Gale makes a comeback on the latest Better Call Saul
He’s back. After meeting an untimely death at the hands of Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) on AMC’s Breaking Bad, Gale Boetticher (David Costabile) appeared on prequel series Better
Call Saul in Monday night’s episode. The affable chemist and eventual lab assistant of Walter White (Bryan Cranston) was in a scene with drug kingpin Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), who asked him to test meth samples.
“Gale is one of our favourite characters and, once we started talking about what Gus Fring is up to this season, it just seemed like a very natural choice to see Gale again,” co-creator Peter Gould says.
Although Gould won’t confirm or deny whether we’ll see more of Gale this season, here’s what Costabile can say about it.
When did Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould reach out about bringing back Gale, and what was that phone call like?
I was shooting for USA network in Albuquerque (New Mexico) and happened to run into Peter at this breakfast place. Dig It was the end of the first season of Better Call Saul and he said, “It’d be great to have you back,” and I was like, “Yeah, I would love to.” It’s an incredibly fun character and I had a blast doing it. So when they called (at the beginning of Season 4), I was like, “Yeah, sure.” It’s a much better call to get than when Vince (Gilligan) says you’re going to get shot in the face. But hey, we know they can’t kill me (this time).
Did you ever make up your own backstory for Gale while you were on Breaking Bad?
Yes, absolutely. I have all sorts of stories about Gale in my head. But to me, when you work with great writers, all of those details are almost in between the lines: where that person came from and why they got to the place they are now. On Breaking Bad, even the set decorator was telling a story. You can see it in the introduction (to the character) with the potato clock, or the pictures of him climbing Mount Everest. Each one of those stories worked exactly in concert with what I had imagined.
In Monday’s episode, Gale offers to start cooking meth for Gus, after discovering the low potency of the samples Gus brought him. What motivates him to do that?
I think on a very deep level, that quest for exactitude is something that is really thrilling to him. I don’t think the idea of drugs or doing something illegal is as exciting as creating quality that is indisputable. The idea that you could do that through chemistry is exciting to him, because that is his initial love. You see the excitement that he has when he’s talking about how he doesn’t want to denigrate the samples, but he knows it’s not enough and he can do better.
Your character sings “The Elements” song by Tom Lehrer, which contains all the elements of the periodic table. How long did it take to memorize that?
Oh my god. When I first learned “Crapa Pelada” for
Breaking Bad, it was such a difficult song, not only because it was in Italian, but in a dialect. I got that one many weeks before I shot the scene, and this one I got an even shorter notice. So it was very exciting and it’s just one where you had to know it. I mean, you could stick a pin in my eye and I’d still be able to sing that tune. I was a mad person walking around New York City just mumbling the elements of the periodic table.
Do fans of Breaking Bad still stop you on the street?
Oh yeah. When I was first on the show in the very beginning, there were not that many people watching. Then by the fourth and fifth seasons, it exploded in such an enormous way. Certainly while that was happening (I would get recognized), because people could binge it and knew who this character was. And also because of his untimely death, I think he became quite beloved. He’s a very sweet character in a world that’s not particularly sweet, so it made it all the more difficult for people to have lost him.
If Gale could cross paths with any Breaking Bad alum on Better Call Saul, who would you like to see?
I don’t like to give suggestions to Peter and those guys, but I think it would be super fun if me and Jonathan (Banks, who plays Mike Ehrmantraut) had something to do. It’d be a very strange interaction.