Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan on pitching Walter White

let's go back to the early days when you went to that first Studio meeting with the studio Executives pitching the series about this browbeaten 50-year-old high school chemistry teacher who learned he was about to die from cancer had a young family to support baby on the way and he comes up with the idea of

cooking crystal meth were you expecting that meeting with the studio Executives to be a pretty short one I did not think uh that I would I would have much of a chance of of selling this story but I was very excited about this this all happened about uh a little more than 10

years ago and I was very excited by this idea and uh but no I I I was a I was a realist in in terms of uh thinking that this is not going to be an easy sell and you you broke the mold with Breaking Bad in that we saw a massive change in

Walter White the main character from protagonist to antagonist all the way through the series and that's not the way TV is done there are favorite characters who stay for Five Seasons eight seasons 10 seasons why did you said about doing that with Walter what probably the most complicated TV character in recent memory wow well I I

I am a big fan of television and watched it my whole life and I realized that television uh the structure of Television traditionally was was very much about stasis about a self-imposed sort of stasis in which characters don't really change they don't evolve or devolve they don't turn from one thing into another thing they they stay very

much Marshall Dylan on gunm smoke is very much Marshall Dylan uh uh Bart Simpson Hawkeye Pierce Hawkeye Pierce they they they they they remain in a in a sort of constant state and I thought wouldn't it be interesting if from the get-go we created a show created a character who was by his very design