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      ‘House of the Dragon’ Will Revisit Westeros, Not Reinvent It

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      Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik, the showrunners of the “Game of Thrones” prequel, discuss its fealty to the original and the new politics of brothel scenes.A few years ago, Miguel Sapochnik thought he was done with “Game of Thrones.”“I’m unfortunately caught on tape on the very last day of shooting,” he recalled recently, “surrounded by burning Westeros and hundreds of people covered in blood, saying, ‘This was great; I hope I never come back again.’”And yet, here we are and here he is. On Sunday, the franchise returns to HBO with “House of the Dragon,” a prequel series set nearly 200 years before the original. Westeros isn’t burning, but there is plenty of blood, among other clear reminders that viewers are back in the deeply TV-MA world of HBO’s biggest-ever hit.So is Sapochnik. A director of many of the most spectacular “Thrones” installments, he is a showrunner on “Dragon” and directed several episodes, including Sunday’s series premiere. The other showrunner is Ryan Condal (“Colony”), who created the series with George R.R. Martin, the literary mastermind of the “Thrones” universe.Of the various proposals for “Thrones” spinoffs discussed and developed, “Dragon,” based on Martin’s prequel novel, “Fire & Blood,” was in many ways the safest choice, with obvious parallels with the original. (A pilot was shot for an earlier spinoff that was ultimately spiked by HBO and WarnerMedia, then the network’s corporate owner.)The series involves an earlier war for the Iron Throne waged largely among members of the ruling Targaryen dynasty, the ancestors of the dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen, played by Emilia Clarke in “Thrones.” The core cast includes Paddy Considine as King Viserys, the ruler of Westeros; Matt Smith as his tempestuous brother; Emma D’Arcy as the king’s headstrong daughter; and Olivia Cooke as a courtier at the center of things.The stakes are undeniable: As a test of viewers’ appetite for more Westeros stories, “Dragon” will perhaps determine whether “Thrones” can emerge as another lucrative pop-culture universe à la Marvel. (Several other “Thrones” shows are in development.)A few weeks ago, in a video interview shortly before the series’s world premiere in Los Angeles, Condal and Sapochnik broke down the new series, brothel scenes and domesticated dragons. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Why was this part of the “Game of Thrones” history the best basis for the first follow-up series?MIGUEL SAPOCHNIK The decision was kind of made for us: George really wanted to tell this story. Of all the stories that were kind of bandied around, it’s the closest one to the original show in tone. It deals with the Targaryens and their dynasty, so it’s accessible in that respect. It has more dragons in it. People will say they don’t like dragons and they’re not watching it for the dragons, but they do like the dragons, they help.RYAN CONDAL This one had the most resonance with the original series, when we see Daenerys after the fall of the empire. She’s running around the East relying on the kindness of strangers, or perhaps the greed of strangers who want to put her on the throne to enrich themselves. Her memory, the stories that she’s been told of the Targaryen height, the shining city on the hill — that’s this story.Matt Smith plays Prince Daemon, one of several Targaryens with their eyes on the Iron Throne.Ollie Upton/HBO creditIn what specific ways did you want to reflect the original series?SAPOCHNIK We wanted to replicate its success. That was first.Smart.SAPOCHNIK No, I mean, we need to be so lucky. We specifically set out to start the show as “Game of Thrones” and not to try and deviate. It seems very important that if you’re going to evolve beyond “Game of Thrones,” first you have to pay respect to it. Also it worked, so why try to reinvent it? But to just replicate the original show would be a big disservice to the story because we have what is effectively a soap-opera kind of quality to it. The perspective is the thing that’s different, in that it’s a female perspective.CONDAL There’s 172 years of history that happened between these two series. Much had to be the same because it’s still “Game of Thrones,” it’s still the same universe. But things also have to be different to communicate this massive passage of time. So those were the opposing forces that we were always weighing.What were some of the things that you didn’t want to replicate?SAPOCHNIK It’s a radically different world from what it was 10 years ago. Certainly our industry has changed and shifted substantially: The #MeToo movement came in, and then there was cancel culture, there was Black Lives Matter. Then Covid just slapped everything down.We have to reflect the changes in the world before us — not because somebody told us to, but because we actually feel like there’s a point. We’ve done that in front of and behind the camera. It’s actually really hard. Like, trying to find experienced female B camera operators — it’s a very specific thing you’re looking for, and they don’t get the opportunity, so they don’t get the experience. So you have to take on less-experienced people. Because otherwise we’re never going to break through this glass ceiling that we have.What about onscreen? For example, there’s a big brothel scene in the premiere, which is synonymous with “Thrones,” but that show also received plenty of criticism for its handling and overuse of sex and nudity. Was that a tricky balance to strike?SAPOCHNIK The problem in doing a brothel scene like they used to in “Game of Thrones” is what we would do is hire adult entertainment actors. Because that was the best way of getting people who understood what they were doing and there was no issue surrounding nudity and intimacy with other people, and then you would pair them up and film it. With the advent of intimacy coordinators and Covid, that’s no longer possible. So suddenly that simple brothel scene is far more complicated, and as a result, at some point you start going, “Well, why are we doing this?”Why did you decide to do it?CONDAL I mean, that scene is right out of the book. I don’t think we ever got that granular about the original show. It was more caring for the tone, the voice, the look and feel. We took the approach of this is a much more decadent period in time — it’s after a long period of peace, so people are wearing their wealth, they’re dressing in their house colors. That was more of the spirit we brought.This series is more immediately fantastical, with soaring dragons from the earliest moments. Do you worry about alienating the fantasy-ambivalent people who watched “Thrones” for its grittier aspects?SAPOCHNIK I would argue that we are standing on the shoulders of the previous show, which got people to see dragons as being part of this world. We had White Walkers, direwolves, giants, ice spiders, all that stuff. As this show progresses, the only bit of fantasy are the dragons and prophecy — and the dragons are kind of domesticated, they’ve got saddles. If anything, it’s probably more grounded.CONDAL If you can accept the dragons.SAPOCHNIK Yeah, exactly. Making those dragons feel real, especially in those opening scenes, is paramount. If you can’t crack that then you’re in trouble, because what you want people to do is say, “Oh, cool, they can do dragons,” and then move on.Are you nervous about the shadow that the conflicted reception to the end of “Thrones” will cast over your show?SAPOCHNIK Why would we be?CONDAL I don’t think so. It was such a generational event — people had a lot of expectation for where that series was going to end and what it was going to be. I think it was a grieving process for a lot of fans who had spent a decade with that particular story line. I think a lot of them struggled with having to say goodbye, and the response indicated how wide and strong that fan base is.Frankly, I think that grieving process probably led them to want to re-enter Westeros, even if they’re coming in sort of unsure: “Am I going to fall in love again only to get hurt when everybody’s dead and has to go away?” But we have an extraordinary gift because we have a pre-existing fan base, which did not exist when the show originally launched in 2011. That is certainly a responsibility, but I’d rather have it than not have it.SAPOCHNIK I went back and rewatched the whole show from start to finish, and you can see the setup for Dany’s turn early on. So that wasn’t surprising. I found it quite hard, when we were making it, that we had this weird epilogue happy ending.It wasn’t just the fans that were struggling with ending it. The people making it were struggling. It was their livelihood for a long time, and then suddenly they were coming to an end. Everyone hates endings. More

