and cry. She doesnt wring her hands, she says what do i do . And thats how she moves forward. I love the fact that vince made her a woman with a backbone of steel and it made viewers sometimes really upset. It made them angry. It made her a polarizing figure. And they didnt understand or like her for that sometimes because they felt like she was nagging. That felt like she was getting in the way. laughter they felt like she was getting in the way of yeah, they felt like she was getting rose so, aaron, the interesting thing about jesse is that hes a guy who has friends and hes a guy who develops relationships. His young friends, then mike, then walt. Thats the most interesting thing about the character to me. Yeah, i see it as hes in constant search of something, guidance and also acceptance. At first, you know, when we meet jesse i saw him as just kind this kind of fumbling idiot. Almost like a comic relief in a way. But throughout the show you see that he didnt come from a battered home. Thats not why he is doing what hes doing. He had a he grew up in a nice with a nice family and maybe a little bit too much pressure put on him. His parents gave up on him long ago and so now hes just floating around and he just wants hes desperately in need of guidance and so he turns to walt, i think, really as a father figure in a way and he just wants he wants him to kind of see him as he really is. He just wants acceptance and love, really. Which is just so sad in a way. Rose how do you explain fact that walt is what he is yet the audience wants him if not to win to succeed. I dont know that i dofr a good job of explaining it well. Rose well, maybe that should be everybodys interpretation. This antihero is not cary grant jewel thief. Well, that is true. And hes not robin hood. And hes not he is closer rose hes scarface, as youve said. He is closer to scarface. Actually, i think walter white would be scared and repelled by scarface. We saw a scarface character in our first season but walt dealt with him using his brains rather than his brawn. I first of all we were lucky that a wonderful show like the sopranos requests paved the way for antiheroes. Rose would the success of breaking bad have happened without that . Somebody had to be first to get antiheroes out there but having said that i dont know if it would have been breaking bad if we were talking 1999 again and it was if it was up a