By Mike Hogan
Photo Credit: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television.Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
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 to 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 certain 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 also is 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.
And so I think what you see in season six is a man who has, in his mind, checked off all the boxes of decent behavior toward them. So Howard hiring a P.I. and the whole boxing thing, those are outside of his realms. Those are Howard going to a playbook that he hasn’t opened before. And I think that’s what leads him to where he’s at.
Right. He loses his compass out of sheer frustration.
Yeah. And that wonderful scene where they introduced my wife, Cheryl, played by Sandrine Holt. It was so awful and awkward to play, and I think it came off really well. It gave another insight of, oh, Howard’s put together on the outside, but you know, he suffers just like you and me. He doesn’t have a perfect life. When he goes home and takes the tie bar off, he’s just another man, just like everybody else. The caveat is, he has a much better house when he takes off his tie, right?
Right. And he has a lot more ties. Let’s talk about his wardrobe, because it’s like his armor, right?
All credit goes to Jennifer Bryan, who was the wardrobe designer. Jennifer Bryan came up with the tie bar. She came up with the knit tie, which at the time were very, very hard to find. The suits are made by Di Stefano of Italy, down in Los Angeles. They were handcrafted in Genoa. They are inch-to-inch made for me. And that’s why they look so good. And you are right: The word is “armor.” I would put that on and I would walk on set, and in my brain a bit of Howard would be thinking, My suit is more expensive than anybody’s here. I have more money on me than you guys probably earn in two months. Let’s be honest: It was probably 90% of my acting.
Let’s talk about Howard’s manic episode. This season, we started really getting sympathetic glimpses of Howard’s life, and growing increasingly alienated from the idea that Kim and Jimmy are doing anything except acting out their own warped demons by going after him. So you’ve got this scene where they have created this incredibly vicious scenario where Howard is saying what’s true, and he looks insane. What was that like to shoot?
Well, the writing is the blueprint. It tells you everything. And these writers are so good and so solid. So even in the dissembling of Howard in front of people, they wrote it so well because he is trying to keep this cool. And you’re right. He does see it. He’s the only one who sees it. So he’s like a prophet. And since he has the history with Kim and Jimmy, he has a private history that no one knows about. So even if he brings it up, now, it still sounds extra crazy.
The good news is I got great guys like Dennis Boutsikaris [as Rick Schweikart] and Ed Begley Jr. [as Clifford Main]. So I’m trying to explain this complicated yet absurd thing, and Ed literally can make his eyes turn into pins. And you’re like, “Oh no, he’s retreating. He’s not listening.” And then I look over at Dennis, and Dennis has these big saucers of eyes, these big, like, oh, poor baby eyes. So with the two of them, I was getting nothing. There was nowhere to hide. That’s what it felt like: nowhere to hide.
The very first place I ever shot a [Better Call Saul] scene was the boardroom. And so I thought it was really appropriate that that’s where it all unravels, right there in the boardroom. I started off in control at the head of the table, and by the end of the series I’m in the middle of the table, losing it all in real time.
I wasn’t sure Howard was going to come back in the episode, but then he does. And he has this incredible moment where he’s able to tell Jimmy and Kim what he really thinks, and demand that they explain themselves in a kind of a lawyerly way. Tell me about that scene.
Well, it’s a big scene, completely driven by Howard. It’s a giant cathartic monologue. It’s the whole, “I know who you are, and I’m going to let you know who I am.” And I think it’s also probably written to allow the audience to say some things to [Jimmy and Kim] that maybe they’ve been thinking. Why are you like this? What are you doing?
I remember we did a bunch of takes, top to bottom. [Writer] Tom [Schnauz] really let me have a go at it. And the first couple of times out you’re finding your way, but there’s a run where you have it. And all of a sudden you finish and both Bob and Rhea look over and do that actor thing where their eyes just get a little big and they do a little head nod, and I can feel it too. Tom can see it too. He goes, “Great. Let’s go again.” And so from that point, there was a pocket that you get to work in, that is very, very good. Not to say there’s not a series of awful chewing-scenery takes. Because I’m sure those exist too, by the way.
That’s why God created editors, right?
Yes, exactly. There would be some where they would not look at me after the take and I’m like, “Geez, okay, got it.”
Why do you think Lalo killed Howard?
Oh, I’m just in the way. At this point, Lalo’s singular focus is about Fring, as far as I can tell. He already sees that I’m a problem, no matter what. So I’m just disposable. I’m a fly. He needs to talk to Jimmy and Kim right now. Who’s this guy? Get out of the way. And I think it probably also works as an intimidation factor.
I love Tony Dalton. We get along great. We’ve been hiking and all that stuff. You read it on the script, but it is that weird thing that all of a sudden, okay, we’re rehearsing. They bring in the rubber gun and all that stuff. And you’re like, “Oh, oh. Oh, Tony, are you going to kill me? Really?” And Tony says something like, “Sorry, man. That’s what they say I have to do.”
And you go from being the heavy, in the first season, to the person summarily dispatched by the big boss, in video game terms.
I think it’s funny, the yo-yo that I think some of the audiences had for Howard. We’re against him. We’re for him. They really sort of play it back and forth really deliciously for these six seasons. But you’re right. This season in particular, they show signs of Howard that really allow you to say, “Wait a second. I forgot. Why are they doing this to Howard? He doesn’t deserve that.” And then he really doesn’t deserve this. He’s just literally at the wrong place at the wrong time.
After the ending sank in a bit, I thought to myself, if Kim hadn’t made that U-turn, Howard would’ve lived.
Yeah. What if? He wouldn’t be there if Kim hadn’t turned that car around. He wouldn’t be there if Jimmy hadn’t gone through with the plot.
How disturbing was it to watch that scene?
Honestly, after it happened, I physically put my hands on my knees and bent over. The wind was sort of taken out of me. I think I’ve been shot before, or I’ve been killed before onscreen. But there’s a finality to it, character-wise and job-wise and life-wise. I know my mother’s going to be so mad at these guys.
Yeah, it’s a tough way to go.
Tom and Mary Lou Fabian in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, first of all, are not completely on board with all the violence anyway, but they are certainly not going to be happy about this.
So what’s next for you?
Parking fourth floor or above at Paramount and standing in line to audition like every other actor. I just finished a film with Andie MacDowell called The Other Zoey that will be on Amazon in the fall. I worked on an HBO Max show called The Gordita Chronicles. I was just working on Big Shot with John Stamos. So I’m right back into the swing of what I love about acting, which is doing varied jobs in varied places and varied characters.
Maybe you and Michael McKean can reunite on the new Spinal Tap movie. What would you want to play in that one?
Well, I guess I’d be a drummer for 30 seconds if they’d have me.