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      Himesh Patel on the Pandemic, Fatherhood and ‘Station Eleven’

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      Voting is underway for the 74th Primetime Emmys, and this week we’re talking to several acting nominees. The awards will be presented on Sept. 12 on NBC.“I’m a little bit of a nerd,” Himesh Patel warned.That was on a recent Tuesday evening, on a video call from a red-walled room in his London home. Dressed in a black Adidas T-shirt, with a pair of white stripes snaking down each shoulder, he looked less like a nerd than someone ready to take the field.That is, until he began breaking down strategies for hay and brick trade deals in the board game “Settlers of Catan.”“You’re all sort of trying to trick each other into trading the wrong thing,” said Patel, 31, in a British accent that would be shocking to anyone who had seen only his performance in the post-apocalyptic HBO Max drama “Station Eleven.” The role earned him his first Emmy nomination, for best lead actor in a limited series. His Chicago accent was flawless.Hay and brick trades … Sounds … riveting?“I know,” he said. “It sounds lame, but it’s really fun and there’s lots of strategy involved.”Patel played a different kind of settler on the HBO Max series “Station Eleven,” based on the book by Emily St. John Mandel, which follows the survivors of a devastating pandemic in their efforts to rebuild society — with art and community more than bricks and hay. When Patel’s character, a freelance writer named Jeevan, decides to take in an orphaned young actress, Kirsten (Matilda Lawler), he must also navigate the challenges of becoming a de facto parent.Like Jeevan, Patel was an understated presence on the show, and his nomination — the show’s sole acting nod among the seven it earned overall, including for writing, direction and score — came as a surprise to many, himself included. (He found out on a train ride to visit his parents in London).“I like it that way,” said Patel, who, like Jeevan speaks softly and slowly, weighing every word. “I’m not very good at being on the red carpet.”Patel grew up in Cambridgeshire in eastern England, the child of Indian parents who were both born in Africa. (“I was a child of two worlds,” said Patel, who grew up speaking Gujarati.) He characterized his cultural upbringing as a cross between Bollywood films and fantasy blockbusters like “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings.” (If he had not become an actor, he said, he likely would have been a computer modeler.)After spending his teenage years doing plays with a local youth theater, he got his first big break when he was cast in “EastEnders,” the long-running British soap opera, when he was 16. He dropped out of school, then spent nine years playing the role of Tamwar Masood from 2007 to 2016.More on the 74th Emmy AwardsThe 2022 edition of the Emmys, which celebrate excellence in television, will take place on Sept. 12 at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.‘The White Lotus’: Natasha Rothwell’s nomination for her portrayal of an underappreciated spa manager on the show is a pivotal moment for the actress, whose career began on the improv stage.‘Severance’: Christopher Walken and John Turturro, both nominated for best supporting actor in a drama, drew upon their years of friendship in the Apple TV+ techno-thriller.‘Dopesick’: Kaitlyn Dever is up for her first Emmy for her role as a young woman with an opioid addiction in the mini-series. As she prepared for the part, she sought to approach the role with the utmost sensitivity.Although “EastEnders” made him a star across the pond, American audiences began to notice him more when he landed the lead role in Danny Boyle’s 2019 musical romantic comedy “Yesterday,” in which he plays a struggling musician who suddenly becomes one of the few people in the world who remember the Beatles. Then he scored a role as the fixer Mahir in “Tenet” (2020), Christopher Nolan’s time-bending spy thriller.Even more recognize him now because of “Station Eleven” and his most recent film role: Playing the journalist love interest of Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) in Adam McKay’s star-studded 2021 disaster comedy “Don’t Look Up.”“If I’d told my 11-year-old self that, I think he would’ve been like, ‘Shut up, stop taking the piss out of me,’” he said, laughing.“Station Eleven” episodes did not begin airing until late last year, but Patel began work on the series in 2019, when the cast filmed the last shots of Episode 1, in which Jeevan and Kirsten leave the apartment and walk through the snow toward the lake, in Toronto, standing in for Lake Michigan, in Chicago. Then the pandemic sent them into lockdown. (They passed the time by playing board games over Zoom, with “Settlers of Catan” featuring heavily in the rotation.)“We didn’t change the story to try to make it feel more relevant,” Patel said. “But you could feel the influence of the pandemic creeping in.”Himesh Patel with Matilda Lawler in a scene from “Station Eleven.” Patel plays a freelance journalist who takes in an orphaned young girl as a pandemic rages.Parrish Lewis/HBO MaxThe show’s creator, Patrick Somerville, based the screen version of Jeevan on the character in Mandel’s novel, though he said he tailored the character to Patel’s acting style.“He has a stillness about him that was vital to the show actually working,” Somerville said in a video interview from outside the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, as Lake Michigan waves lapped in the background.“I’m the loudmouth of the group,” he added. But with Patel, he said, he learned that “one line — or no line — could carry the weight emotionally of a scene.”One particular scene in Episode 9, which wasn’t in the book, resonated deeply with Patel: A scene in a makeshift birth center, in which Jeevan becomes a birthing partner to a handful of women. The episode was filmed less than three months after Patel had watched his own wife give birth to their daughter.“I was in the early months of being a father and not knowing the ins and outs of how to do it when we shot that,” he said. “It was so easily accessible because I was going through it.”Lawler, who plays young Kirsten, said she saw a change in Patel after his daughter was born. “He had more of a fatherly presence” in their relationship, she said. (She had advice for him, too, she said: Learn how to braid hair, stat.)In a video interview from sleepaway camp in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, Lawler, who, as in the series, comes across as much older than her 13 years, said the bond between her and Patel was immediate and effortless — a chemistry that was reflected onscreen.“It’s a strange bond — we just naturally understood each other,” she said.She offered some other insights on Patel: He’s a great dancer. He’s fantastic at Ping-Pong. He’s “taller than I thought” and “absolutely not intimidating as a person.”“It’s disarming how inclusive he is,” she said. “He always made everyone feel really comfortable.”He is also, she confirmed, “kind of nerdy.”Hiro Murai, who was nominated for two directing Emmys this year — for the pilot of “Station Eleven” and for an episode of “Atlanta” — said he and Patel had a number of conversations about how to balance Jeevan’s emotional intimacy and the comedy, particularly in Jeevan’s relationship with Kirsten.“There’s something very funny about a guy who’s kind of a stunted adolescent trying to take care of this little girl who’s much older than him in spirit,” he said. “The humanity was the most important part, and the comedy had to come out of the character rather than leaning into situational jokes.”In the future, Patel, who recently wrapped shooting in Southport, N.C., on “Providence,” an indie murder-mystery comedy in which he stars alongside Lily James and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, would like to do more producing and potentially writing work, he said; one idea is for a series about the lives of the more than one million Indian soldiers who fought for the British Empire during World War I.“Those were a tumultuous few years in Britain in terms of identity and people understanding their cultural history,” he said, “There are lots of stories to help fill in.“What excites me,” he added, “is the opportunity to have so many brown actors in front of and behind the camera.” More

