Walter White’s empire business is now permanently in New Mexico.
“Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan commissioned two statues of characters Walter White and Jesse Pinkman to be housed in Albuquerque, New Mexico in honor of the Emmy-winning AMC series. Bryan Cranston portrayed high school teacher turned meth maker White, with Aaron Paul starring as White’s business associate, surrogate son, and drug dealer. “Breaking Bad,” which concluded in 2013, spurred the Netflix film “El Camino” and AMC’s prequel spin-off series “Better Call Saul,” centered on the origins of Bob Odenkirk’s cracked attorney.
“Over the course of 15 years, two TV shows and one movie, Albuquerque has been wonderful to us,” Gilligan said in a press release. “I wanted to return the favor and give something back.”
The bronze statues will be donated to the city of Albuquerque by Gilligan and Sony Pictures Television. The sculptures are set to be on display at the Albuquerque Convention Center in July.
“We also appreciate that the statues will be indoors, and therefore protected from pigeons depositing their critiques on our heads,” actors Cranston and Paul joked in a joint statement.
Spin-off “Better Call Saul” recently landed multiple Emmy nominations, including nods for lead actor Odenkirk and supporting actress Rhea Seehorn, plus a nomination in the Outstanding Drama Series category. “Better Call Saul” wraps up its final season in 2022, with Odenkirk relating to Cranston’s intense performance in “Breaking Bad.”
“I always used to scoff and roll my eyes at actors who say, ‘It’s so hard.’ Really? It can’t be,” Odenkirk told The New York Times of taking on a dramatic role. “[But] the truth is that you use your emotions, and you use your memories, you use your hurt feelings and losses, and you manipulate them, dig into them, dwell on them. A normal adult doesn’t walk around doing that, going, ‘What was the worst feeling of abandonment I’ve had in my life? Let me just gaze at that for the next week and a half, because that’s going to fuel me.'”
Odenkirk added, “It gave me great sympathy for someone like James Gandolfini, who talked about how he couldn’t wait to be done with that character, and I think Bryan [Cranston] said similar things: ‘I can’t wait to leave this guy behind.’ I finally related to that attitude.”
