Bob Odenkirk Built Saul Goodman Around A Dark Part Of His Past

As seen in “Breaking Bad” and even more so in “Better Call Saul,” Jimmy McGill — the man who would be Saul — is a guy with a good heart who nonetheless keeps finding himself slipping, literally and figuratively. This also describes Odenkirk’s father, Walter, a man who apparently suffered from alcoholism and depression, leaving a haunting impression on his family as a result.

According to Odenkirk in an interview from February 2022, growing up in the small town of Berwyn, Illinois as one of seven children had its bright spots. It was where the actor caught the acting bug, putting on little performances at the dinner table that his mother, Barbara, “would absolutely indulge.” In fact, she “would encourage it.” Such levity was important to Odenkirk and his family, due to their home having “a tension running through it” due to Walter having issues “struggling with existence.”

Odenkirk describes Walter as “a pretty disconnected guy,” someone who seemed to go through life not realizing the harm he was doing. Apparently, Walter would get into various sorts of trouble, everything from car accidents to losing the family’s money to straight up disappearing at times. These incidents made the young Odenkirk more angry than anything else, leading to an actual altercation between father and son. As Odenkirk recalls, “One time I got to confront my father physically. It was a great feeling. And that’s kind of sad, and horrible.”

Even more unfortunate than their fight was the fact that son and father never really got a chance to reconcile. As Odenkirk recalled in 2013, the year he turned 21 his father “developed terminal bone cancer and he came home. I did try to connect with him, but it just didn’t happen.” Walter’s ultimate death became “a shrugging affair,” in Odenkirk’s words, with the son still in the dark about what was really behind his father’s behavior: “I don’t know what his story was,” he said.