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      Mohammed Amer Is a Salad Bowl

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      Melting pot? The Houston comedian prefers a different analogy for himself. His new Netflix series, “Mo,” cocreated by Ramy Youssef, should help clarify.ALIEF, Texas — Mohammed Amer started up his black Mercedes and pointed to a corner across from Alief Middle School. The location was laden with meaning.“That’s where I learned to play the dozens,” he said as he turned out of the school parking lot, referring to the age-old game in which combatants insult each other’s mothers.“At first, I took it so personally,” said Amer, who emigrated from Kuwait when he was 9 years old: “‘How could you guys be talking like this to each other? What’s going on in America?’ Then I realized it was just a big bonding experience. And that’s what introduced me to comedy.”It’s a good time to be Amer, who goes by Mo, a Palestinian American comedian who grew up in this diverse, working-class Houston suburb. His new scripted series, “Mo,” premieres on Netflix on Aug. 24. He has a role in the upcoming action-fantasy movie “Black Adam,” starring Dwayne Johnson, who taped a spirited introduction to Amer’s most recent Netflix standup comedy special. A youthful 41, he is starting to reap the benefits of years spent busting his tail in the comedy world.But Alief will always be home, even if he currently lives a few miles away, in downtown Houston. It’s where he discovered how it felt to live in a community defined by its diversity — Black, Mexican, Vietnamese, you name it. To drive through Alief is to see tightly packed strip malls filled with the business equivalent of the United Nations: a Vietnamese restaurant next to a Mexican grocery store next to a Parisian bakery.Born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents, Amer was scared when he first got to the United States after his family fled Kuwait during the first Gulf War. But he quickly found friends from all over the world, and he never really left.He speaks English, Arabic and Spanish, as does his character on the new show, also named Mo. And he finds humor in the tensions that demarcate his various identities. On “Mo,” his girlfriend, Maria (Teresa Ruiz), is a Mexican American woman who runs a garage. (We drove by the inspiration for the shop, which is, indeed, owned by a Mexican American woman.) But he’s scared to commit, partially because of his low self-esteem but also because he knows his mother (played by the Palestinian Jordanian actress Farah Bsieso) won’t approve.Teresa Ruiz plays Mo’s girlfriend, Maria, a Mexican American woman who runs a garage. Rebecca Brenneman/NetflixWhen Maria takes him to confess at a Catholic church, he explains to the priest (played by the local hip-hop legend Bun B) that he is Muslim and the crucifixion iconography really freaks him out. Then he breaks down crying.“In many ways, Mo is the melting pot,” said Ramy Youssef, the Egyptian American star and creator of the Hulu comedy “Ramy,” who created “Mo” with Amer. Yousef also cast Amer in a supporting role on “Ramy,” as the owner of a diner.“Not to use a tired word, but he is very literally multicultural,” Youssef continued. Told of his friend’s analogy, Amer offered a correction: “I like salad bowl better than melting pot. Everybody loses their own identity in the melting pot. In a salad bowl, everything retains its original flavor.”Alief also has an above-average crime rate for the Houston area, a reality that finds its way into “Mo.” One moment, Mo is decrying the existence of chocolate hummus in a grocery store (“That’s a war crime”). The next, he is catching a stray bullet that grazes his arm. Uninsured, he goes to a sort of chop-shop doctor who stitches him up and gives him some lean, a potentially lethal mix of codeine cough syrup and soda, long popular in Houston’s hip-hop scene. (It was a factor in the overdose deaths of the Houston hip-hop favorite DJ Screw, as well as Pimp C, from nearby Port Arthur.) Mo battles a lean addiction throughout the first season.Amer wants to make one thing very clear: “I do not have a codeine addiction. I do not sip lean.” But, like his character, he did used to sell knockoff luxury goods from the trunk of his car, including fake Rolex watches.“There were a lot of drug dealers in the neighborhood that loved flashy stuff but didn’t want to necessarily spend 10 grand,” he said. “Everybody in Alief had a side hustle.” That included the woman in his old apartment building who sold frozen Kool-Aid pops for a quarter.To watch “Mo” and meet Amer is to wonder where the artist and his creation diverge. Many of the important details of the series are true to life. Amer was a child when he arrived in Alief with his family from Kuwait. His father, a telecom engineer, died of a heart attack soon after. And it took Amer 20 years to get asylum and U.S. citizenship, a process dramatized in the series, often humorously. Unhappy with his unreliable Palestinian lawyer, Mo switches to an American Jewish woman, Lizzie Horowitz (the Austin comedian and actor Lee Eddy), which mortifies his mom.From left, Lee Eddy, Farah Bsieso, Omar Elba, Cherien Dabis and Amer in a scene inspired by Amer’s experience waiting 20 years to get asylum and U.S. citizenship.NetflixAmer exudes a sense of authenticity, a quality that endears him to his cast. “He is so honest and genuine,” Bsieso said in a video call. “He doesn’t try to fake anything. He reaches the heart and soul of anybody who listens to him or watches him or works with him.”In his standup work and on “Mo,” Amer’s comedy is shot through with a sense of anxiety, sometimes playful, other times more serious. In his comedy specials, including last year’s “Mo Amer: Mohammed in Texas,” his voice rises in concern and even confusion whenever he addresses a sticky subject (Covid-19, his recent divorce). Mo is often flustered as he navigates his life in the series. Vulnerability is an essential part of his work.“Most of my life has been anxiety, and I think comedy is the way I’ve been able to channel it,” he said. “Standup has been a lifesaving thing for me. Standup allows the space for me to emote how I feel at any moment in time. With standup you spend most of your life getting better at it, but also trying to top yourself. Imagine a brick wall. Every time you go onstage, you chip away at the wall until eventually there’s nothing in front of you except the crowd.”Youssef sees the Mo of the series as a sort of alternative universe Amer.“I think a lot of the antics that happen in the show are daydreams of what would have happened if Mo hadn’t found comedy,” he said. “What if that wasn’t his path and that wasn’t what he was doing? Life is this fork, and you turn left or right. The fun thing about making a show is asking, ‘What if I went left?’ And then we get to write that.”Amer at his alma mater Alief Middle School, where he filmed scenes for “Mo,” near Houston.Eli Durst for The New York TimesAmer turned his car toward his old high school, Hastings, a stone’s throw from another high school, Elsik. The R&B star Lizzo went to Elsik. Beyoncé did, too, and she shot the video for her song “Blow” right down the street, at the indoor amusement park and roller rink Houston Funplex, where Mo has a lean-induced breakdown on the show.Another Elsik alum, the rapper Tobe Nwigwe, plays Mo’s best friend, Nick, on the show. “Mo” is very much a neighborhood affair, shot where it’s set. It stands apart in that regard from many movies and series set in Texas, which often shoot in nearby states — New Mexico, Louisiana — to take advantage of more generous tax incentives. Amer is fiercely proud of his home base; it’s practically a character in the series. He wasn’t about to shoot in Albuquerque.The most compelling conflict in “Mo” pits modernity against tradition. Mo loves hip-hop, and the soundtrack is laden with Houston artists, including DJ Screw, Big Moe and Paul Wall, who also has a funny cameo as a courthouse security guard. He loves his assimilated girlfriend. But he is also a practicing Muslim, committed to his faith and family.“He is modern but also deeply connected with his roots, and we all know that’s a really difficult thing to balance, especially in his position where he is essentially penniless and just trying to maintain his dignity and juggle all these emotions,” Amer said. “He’s definitely modern with the mind-set of the old as well.”He’s the salad bowl. Welcome to the party. Just don’t bring the chocolate hummus. More

