MANDO’S BIG BREAK
Quebecer stars as villain in Breaking Bad prequel
He plays a cunning Mexican-American mini-crime lord living in Albuquerque, N.M., in Better Call Saul. The noirish Breaking Bad dramedy prequel is proving to be every bit as compelling as the latter, but the role of “Nacho” Varga couldn’t be more of a stretch for Michael Mando, the Montreal actor who is more steeped in Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams than Quentin Tarantino.
Considering there is hardly a dearth of actors in the U.S. who could slip into the role of a Spanish-speaking bandito, Mando must have really impressed Better Call Saul creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. All the more so since Mando’s mother tongue is French, although he is fluent in both English and Spanish.
It has been quite the ride for Mando. Born in Quebec City and raised by a single father, a chemist, Mando, 33, estimates that he, his two brothers and his dad lived in more than 35 homes in 10 cities — primarily in the Ivory Coast and Ghana — and on four continents before settling in Montreal over a decade back.
Acting was not initially in the cards, either. He studied psychology and international relations at Université de Montréal. During a break from studies, he auditioned, on a whim, for Dawson College’s renowned Dome Theatre Program. He was accepted; he so dazzled in various stage productions that upon graduation in 2007, the chairman of the department called Mando “one of the finest talents to emerge from the program in the last 25 years.”
And a career was born. He landed parts in the TV series The Bridge and The Border, but made his mark first in the gaming world with his work in Far Cry 3, then in The Far Cry Experience web series. His big break came when he joined the original Orphan Black BBC series, for which he received a nomination for a Canadian Screen Award last year.
But landing the role of Nacho beats all. One of the series’ principal characters, Nacho, when last seen, was plotting revenge against the show’s lead, huckster barrister Jimmy McGill, a.k.a. Saul Goodman (played by the brill Bob Odenkirk). Seems Saul set Nacho up, and Nacho is not amused. Over the next few episodes, their relationship intensifies.
It’s worth noting that the two would never have met had Saul not conscripted two dim sidewalk surfers who tried to scam the grandmother of Nacho’s even more menacing crony, Mijo. Never a dull moment in this series.
Mando is careful not to reveal too much: “Let’s just say that Nacho is very efficient, intelligent and motivated,” he says in a phone interview from Los Angeles. “He’s probably one of the most interesting characters I’ve ever played.
“There is a lot of his character we don’t know yet. We don’t know where he’s from. We don’t know what he’s really about. We don’t know his backstory — which I’m so excited to explore further in Season 2. But I can say he is more interested in financial success than in violence.”
All by way of saying Saul won’t be dismembered this season, anyway, for momentary loss of judgment. But who knows what’s in store for him next year?
There wasn’t much doubt that AMC would green light Better Call Saul for a second season of 13 episodes, after the première for the first season was the highestrated scripted series in basic cable history.
All 10 episodes of this year’s series have been shot. Season 2 begins shooting this summer and will air at the beginning of 2016.
Mando wasn’t among the first wave of Breaking Bad fans. It was only when he learned he was slated to have a screen test for the part of Nacho that he began to watch the show for research purposes. By the time he was cast, he had caught up with the entire series and was blown away by it.
“I was knocked out by the writing, directing and acting,” he says. “It was extremely flattering that this same team chose me for the role. I am, obviously, so grateful for the opportunity to work for people so respected in the industry.”
Mando also loves the fact that the role is so far removed from any that he has ever undertaken — not to mention so far removed from his life.
“It’s all acting and I think it’s an actor’s job to stretch himself, to play characters that are nothing like himself,” he says. “But it’s amazing that I have ended up here, since I got into acting only by accident.
“It was at a point in my life when I needed to fill up my time with something. It was one of those things where you meet someone who knows someone who tells you that you might consider giving something a try. So I ended up in the Dome Program, and I was fortunate that my teachers believed in me — and gave me the courage and the confidence that I could express myself and that I could work in this profession.”
Though more trained in the classics in the Dome program, Mando views the writing of Gilligan and Gould as not that dissimilar to what he was studying. “These guys are, in fact, the Tennessee Williams’s of our day, writing in the same vein.
“Before acting, I was always attracted to words, to literature — be they the words of Williams, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare or Molière. But I really have to thank Steven Lecky, the chairman of Dome then. He was the one person directly responsible for me being where I am. Had he not accepted me on the spot that day so many years ago, I don’t think I would have ever thought twice about acting.”
Not surprisingly, Mando’s performance in Better Call Saul has brought him to the attention of filmmakers in Hollywood. Regardless, he still considers Montreal home and suffered along with us some of the ravages of this winter.
While waiting to shoot on Season 2, he is working in postproduction on two short films he directed a few years back. One of them is based on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 2, and even though he has yet to reach that milestone, Mando insists that as a Montrealer, he can totally relate to the opening line of the sonnet: “When forty winters shall besiege thy brow …”
Nice touch: Nacho recites Shakespeare. He does the Bard proud. Montrealers, too.
I was knocked out by the writing, directing and acting. ... I am, obviously, so grateful for the opportunity to work for people so respected in the industry.
Michael Mando.