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This post contains spoilers from Better Call Saul episode 607, “Plan and Execution.”
The Breaking Bad Cinematic Universe, as I’ve taken to calling the world where Walter White’s and Saul Goodman’s character arcs unfold, is all about transformation. We all know about the chemistry teacher who became a murderous drug lord, and we’re almost at the end of the story about the kindhearted con artist who became the cartel’s attorney of choice. But along the way, we’ve encountered any number of supporting characters with surprising trajectories.
It’s been six seasons and seven years since Patrick Fabian made his debut in Better Call Saul as Howard Hamlin, the perpetually pinstriped, über-alpha, vanilla-concentrate law partner who has alternately tormented and championed Bob Odenkirk‘s Jimmy McGill and Rhea Seehorn‘s Kim Wexler. As Fabian himself acknowledges, Howard was “set up as Lord Vader” in season one, and has behaved heartlessly at times, often out of loyalty to Jimmy’s brilliant but damaged older brother, Chuck (Michael McKean). But in the first half of Better Call Saul‘s sixth and final season, we got our most sympathetic glimpses of Howard yet — even as Jimmy and Kim doubled and tripled down on their master plan to destroy him. It all came to a head on tonight’s episode, when Howard found himself on the wrong end of a silencer wielded by Tony Dalton‘s Lalo Salamanca.
On Friday morning, Fabian was running for coffee in Albuquerque when he dialed in to a far less eventful conference call than the one that unfolds in the episode. The person on the other end of the line was… me, with burning questions about Howard Hamlin’s character trajectory, tragic fate, and bespoke suit of armor.
Vanity Fair: When and how did you find out what was going to happen to Howard?
Patrick Fabian: Vince [Gilligan]Peter [Gould], and Melissa [Bernstein] gave me a call before the season even began. No actor wants to have the triumvirate of your show call you before the season because you know it’s probably not good news. They didn’t let me know exactly what was in store. They just let me know that basically my services were not going to be needed at this particular point.
At what point did you learn the details of how this was going to go down?
Just like everything else in Better Call Saul, it’s unfolded one script at a time. So I didn’t know until I read seven. Rhea [Seehorn] texted me and said, “Seven’s dropped. Have you read it yet? ” And I was like, “Oh.” I have to say, as much as it plays out on the screen, on the page it is also very abrupt. There’s that weird finality where you go, “Did I just read what I read?” It’s supposed to linger and have that impact. I bet there’ll be a lot of people screaming at the television.
You’ve played this character so beautifully for six seasons. And I feel like we’ve seen a lot more of him and his sympathetic side this season, perhaps to set us up for this disappointment. But Howard is still kind of ridiculous, right? You and the showrunners push that envelope, but you always also find a way to keep him human. Was that something you thought about explicitly?
Vince Gilligan came to me in the very first episode, back in season one — because I’m set up as Lord Vader. I’m set up as the heavy. Jimmy says so, right? I guess I was leaning into that, like, I’m the evil corporate overlord, and Vince leaned down to me in between takes and said, “Hey, we don’t know if Howard’s good or bad. We don’t know yet. But we hired you. And we hired you because you had a decency about you. ” And that word decency really stuck with me.
Howard may be tough to deal with and a bit of a peacock and a bit of a prima donna, but in the end he’s not a cheater and he’s not a liar. He’s ultimately decent. I think he shows that by his extensions of good will to Jimmy. Even after he denied him [a job at Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill], he got him a job at Davis and Maine. And then he offered him a job at HHM in season five. He helped Kim go to college. He helped to pay off her debt. He tried to warn her. He really went out of his way to cover all the bases of behaving decently with these people. Until, at the end of [season] five, he washes his hands of both Jimmy and Kim.
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