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      Daryl McCormack Has More Than Luck on His Side

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      The Irish actor’s performance as a sympathetic sex worker in “Good Luck, Leo Grande” this summer “has definitely opened up doors for me,” he said. Next up is the Apple TV+ series “Bad Sisters.”Early last year, Daryl McCormack’s East London neighbors seemed determined to do some matchmaking: “Oh, you should meet Sharon,” they said. “My friend is writing a show; I’ll make sure to say that I know you.”“People do that all the time,” the Irish actor explained in a recent video interview from Melbourne, Australia, his arresting green eyes making it hard not to stare. “They’re like, ‘Let me tell my friend,’ and nothing comes of it.”Sharon — as in the writer and actor Horgan, who has lacerated motherhood and marriage in “Catastrophe” and “Divorce” — had been getting an earful, too.“He lived above my friend’s jewelry shop just around the corner from where I live, and most of the female-owned stores along the street were pretty excited about him,” she said, laughing. “I told them I was making this Irish thing and I was looking for a youngish leading man. And they were like, ‘Well, what about Daryl?’”That Irish thing was “Bad Sisters,” a darkly comic thriller debuting Friday on Apple TV+, about the five inseparable Garvey women, one of whom is married to a man so misogynistic and nefarious that the other four would do almost anything to boot him from their lives.The youngish leading man was needed to play a handsome, heartbroken insurance agent who gets dragged into a convoluted policy investigation when the Garveys’ loathsome brother-in-law turns up dead.Lo and behold, McCormack’s name was already on the casting director’s list of contenders.“I went, ‘Oh my God, it’s the guy that all the women in Hackney fancy,’” Horgan said.McCormack stars as a heartbroken insurance agent in “Bad Sisters.” (With Eve Hewson.)Liam Daniel/Apple TV+McCormack, who eventually got the job, of course, has been the object of a great deal of fancying since the June release of the British dramedy “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” which stars Emma Thompson as Nancy, a widow in her 60s, and McCormack as Leo, a sex worker she hires to guide her through an erotic awakening.Critics praised the film for its sexual positivity, authenticity and zing, as well as Thompson’s daring performance. But just as remarkable was the relatively inexperienced McCormack’s ability to match the virtuosic Thompson quip for quip. “McCormack moves between wit, compassion and vulnerability with grace,” The New York Times wrote in its review of the film.Given the abundant physical and emotional nakedness Thompson’s role required, she held considerable sway in the casting of her co-star. She had seen McCormack’s audition tape, but before making a final decision, she asked him to take a walk with her.“Knowing where these two characters go and how vulnerable the film can get, I think it was important for her to really feel a sense of safety with me and a sense of trust,” McCormack said.As they strolled, Thompson found him instantly calming, she wrote in an email — “gentle and curious and apparently unsaddled with too much in the way of personal ambition. Somehow he was going to be able to relax Nancy, who is in a state of tension comparable to a first-time bungee jumper.“He was the right person to step off the bridge with,” she continued, “and fly down hoping the cord won’t break but knowing if it does, it was all worth the effort.”When Thompson texted “I’ll see you on set” the next morning, McCormack, stunned to learn he’d been cast, checked to make sure that she hadn’t notified him by mistake.“It was quite life-changing, that moment,” he said. “My world just did a somersault.”After taking a walk with McCormack, Emma Thompson concluded that “he was the right person to step off the bridge with” in “Good Luck, Leo Grande.”Searchlight PicturesCalling from Australia, where he and Thompson were promoting the movie, McCormack, 29 and laid back in a gray hoodie, looked more like the ace athlete he was as a schoolboy (in the Irish sport of hurling) than the seductive, silky-voiced fantasy man he conjured in “Leo Grande.” He knows the sex comedy, considered an Oscar contender, has changed his career.“The film has definitely opened up doors for me in a big way,” he said, “like just even speaking to people that I’ve admired for a long time, work finding me a lot quicker, having a bit more of a selection to do work that I really want to do.”He was still in the midst of shooting the movie when Horgan reached out about “Bad Sisters.”McCormack may have been consumed by Leo at the time, but Horgan could see Matthew Claffin, the insurance agent, in his magnetism, his nimble acting chops and, when needed, his goofiness. And in the audition process, his chemistry with Brian Gleeson, who plays his half-brother, as well as Eve Hewson, who plays the youngest Garvey and a potential romantic interest, was undeniable.In fact, McCormack initially found it nearly impossible to keep it together through scenes with Gleeson because of the desperation Gleeson brought to his version of a bad cop.“Daryl is a giggler all right, but obviously a consummate professional,” Gleeson said. “I tend to over-worry things, and that has the weird effect of trying to do too much acting, basically. At one point, Daryl just kind of burst out laughing. But it had a great effect of relaxing everybody.“He’s got a lovely gentle sort of disposition,” he added, “but there’s a lot of steel in him.”McCormack grew up in Nenagh, in County Tipperary, the son of a white Irish mother and a Black American father he rarely saw. But his paternal grandfather, Percy Thomas, who runs a theater company in Maryland, helped fill that void.“The second he heard of himself having a grandson, he instantly made his way over to Ireland and connected with my family,” McCormack said. “Our relationship is so special. I think because we both had such an interest and connection to the performing arts, he just loved me because I was someone he could speak to about acting all the time and I’d never get bored, never get sick of it.”When McCormack was 17, Thomas took him to see “A Raisin in the Sun” at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, England.“That was actually quite fundamental to me in terms of wanting to pursue acting,” McCormack said. “It just blew my mind, completely moved me. I really saw the power of storytelling in that night.”Thomas has been a sounding board for McCormack throughout his studies at the Conservatory of Music and Drama at the Dublin Institute of Technology, and later at the Gaiety School of Acting, and his work: a post-drama school soap opera part, two seasons as a gangster in “Peaky Blinders” and his breakout as a leading man in “Leo Grande.”McCormack said that, throughout his career, he had given up parts that were easy in favor of ones that left him feeling daunted.“I want to pick roles that scare me a little,” he said. “It’s probably my main antenna in terms of trying to find the next job.”“I don’t want this ever to become a job,” McCormack said. “I want this always to be an experience.”Kalpesh Lathigra for The New York TimesHe was drawn to “Bad Sisters” by Horgan’s sharp-fanged writing and the chance to work with many actors he admires, most of them Irish, including Eva Birthistle and Sarah Greene along with Gleeson, Hewson and Horgan.Other films and series are on the horizon. He recently wrapped Alice Troughton’s psychological thriller “The Tutor,” alongside Richard E. Grant and Julie Delpy, playing an ambitious writer hired to tutor the son of a famous author with whom he is obsessed.“Daryl is an incredibly gifted young actor,” Grant wrote in an email. “Seemingly without any neurosis and as collaborative as one could wish for.”And it was announced on Wednesday that McCormack would star opposite Ruth Wilson in “The Woman in the Wall,” a BBC and Showtime thriller inspired by Ireland’s infamously abusive Magdalene Laundries, where “fallen women,” orphans and abandoned children were forced to perform unpaid labor by Roman Catholic nuns.It will be yet another performance opposite a formidable female lead, a situation McCormack has repeatedly sought out in his still-burgeoning career. For instance, in late 2019, when McCormack learned that Ruth Negga would be doing “Portia Coughlan” at the Young Vic in London, he made it his mission to play the role of her lover.“She was such an inspiration,” he said. “As a biracial Irish actor, there’s not many people you can look up to that have the same experience as you.”He hounded his team to get him an audition, and after being told that the production team was looking for someone older, he hounded them some more. Finally, he was asked to read for the part.“I’m about to go in, and it was around late February, March 2020, and we all know what happened then,” he said, referring to having his dreams dashed by Covid.Working with Negga remains on his bucket list. He also hopes to one day write a movie or a series inspired by his mother and her efforts to protect him against the struggles that sometimes came with being biracial and, in the eyes of others, different.“I keep chasing that feeling of not feeling comfortable,” McCormack said before pulling on a baseball cap and heading out into a world that is increasingly aware of him. “If I continue to take roles where I feel like my back is up against the wall, that makes me excited — because I don’t want this ever to become a job. I want this always to be an experience.” More

