Q&A: ‘Breaking Bad’ scribe on finale: ‘We were flying by the seat of our pants’

TORONTO – “Breaking Bad” stands as one of the most finely crafted series on television, but its Emmy-winning scribe says the show’s creators were “flying by the seat of our pants” when it came to its devastating final episodes.

Moira Walley-Beckett earned an Emmy for one of the show’s most emotionally-wrenching hours, in which (spoiler alert!) Hank is killed, Walt Jr. finally learns the truth, and Walt kidnaps baby Holly, among other things.

The Vancouver-bred dancer/singer/actress-turned-writer says her screenwriting career has been “a happy accident.”

Walley-Beckett had been working on another show when she became obsessed with the drug drama’s first season. So much so that she wrote a script for herself “because the characters were in my head.”

That led to a meeting with producer Melissa Bernstein, who got the script into the hands of show creator Vince Gilligan. The rest is history.

“Something about that material, something about the show, something about the characters had gotten into my marrow already so it was a total Vegas move to gamble on (writing a script),” Walley-Beckett admits.

“I was there ever since. And it’s exactly where I needed to be.”

Now, Walley-Beckett is in the middle of writing a new “Anne of Green Gables” adaptation for CBC-TV. During a recent stop in Toronto, The Canadian Press chatted with Walley-Beckett about the episode “Ozymandias” and wrapping up the series.

CP: You’re credited with writing one of the best episodes of “Breaking Bad.” What was it like to write?

Walley-Beckett: That particular episode was not the penultimate episode, it was the one before, but it almost felt that way because so much happened.

It was so full of final moments and it was just like the whole series — with the exception of the finale — was culminating to these explosions, these plot explosions, and these character emotional explosions. And as Vince likes to say: all the chickens came home to roost in this episode.

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CP: How far in advance did you know what would happen?

Walley-Beckett: We charted carefully season per season but we were flying by the seat of our pants in the last season. When we threw that M16 into Walt’s truck at the top of season 5 and just had to have it, we actually didn’t know exactly how that was going to play out.

And it was kind of rare for us to operate that way. And it was certainly extremely stressful breaking the last two halves of the last season because we felt the weight of the legacy and the desire to satisfy and to also make sure that we told the story that we truly, truly wanted to tell.

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CP: Have you spoken to Vince Gilligan about your upcoming CBC project?

Walley-Beckett: Everytime I see him he’s just like, “When are you going to come and write on (‘Breaking Bad’ prequel) “Better Call Saul”? I’m like, ‘Guys, I’m doing my own thing.'”

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