This interview includes spoilers for Season 5 of “Better Call Saul.”
Rhea Seehorn watches episodes of “Better Call Saul” when the AMC show’s audience does — on Monday nights. The actor, who over five seasons has expanded the tightly wound attorney Kim Wexler into a complex, simmering set of contradictions, could potentially watch the series far earlier, but she hasn’t considered it.
“It’s of course a bit excruciating at times to watch myself,” she said, laughing, over the phone last week. “But I’m a fan of everyone else’s work on it and I like watching it as a fan when it airs live.”
“It’s actually a show I don’t care to binge,” she added. “I like thinking about certain shows for a week, and this is one of them.”
Seehorn (her first name is pronounced “Rae”) had not seen the season finale when we spoke (I had), so she hadn’t had a chance to absorb the dark turn Kim Wexler takes, or the threat that she and Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) may face next season — the show’s final one — when Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) returns from Mexico to avenge what he will likely see as a conspiracy against him. But she did relish the potential for her character to explore what she sees as one of the show’s core themes.
“The question of extrinsic versus intrinsic properties of people fascinates me,” she said. “You can no longer just say, ‘Oh, Jimmy was a bad influence on Kim.’ It’s just way too simple for the story they’re writing.”
In an interview, Seehorn discussed Season 5, Kim’s surprising moral swerve and the show’s most recalcitrant performer. (Spoiler alert: It’s a fish). These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
There was palpable sadness for the first half of the season because it looked as if the relationship between Jimmy and Kim was dissolving in slow-motion. But you’ve said she is just trying to figure out who Saul is, and there are moments later in the season, especially when he’s lost in the desert, when you see elements of love.
You also see it in small moments: when she’s watching Jimmy make his commercials at the nail salon, and she knows she needs to tell him, “We’re not going to do this anymore.” She still enjoys watching him flourish in whatever he’s good at. I loved the moment where she’s considering asking him to help with Everett Acker [Barry Corbin], and she wants to go and see him practice as Saul Goodman for the first time because she doesn’t know how that person practices law. I have to remind myself that Kim has not seen “Breaking Bad”; that’s not the picture she has in her head.
She’s navigating. She’s trying to figure out: “Who is this new persona that you’re bringing into the relationship? Do you plan on being Saul Goodman 24 hours a day? Where are you going with this?” I admire that part of Kim, how she looks at things pragmatically instead of having a sweeping emotional response. Unfortunately, that is sometimes a bad thing, when she keeps compartmentalizing and trying to find a way to think her way out of emotional situations.
The third episode starts with an almost-silent beer bottle scene and ends with a completely silent one. And in the first one, there is what you were witnessing: She’s looking at him like a specimen and kind of holding back, and he’s trying to reach her and she’s unreachable. But then you see that there is great love in the silent scene at the end. At that moment, she’s thinking, “I still know the man that’s under whatever this is.” And she’s still in love with that. It’s like, your partner has decided a very bizarre different road to take. I think we’ve all been in situations where you’re not ready to throw out your whole relationship, but you are closely watching what this change means.
For Kim, the romantic side of their relationship seems to come alive when being with Jimmy allows her to rebel. At the end of the finale, they start coming up with this plan to ruin Howard (Patrick Fabian), and then the next shot they’re in bed together.
I have enjoyed tracking over the seasons this idea: I don’t think it’s just that she loves the dangerous side of Jimmy — I think she enjoys also being dangerous at times, and to let go a little bit. And it’s happening more and more at the same time she is learning that following the rules does not seem to get the righteous result, either. She was trying to follow the rules so that the good guy won, so that she could help people. But there was also a level of control that I think Kim seeks constantly, to be able to decide who gets what.
She has a lot of idealistic thoughts about the little guy getting stepped on. She doesn’t like the Kevin Wachtells of the world and the Howard Hamlins. She has serious problems with people who haven’t earned their own way. You could say a lot of things about Jimmy, but he has definitely worked his ass off. Everything he has, he got himself, and she has too. I think that they connect on that.