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      Meet the ‘Better Call Saul’ Staffers Who Kept Its Story Straight

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      Ariel Levine and Kathleen Williams-Foshee, members of the show’s “brain trust,” tracked every minor character trait and historical reference.If there’s one takeaway from the moral and ideological universe of “Better Call Saul” — and its similarly meditative parent series “Breaking Bad” — it might be that details matter. Small decisions and non-decisions tend to accumulate until, to paraphrase the character Mike, who appeared in both series, we find ourselves at the end of a road, not necessarily conscious of where it began.The force of accumulated history was baked into the premise of “Better Call Saul,” which ended after six seasons on Monday. But the creators of the show, which began its story — following the exploits of the morally-challenged lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), the taciturn and principled fixer Mike (Jonathan Banks) and his fastidious drug lord boss Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) — six years before the famous events of “Breaking Bad,” went out of their way to reinforce notions of predestination within the narrative. To an unusual degree, it spun a kind of clockwork ecosystem, teeming with portentous allusions, callbacks and foreshadowing that encouraged the most passionate viewers to scrutinize its every frame.Behind the scenes, members of the show’s writing staff were no less obsessive. Ariel Levine, a staff writer on “Saul,” and Kathleen Williams-Foshee, the script coordinator, were part of what was known internally as “the brain trust” — a group of staffers who functioned as the show’s institutional memory. Working closely with a team of writers, assistants and producers — led by the showrunner and co-creator Peter Gould — Levine and Williams-Foshee maintained detailed notes on virtually every person, place, thing or event ever mentioned or implied on either the show or its predecessor.Speaking with The Times on Tuesday, the day after the “Better Call Saul” finale, they discussed solving hard story problems (whatever happened to Saul’s ex-wives?), making the choice to contradict “Breaking Bad” and staying ahead of Reddit sleuths. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How long did you each work on the show and in what roles?KATHLEEN WILLIAMS-FOSHEE I’ve been the script coordinator since Season 3 and also worked briefly as a writer’s assistant in Seasons 5 and 6.The End of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” spinoff has concluded its run after six seasons.Series Finale: If the ending of “Better Call Saul” surprised you, take comfort in this fact: It surprised Saul Goodman, too. Here’s our recap.More Than ‘Breaking Bad 2’: Both prequel and sequel, the show was a time machine that asked how we become who we are, our critic writes.Bob Odenkirk: After receiving a fifth Emmy nomination in July, the star discussed bringing some measure of self-awareness to the character of Saul for his final bow.Stealing the Show: Kim Wexler’s long slide toward perdition has become arguably the narrative keystone of the series, thanks to Rhea Seehorn’s performance.ARIEL LEVINE And I started in Season 1 as a postproduction assistant, worked as writer’s production assistant in Season 2, a writer’s assistant in Seasons 3 through 5 and then staff writer for 6.In the writers’ room, how did you keep track of all the history in play as you were trying to generate new stories?LEVINE In the room, figuring out what we could and couldn’t do, or what we should and shouldn’t do, was primarily the writers’ assistants’ job. When I was a writers’ assistant, Kathleen and I would use this living document I made with every established fact or character on both “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.” So if Saul said in “Breaking Bad,” “I’ve been divorced three times,” that would be in there. Or if Gale [a meth cook in “Breaking Bad” played by David Costabile] had a résumé that appeared in one shot in one episode that said he went to a certain college, that would be in there, as well. Whenever the writers were discussing a particular character or event, we would speak up in the moment and tell everyone what is known about it.How long is this document?LEVINE [Checking her computer.] The final version was 52 pages.WILLIAMS-FOSHEE It was beautiful.LEVINE We expanded it into a spreadsheet that we called the Gillaverse Mega Timeline [after Vince Gilligan, the creator of “Breaking Bad” and co-creator of “Better Call Saul”] and then had smaller individual documents for all of the recurring characters.In “Breaking Bad,” Saul was the attorney for that show’s hero/villain, Walter White (Bryan Cranston).Ursula Coyote/AMCHow many times have you both watched “Breaking Bad”?LEVINE All the way through? Seven. But there are individual episodes, like the one that introduces Saul, or the one that gets into the relationship between Gus and the Salamancas [collaborators in a cross-border drug cartel] that I’ve easily seen 20, 25 times or more.WILLIAMS-FOSHEE I’ve watched it at least five times, all the way through, but probably more. When [“Saul”] was in production, we were looking at scenes from “Breaking Bad” every day.How did you deal with story decisions that might contradict something that was established on “Breaking Bad”?LEVINE We always wanted to be as consistent as possible, but we reserved the right to decide that something you saw on “Breaking Bad” might have been wrong. Ultimately, we chose to do what we felt would serve this story. Saul’s diploma on “Breaking Bad” said that he graduated from the University of American Samoa in 1986. But that didn’t work for the timeline of our show, so we changed it to 1998. Similarly, on “Breaking Bad,” Saul mentions a second ex-wife, and there’s a deleted scene from the show where he says he has three ex-wives, total. We actually talked about including a flashback scene to one of his previous marriages, but it seemed like too much to introduce an entirely new character. So we just had him present two previous dissolution of marriage certificates in the scene where he and Kim [Saul’s true love, played by Rhea Seehorn] get married at the courthouse.WILLIAMS-FOSHEE It helps that Saul talks out of his ass a lot, because in a way it makes sense that not everything is going to add up. He’s just riffing constantly; that’s part of who he is.What was the hardest needle to thread between the two shows?WILLIAMS-FOSHEE I think the thing that took the most time and reasoning was Gus and the super lab [a giant underground meth operation that figured heavily into the plot of “Breaking Bad”]. We wanted to show how Gus and Mike came together to pull that off, but it’s clear that the lab has only recently been completed in the timeline of “Breaking Bad.” We decided that not only did we have to explain just how much time and effort went into building the lab, but that something would have to interrupt them at a certain point and essentially force them to start over.Fans on Reddit never let any detail or perceived misstep go unnoticed. Were there any oversights that came back to haunt you?LEVINE I think the thing that usually haunted us was stuff that was shot that we didn’t know about, or weren’t around for. Dates were a big issue. We were always shouting at production, “Please, don’t show any calendars!” More

