‘Better Call Saul’ team talks on Season Four relationships

TBS cancels ‘People of Earth’

LOS ANGELES, June 10, (RTRS): As “Breaking Bad” prequel “Better Call Saul” heads into its fourth season, the series is experiencing new challenges — specifically through exploring Saul (Bob Odenkirk) as Jimmy McGill in the past and Gene, a Cinnabon manager in his post-“Bad” future, and without Chuck (Michael McKean).

“The only person on Earth left for Jimmy to care about and for the love and respect to earn is Kim,” Odenkirk said of his relationship with Rhea Seehorn’s character at the ATX Televison Festival Saturday.

While there was a tease that Chuck could make an appearance at some point in the season, Odenkirk pointed out the focus for him were two pivotal scenes between Jimmy and Kim that “include an element of forgiveness and reaching out and becoming a slightly better person than they are.”

“You’re going to wish they work it out,” he said.

However, her absence in the “Breaking Bad” world “makes it all the more tragic,” he continued. “You see these moments where they have what it takes.”

Executive producer Vince Gilligan, who stepped away from day-to-day work on “Better Call Saul” (he directed an hour in the upcoming season), admitted Gene holds the most interest for him at this point.

“There is the possibility for redemption with Gene,” he said. “The whole thing could end sadly instead of happily. But to me, that’s one of the more potentially hopeful things.”

While Jimmy’s inevitable decline into the Saul Goodman plays out, Odenkirk allowed that the transition has been difficult.

“My problem this year is I found a desire to change this journey a little. It’s sad to me,” he said. “I’m starting to feel bad he’s going to be this guy who has abandoned any idealism he had, and the hope of being a good person, which he has had. And he’s just starting to go. No one is going to give me a chance? I’m just going to throw bombs around.’ That makes me sad.”

It’s certainly a darker spiral for the character whose origin story was originally floated as a joke.

Odenkirk recalled that as he and Bryan Cranston filmed their characters’ first meeting in the 2009 episode of “Breaking Bad” entitled “Better Call Saul,” “somebody said, ‘Can I get a job on the sequel?’” The notion remained in conversation, though almost always in jest — until ultimately, “Breaking Bad” creator Gilligan and co-executive producer Peter Gould sold the prequel — without a solid series plan in place.

“One of our first thoughts was maybe it would be a half-hour single-cam,” Gilligan said. “ripping off ‘Dr. Katz.’”

Though “Breaking Bad” was a critical and award season success, Gilligan strove to continue the universe to avoid a creative block. He worried if he took a long enough break, he’d “seize up.” Instead, the team finished postproduction on “Breaking Bad’s” final season on a Friday and opened the “Better Call Saul” writers’ room on a Monday.

“That was healthy,” Gilligan said. “I feel silly saying this, because I could not be more proud of ‘Better Call Saul’ now. We took it seriously, but if I had known how good it was going to be...it was good to not take it too seriously, because that way leads to creative paralysis.”

Now with the success of “Better Call Saul,” too, Gilligan isn’t entirely shutting the door on expanding the “Breaking Bad” world further. When asked whether there was the potential to spinoff Kim to explain where she was during the “Breaking Bad” timeline, he expressed interest.

“That would be a great spinoff,” he said. “at a certain point, I don’t know...how many spinoffs does the universe support before it collapses?”

Donald Glover was met with applause after assuring the audience at the Saban Media Center on Friday that the upcoming third season of “Atlanta” would be their television equivalent of Kanye West’s Grammy award-winning third album, “Graduation.”

“This will be our most accessible, but also the realest and honest version of it, and I think the most enjoyable,” Glover said.

Glover and his co-writer and brother, Stephen, were tight-lipped about details about the recently announced third season, but Stephen said the show’s writers are eager to get started. “We can do almost anything,” he added. On the red carpet for the “Atlanta” FYC, Stephen Glover told Variety he wasn’t concerned about the chances of FX renewing the show.

“Just talking to the heads, they were really positive about it. and even though it hadn’t been announced yet, I felt good about it,” he said. “So when it did get announced, everybody was like “Cool, let’s get back to work.””

Continuing the hip-hop industry comparisons, Donald Glover said the show’s writers think about writing a new season in terms of releasing a new mixtape, where rappers continually face the pressure of topping themselves.

“That’s what rap is, you have to top yourself,” he said. “So we just do the seasons like that.”

Even though the Glover brothers and the show’s other writers, Stefani Robinson and Jamal Olori, haven’t begun writing anything for the third season, Donald Glover said the key to writing an “Atlanta” episode all comes down to writing moments.

“We understand as a group that things are made of moments, so we just focus on moments because a good moment can really change an entire episode,” he said.

