{"id":523794,"date":"2026-03-14T20:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T20:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/523794\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T20:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T20:51:08","slug":"vince-gilligan-on-the-8-word-note-that-inspired-breaking-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/523794\/","title":{"rendered":"Vince Gilligan on the 8-Word Note That Inspired ‘Breaking Bad’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWe\u2019ve all heard how Breaking Bad<\/a> creator Vince Gilligan<\/a> first thought that his beloved crime drama would tell the story of how a Mr. Chips-type everyman would turn into Scarface. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut during a South by Southwest Film & TV Festival panel on Saturday morning titled \u201cAlbuquerque Aftermath: From Breaking Bad to Pluribus<\/a>,\u201d Gilligan said he found a notebook which had the very first conception for the show \u2014 and it was only nine words.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI found this old notepad in my office a few years back, and it was the very first idea for this,\u201d Gilligan said. \u201cAnd who knows where ideas come from? But it said: \u2018Good guy does something bad to save his family.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen Gilligan retold the story of how he fleshed out his idea of a high school chemistry teacher with cancer who cooks meth to provide for his family and then pitched it to Sony Pictures Television. Gilligan says a top executive, who is no longer with the company, told him, \u201c\u2018That\u2019s the single worst idea I\u2019ve ever heard.’\u201d Gilligan quickly added, \u201cTo his credit, he\u2019s a good man, and he acknowledged [his mistake later].\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, Sony would eventually embrace the show and then AMC came on board as distributor. Gilligan also famously pitched Breaking Bad to HBO, which he\u2019s described as one of the worst meetings of his life, with then-HBO executives exuding \u201ca toxic gamma radiation of disinterest\u201d to his pitch. <\/p>\n

\n\tGilligan, who aw-shucked his reputation for being a famously nice showrunner, was also asked about working with a writers\u2019 room and how he decides whether to go with one of his own ideas or somebody else\u2019s. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe best thing to do is very quickly learn to not pay attention to whose ideas are whose,\u201d Gilligan said. \u201cI\u2019m not keeping score in my head. The moments I\u2019m the most proud in [my] shows, I don\u2019t remember who [suggested the idea]. The best idea wins. There\u2019s a lot of ways to do this job, and we could be dictatorial, and that maybe works for some, but at the end of the day, I\u2019m so proud of the work. We\u2019re not curing cancer in our respective TV shows. There\u2019s no reason for people not to enjoy coming to work. Once they get there, they\u2019re going to work hard. But there\u2019s no reason they have to make it tough on each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLater in the panel, Pluribus star Rhea Seehorn<\/a> pushed back firmly when an audience question suggested that her character on the show, Carol, was \u201cunlikable.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI understand the question, but the question behind the question with the word \u2018unlikable,\u2019 I think, is a misuse, or overuse, about female characters,\u201d Seehorn said. \u201cBecause how people have been defining what\u2019s likable in a woman in a very, very restrictive way to play a character. It\u2019s much more important that that character be accessible in some way, and for me behaving truthfully and honest a moment when people would say, \u2018Wow, she\u2019s really not polite when they bring her things.\u2019 [The Others] killed my wife. My career is gone. I might die alone watching Golden Girls, so sorry if I\u2019m a bit chirpy \u2026 Carol is allowed to be the full spectrum of human behavior \u2026 I find her complex and difficult and challenging.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tGilligan then added that given The Others are so crushingly and uniformly nice, it\u2019s \u201cDrama 101\u201d to have a protagonist that balances that out. <\/p>\n

\n\tSeehorn was also asked by an audience member when she figured out what Pluribus was about. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s really wonderful that I\u2019m playing a character that doesn\u2019t understand what\u2019s going on,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t know. Is it about human nature? What it means to be human, and redefining the pursuit of happiness? How do you find success, love and relationships?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGilligan said he was going to dodge the question of the meaning of Pluribus, but noted, \u201cThis is the hardest [show] of all of them to explain. I\u2019m going to try to let other folks tell me what our show is about, because I learn stuff all the time when people tell me. What is any show about? What is According to Jim about?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe participants included Gilligan, Seehorn, composer Dave Porter, costume designer Jennifer Bryan and producer Trina Siopy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019ve all heard how Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan first thought that his beloved crime drama would tell…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[52698,4,450,451,3,57704,92313,452,453,62069],"class_list":["post-523794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-bad","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-pluribus","tag-rhea-seehorn","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-vince-gilligan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}