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      Lily James Experiences Beaches a Little Differently Now

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      Voting is underway for the 74th Primetime Emmys, and this week we’re talking to several acting nominees. The awards will be presented on Sept. 12 on NBC.Actors usually talk about the thrill of digging into a role, how excited they are when they crack the code. Lily James does evoke those emotions when asked about channeling Pamela Anderson in the Hulu mini-series “Pam & Tommy,” but there is always a slight shadow.She was scared, she said — and she got a little obsessive. She spent her hours in the makeup chair listening to collections of Anderson interviews and excerpts from shows like “Stacked,” “V.I.P.” and, of course, “Baywatch.”“I was so fricking terrified that I wasn’t going to pull it off,” James, who is British, said in a recent video conversation. (Her accent was one of many transformations she had to undertake for the role.) “I haven’t ever worked harder, just because it needed that.”She did pull it off: Her performance earned both wide praise — The New York Times’s James Poniewozik described it as “sneakily complex” when the show premiered, in February — and James’s first Emmy nomination. (“Pam & Tommy” got 10 nods overall, including one for best limited series.)During a recent video chat, the co-showrunners D.V. DeVincentis and Robert Siegel confirmed James was all in, all the time.“There was no hanging out or gossiping by the food, nothing like that,” DeVincentis, also a writer and executive producer on the show, describing her ethic on set. “If she wasn’t shooting she was always sitting listening to interviews with Pamela Anderson to keep the voice in her head.”“Also just being lovely and cheerful and approachable,” Siegel, who is also the creator, added quickly — lest anybody think James had gone to antisocial, diva-like extremes. “She had so many opportunities where she could have snapped or lost her temper, and it would have been completely forgivable and justified. She never really did.”James, 33, could not have been more cordial when we talked, even though she had to carve out time from her last moments of rest in Tuscany — where she was staying before moving on to Rome to start work on a film by Saverio Costanzo, the Italian director behind the Elena Ferrante adaptation “My Brilliant Friend” on HBO.She had the talking-with-her hands thing nailed already, and she looked relaxed and easygoing, with an excellent of sense of how to still look great on Zoom. She projected an endearing mix of low-key confidence and lighthearted self-deprecation, which included an overly severe assessment of her own interview skills.“I feel I’m really bad talking about work,” she said. “I always remind myself, ‘I’m an actor, so it’s fine, I don’t have to be good at this bit.’”Anderson is yet another step up for James, whose three-season stint as Lady Rose MacClare on “Downton Abbey” lifted her into increasingly high-profile roles — including the younger version of Meryl Streep’s Donna Sheridan in “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” and Ansel Elgort’s girlfriend in Edgar Wright’s stylish, bubble gum action movie “Baby Driver.”It wasn’t the first time she had played a historical person, though Churchill’s wartime secretary, Elizabeth Layton, who died in 2007, was in no position to nitpick the way James portrayed her in the period drama “Darkest Hour,” from 2017. Both title characters in “Pam & Tommy,” on the other hand, are very much alive.Lily James, left and Sebastian Stan as Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, whose stolen and leaked sex tape become a tabloid phenomenon in the 1990s. Erin Simkin/HuluOne of the few moments of hesitation during our conversation came when I asked whether she had ever met Anderson — who was not involved in the series and let it be known afterward that she had not checked it out.“Still nothing,” James said, “and I totally respect that. That’s her choice. It’s a bizarre thing because I’ve played her, and I feel so attached but …” She drifted off. “I hope that if she was ever to watch it, she would feel that the show was just so behind her.”To break away from it all, James enjoys being in nature, away from people and cities. “When you see the perspective of the ocean and the horizon in front of you, you’re like, ‘Oh, this is all OK,’” she said.But asked whether she was still able to chill on beaches — or whether they now triggered visions involving rescue cans and slow-motion running — she flashed back to shooting a big “Baywatch” scene in “Pam & Tommy.”“That one is going to go down in my life as one of the craziest days,” she said, shaking her head. “There were paparazzi wading into the sea, taking pictures of me — and I’m someone that never likes to be photographed in my bikini, let alone in Pamela Anderson’s red bathing suit.”That suit is now an integral part of the 1990s cultural landscape. And if “Pam & Tommy” has achieved one thing, it’s to make us reconsider Anderson’s role in it, particularly the early part of her marriage to the Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan, who was also nominated for an Emmy), when the couple’s sex tape was stolen and found its way on the marketplace.Lee came out of the scandal fairly unscathed — rockers gonna rock — but Anderson was relentlessly mocked and vilified. “The show is about looking at our culpability as a human being, our lack of empathy,” James said. “The responsibility of how the show would be received weighed heavily on me, so I really couldn’t let it go, and I didn’t film for a long time afterwards.”“I didn’t feel able to,” she added. “I found myself still speaking in an American accent.”You can’t let yourself disappear in someone else’s life and psyche — and physical appearance — the way James did without being affected. “Pam & Tommy” may have felt like a bit of a lark on paper, but it led to some soul-searching.“It’s made me want to keep going and shoot for really challenging roles,” James said, adding, “I felt like I needed some sort of change in my career and this was it, a sort of crossroads.” More