One of the things that was really fun to play was when she ends up doing an imitation of Kevin Wachtell [Rex Linn]. That, to me, was him trying to encourage her to enjoy what she’s doing. She is struggling mightily with the fact that she knows it is legally wrong, and Jimmy is asking her to enjoy it, that it’s fine as long as the result is the right thing. It doesn’t matter how you got there. I liked that scene so much for what it says about them as a couple. I think they do know each other in ways that they’re afraid to say out loud.
The very last scene with the two of them turns their dynamic on its head. Jimmy is the one who always takes things too far, and when it becomes clear that Kim is willing to go further than he could have ever imagined, he’s scared by it.
It remains to be seen whether Kim was completely sincere and has reached some sort of boiling point. Is this a new side of her, or a side of her that’s always been there that she’s been suppressing? It’s a very magnified version of when we get defensive when people think they know us and we’re like: “You don’t know me. I’m sick of everyone telling me who I am.” That great scene with Howard Hamlin, also in the finale, where she blows up — there is something about her continually being put in a box, and told what she is and what she isn’t, that she doesn’t like.
On top of that, she can see that she’s going to lose the relationship. Jimmy is trying to say, “It’s too dangerous,” throughout those scenes by the end. She’s trying to say, “These are my choices.” And it’s sort of sad, but she’s also kind of owning the idea of, “I say if I’m ruining me.” Nobody’s sullying her. Nobody is making choices for her. She’s here, eyes wide open. I don’t know where we’ll go next as far as, is she baiting him, or daring him to imagine that he doesn’t know her? Or is she telling a truth that she’s never said out loud before?
Like “Breaking Bad,” the show incorporates incredibly creative camera work — shots inside vending machines or drainpipes, scenes shot from dramatic angles. Is the complex cinematography ever difficult to work with or within?
One thing that was making me laugh were the scenes [in Episode 9] where Kim is pacing, when Jimmy is in the desert and she’s terrified for him. [Thomas Schnauz, who wrote and directed the episode] really wanted to shoot with the fish coming across the lens, and every time the fish would go to the other side of the tank. And you had 100 people who were all trying to be very delicate, because you can’t tap on it and we don’t want to upset the fish by putting a big scoop in there. People were trying to say delicately, “Maybe put his food flakes on the left side …” and the second they said, “Action!” and I tried to walk — and I’m supposed to be close to tears — the fish would be like, “[expletive] all of you” and go back. [Laughs.]
In some scenes Kim is wound so tightly that her eyes are the only clues to how she’s feeling. How difficult is that to pull off, from a performance standpoint?
Kim’s greatest confidant in many scenes is the audience. Obviously she doesn’t know she’s in a TV show, but choosing not to speak, choosing not to let other people know what I’m thinking in the physical room — early on, I had so much of that, and the audience went on this ride with me. It reminds me of being onstage doing theater, when you have passages or scenes where you can feel the audience breathing with you. You can sit on a chair and stare straight out, and if you’ve taken them on the ride and you’ve built the car solid enough that they understand the world they’re in and the story that’s happening, they’ll sit with you.
[The showrunners, Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan], from the get-go, wanted me to trust that, and obviously I trust their scripts. So I literally just decide the thoughts she’s thinking and sometimes she’s playing two games at once — consciousness versus the subtext. I sometimes think, “Is this enough?” I’m acting but I’m showing nothing. She has a wryness and sometimes a sadness to her, but she’s also very powerful when she chooses to let people hang themselves, and she uses that as a weapon. But in these vulnerable moments with Jimmy, it’s so great that the directors and the writers have gotten us to a place where now we can earn those pauses for her being vulnerable as well. They can stay with me in those moments, too, and I have nothing to say. I’m just grateful that people are able to follow it.
So much of the show, and the whole “Breaking Bad” universe, examines the enjoyment we take in doing what people might think of as wrong. People have these hidden selves.
I think the audience is rewarded for sticking with that and thinking about those bigger questions while you’re watching it all unfold. Who are we? You are the summary of your choices, but how much is that affected by everybody you’ve ever met? How you were raised? What remains a pure property of anybody in the end? Because if there are multiple selves, who’s to say which ones are the authentic ones?
Source: Television - nytimes.com