Brian Tyree Henry told Variety that “Atlanta’s” popularity can be attributed to not only just appealing to African-American audiences, but also that viewers across the country tuned in and made it successful, allowing them to elevate the careers of other actors and actresses of color.

“People are willing to allow us to go into their homes and they go with us on these stories, and it’s so refreshing to see that,” Henry

said. “You really can’t beat that.”

TBS has pulled the plug on comedy “People of Earth” after two seasons.

The Turner cabler had renewed the Wyatt Cenac starrer last September for a third season. But series creator David Jenkins broke the news of the cancellation via Twitter on Friday. TBS reps could not immediately be reached for comment early Saturday.

“People of Earth” wrapped its second season last fall. The single-camera laffer, from Conan O’Brien’s Conaco production banner and Warner Horizon Television, revolved around a support group in upstate New York for survivors of alien abductions. Luka Jones, Alice Wetterlund, Michael Cassidy, and Tracee Chimo also starred.

TBS has been on a hot streak the past two years as it revved up its original comedy series slate. “People of Earth” is the first TBS original to get the ax since “Angie Tribeca” launched in 2016.

“Thank you to everyone who was a fan of the show and enjoyed its gentle, amiable sci-fi weirdness,” Jenkins wrote on Twitter. “It was an honor sharing this show with you. Let’s do it again soon.”

Jenkins, O’Brien, Norm Hiscock, Greg Daniels, Dan Halstead, and Conaco’s David Kissinger and Jeff Ross were exec producers of “People of Earth.”

The worlds of politics and entertainment have always been intertwined, but today, the two have become increasingly difficult to separate. But perhaps they shouldn’t be. Art and life are reflections of each other, after all.

“If you’re trying to occupy public space with narrative, whether it’s television or film or art or journalism you’re not speaking to this, you’re missing a moment that you’re obligated to,” David Simon, who created topical series such as “The Wire,” said at the ATX Television Festival Saturday.

Simon, a former journalist turned showrunner, continued to say “all art is inevitably political on some measure of the spectrum, and if you’re not tending to what’s happening now, you’re going to be judged.”

“I feel like this is the moment where you’ve got to stand up,” he said. “Certain things that we took for granted, that were inherently implausible and beyond the pale for our political construct, are now on the table.”

Simon’s projects have never shied away from confronting the issues that plague America, but shows including “Treme,” “Generation Kill” and, most recently, “The Deuce” have managed to remove themselves somewhat by setting themselves in a different time period. It was when he was filming “Show Me A Hero,” which was set in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that one of the show’s storylines ran parallel with issues about affordable housing that were going on in New York City at the time — right down to the rhetoric being thrown around on both sides of the aisle.

That era, Simon noted, there was a sense of responsibility about the way stories were told because “in the act of publishing, you made yourself vulnerable.” In today’s digital age of social media he feels the rhetoric has been transformed. (Simon was recently blocked from Twitter.)

“No one is held responsible in the same way when print and broadcast had to be held legally responsible for what they said,” he said. “The tonality has completely bypassed the structure by which we establish political truth.”

When considering series that depict the Trump era as they run concurrently to his political office, Simon admitted that “trying to stay in-step with the reality seems terrifying to me.”

“If something doesn’t change in terms of how we keep the money out of our political system, and how we keep the money out of distorting our media culture for purposes of maximizing power — until we figure that out, it’s not gonna be a TV show. We’re gonna be staging it as a seven-part play in the recreation yard of Guantanamo,” he said.

The largest US actors’ union and the four major television networks on Saturday agreed to limit auditions in private hotel rooms and homes, ratifying a guideline the screen actors’ guild had enacted on its own following the #MeToo uproar, the union said.

SAG-AFTRA, which represents 160,000 actors, and management from ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox reached a tentative agreement on a three-year contract that also includes an array of pay increases, the guild said in a statement. The deal is subject to approval by the guild’s board of directors next month.

The networks and union agreed to language similar to that from the union’s own Guideline No. 1, issued in April, which called for an end to auditions, interviews and similar professional meetings in private hotel rooms or at private residences.

SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris said at the time the goal was to eliminate the potential for “predators to exploit performers behind closed doors under the guise of a professional meeting.”

The so-called casting couch has long been used by men seeking sexual favors from actresses in exchange for parts.

The measures followed the industry outrage that resulted from news reports that numerous women accused Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct. Weinstein denied the allegations.

The Weinstein reports led to a wave of accusations against high-profile men in politics, the media and show business, transforming the US conversation about sexual harassment and assault.

Women told stories about how they had been harassed using the #MeToo hashtag on social media.

The scrutiny of Weinstein led to criminal charges against the producer last month. On June 5, Weinstein pleaded not guilty in Manhattan Supreme Court to charges of rape and sexual assault based on allegations from 2004 and 2013.