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      Trevor Noah on Liz Cheney’s ‘Bigly’ Loss

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      Noah said her defeat in a primary was “the chance for Wyoming Republicans to declare whether they stood with Liz Cheney or with Donald Trump, and they answered bigly.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Ch-ch-ch-changesRepresentative Liz Cheney lost her re-election bid in the Wyoming Republican primary on Tuesday.On Wednesday’s “Daily Show,” Trevor Noah said her loss was “the chance for Wyoming Republicans to declare whether they stood with Liz Cheney or with Donald Trump, and they answered bigly.”“The reason everyone was watching this race is because Liz Cheney was running for re-election and of course, Liz Cheney has been the most prominent anti-Trump Republican in Congress. She voted to impeach him; she’s led the committee investigating him. Basically she just will not stop talking about that one time he tried to overthrow the American democracy. That was like, like a million years ago, lady, move on!” — TREVOR NOAH“Trump was so excited he threw a ticker-tape parade made out of classified documents.” — JIMMY FALLON“But the Liz Cheney story isn’t over yet because she’s vowed that she will still do anything to stop Trump from becoming president again, even possibly running against him in the Republican primary. Yeah. And look, I mean we must admit it is probably is a long shot, but don’t forget she is a Cheney, and if there is one thing they’re committed to, it’s regime change.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Quiet Quitting Edition)“You know how everyone’s been talking about ‘the great resignation’ where people are just like leaving their jobs after the pandemic? Well, if you hate your job and fear confrontation, there’s a new thing called ‘quiet quitting.’ That’s when people emotionally and mentally check out at work and do as little as possible without getting fired. We already have a term for that — it’s called your 30s.” — NICOLE BYER, guest host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live”“Yeah, that’s right, people are quiet quitting. They’re just going to their jobs and doing the job from 9 to 5 and then, and then hold up, that’s just working. That’s work.” — TREVOR NOAH“People in this country are so obsessed with work. Guys, your job is just a place you go to avoid seeing your family, all right? It doesn’t need to be the most important part of your existence. If your job is from 9 to 5, that means the work messages should stop at 5, too. Yeah, that’s right — any message after 5 is basically a booty call. If your boss texts you at 7:45 to see if you filed an expense report, it should start with ‘Hey, you up?’” — TREVOR NOAH“Bottom line, you need to establish a work-life balance, so remember, if you hate your job, make sure you also hate your life.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingDemi Lovato joined Jimmy Fallon for his monologue when she co-hosted Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightMartin Short, an Emmy nominee, will pop by Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutIn Neal Baer’s living room, from left: “Las Reinas de la Noche, 5” (1995) and “Las Reinas de la Noche, 8” (1993-95), both by Reynaldo Rivera; and a triptych by Joey Terrill, “In the Middle of It All” (1992-93).Photograph by Blaine Davis. Terrill: Courtesy of the artist and Ortuzar Projects, New YorkCollectors like Neal Baer are resurrecting the forgotten art of the AIDS era. More

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      ‘Better Call Saul’: Jonathan Banks Says Goodbye to Mike

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      Killed off in “Breaking Bad,” Mike Ehrmantraut had a long second act in “Better Call Saul.” Banks said playing Mike made him “a little more silent, a little less rambunctious.”This article contains spoilers for the series finale of “Better Call Saul.”“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,” Shakespeare once wrote. The sentiment has rarely applied to Mike Ehrmantraut, the cantankerous fixer and hit man in the Albuquerque underworld of “Better Call Saul” and “Breaking Bad.”Morally conflicted, with plenty of wrinkles but little mirth, Ehrmantraut was mostly a blunt, coldblooded crank — with a soft spot for his granddaughter — in “Breaking Bad,” arriving in the second season and getting killed off three seasons later. But over the six-season run of “Better Call Saul,” which ended on Monday night, the creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould fleshed out a nuanced back story for the character, expanding him into a figure caught between the weight of his own guilt and the desire to protect what is left of his family.Jonathan Banks, who played Ehrmantraut, is no stranger to the pressure of survival, having grown up in a tough neighborhood just north of Washington, D.C. After refining his theater chops in high school and college, Banks began a long film and television career, with roles in movies like “Airplane!,” “Beverly Hills Cop” and the 2017 Netflix film “Mudbound.” But the role of Ehrmantraut has been a defining feather in his cap after decades of solid journeyman parts, earning him five Emmy nominations to go along with one he got for the CBS drama “Wiseguy” in the late 1980s.Banks can be as blunt and direct as the character, albeit with a bit more mirth. Over the course of two conversations this month, he discussed the changes the role has brought in his own life and whether he really did all those crossword puzzles. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.Have you seen the finale?I haven’t seen it. But I know what it is. The last scene that Bob Odenkirk and I had together in the desert, and where I say to him, “You regret nothing?” — Mike was still looking for the humanity in this guy. He had just spent all those days in the desert. He’d also been impressed that this guy had been able to pull it together and survive.So that is a long-winded way of saying that, were Mike living when Jimmy went to jail and fessed up to everything — I wonder, would Mike have been surprised? It might not have taken him by total surprise that the guy finally had a conscience.You started playing Mike in 2009. Is there anything from your own life that informed these different layers we have seen in him over the years?I used, partially, people that I grew up with, people that I feared or respected. You know, it always sounds a little too dramatic to me when somebody says, “My neighborhood, I grew up this way; it was tough.” Suffice to say, I grew up not in the garden district. There was a fair amount of rough life. Certainly nothing in the order of “Breaking Bad” or the cartel life, but it was enough that it got your attention. There were a lot of days you walked around afraid — or at least I did.I got banged around quite a bit, got punched in the mouth a lot. It gives you a certain amount of, I don’t know that it gives you toughness, but it leaves no surprises when all of a sudden you’re in a fight or you get beaten or whatever. As far as Vietnam, the sniper part of Mike’s life: I have several close friends that went. And one of my friends they just put into Arlington Cemetery about a month and a half ago. There are a lot of guys that came back that I know that were hurt badly by their experience in combat. That’s something I never experienced — I borrowed from people that I saw.Banks and Bryan Cranston in “Breaking Bad.” Mike arrived in Season 2 and was killed three seasons later.Ursula Coyote/AMCI watched the conversations that you and Mark Margolis [who played Hector Salamanca] had as part of a series of actors’ talks for “Better Call Saul”; I got the impression in some of your comments about being a working actor that Mike’s inability to suffer fools is something that you share.I like to be straightforward. I like to be honest. I don’t like pretense. And I try not to be condescending or pretentious. I like just simple honesty. And honesty is not so simple.What about all the crossword puzzles? How good were you at them before you started playing Mike?Terrible, really terrible. In the Sunday comics, there is “find the six differences in between two photos or two drawings.” I have difficulty with that. I’ll tell you who is great at the crossword puzzles, who sits down and just “boom,” is Michael McKean.You had to do a lot of pretty grueling physical work for this role. Was there anything that was just beyond the pale?No. I mean, I’ll never let Vince Gilligan up for air when he puts me in the desert at 110 degrees every day. But I get to break his chops forever! It’s wonderful. [Laughs.] And I’ve got to tell you, that desert — the early morning sunrises or the sunsets, or when the thunderstorms would come across that New Mexico desert, or the wild horses would run by? Oh my god. I wouldn’t have missed that for the world.At any point did your relationship with the role turn into a feeling of ownership?Yes. Mike is mine. Mike is mine. I caught myself almost for a moment choking up when you asked that. And I think the honest thing to say is if I really think about it, maybe Mike has changed Johnny, too.I think Jonathan Banks, by playing Mike, became a little more silent, a little less rambunctious. And by silent, I mean, I think I listen a little more than I did 12, 13 years ago. I don’t like to use the word witness, but that’s what’s coming to mind. I think he possibly affected me in that I’m a little more patient. Maybe that comes with age anyway.Was there ever a time where you got a script and thought, “Mike wouldn’t do this”?There have been moments that I went, “Oh, I think Mike wouldn’t do that.” But I found, quite honestly, a lot of the times that what the writers were telling me, if I deferred to them, it made sense.The first thing that comes to my mind is in “Breaking Bad” when Mike left his granddaughter in the park and had to escape. And I was going, “No, Mikey would never leave his granddaughter.” And of course, the reasoning is, the police department — they’re there in the park. They will take care of her, they will return her to her mother. I still have a tough time with Mike leaving his granddaughter in the park.There’s a scene in “Better Call Saul” last season where Mike is reading “The Little Prince” to his granddaughter, Kaylee. It’s a passage where the little prince says, “My flower is ephemeral, and she has only four thorns to defend herself against the world.” What do you think this scene means for Mike?I love that scene so much. I love “The Little Prince” so much. It’s a life lesson for that child, obviously, what he’s reading. But as I remember, it touches a lot of chords in Mike as well.Which chords?[Long pause.] Innocence. Innocence protection. And the solace of relaxing, just for a moment. I mean, there’s two things going on — not only the book but her. In spite of all his fears and trepidations, the world is good for a moment with that innocent child and that innocent book.There are two different worlds. And part of his misery is that he can read “The Little Prince” with Kaylee, and then he’s going to go do something that he knows is not good. It’s one of the reasons he despises himself, because he knows better. There are a lot of these characters that don’t know better, or if they do know better they’re not aware of it. Mike is very aware of what he’s doing and knows it is not good.Banks and Juliet Donenfeld in “Better Call Saul.” Mike reserved a soft spot for his granddaughter, Kaylee.Warrick Page/AMCMike is one of the few people in this story who sees himself and others clearly, and that comes through in his relationships with the various other characters, good and bad.He lost his soul when he was responsible for his son’s death. What he tries to get back — and what I’ve also said is his Achilles’ heel — is that he doesn’t want to see people get involved and get hurt. He’ll see the good in somebody, and it usually costs him. Those lines that you well know: “If you’re in the game, you’re in the game.” Mike has no compassion for that once you’re in it.You know, to talk about bad guys, to admire miserable characters — since man could open his mouth and tell a story, it’s gone on. I have a quote in my kitchen — I’m going to take you over here with me so I can read this to you. [Carries laptop across the kitchen] Here we go: It says, “Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.” Mark Twain. [Laughs.]In the final episode, though, the last scene made me think that the overarching theme within the whole “Breaking Bad” universe — even with Walter White — is that no matter how bad someone goes, love can bring them back to some kind of better place. Do you think that aspect can apply in real life, that somebody can be redeemed by love?Yes, because then they are no longer lying to themselves. They’re trying to turn around, even if it’s only momentarily — even if it’s five seconds before you die. When you’re a little kid, you need a Popsicle, and you’re trying to figure out how to lie, how to get it any way you can. As an adult, hopefully, at some point it hits you that you mustn’t lie. You got to put your head on the pillow at night and go to sleep. Don’t lie to your wife, don’t lie to your friends, don’t lie to yourself. That sounds pretty trite, but I believe it. I truly believe it. More