Saul Goodman
Jimmy McGill's flashy lawyer alias - it's all good, man - played by Bob Odenkirk.
Saul Goodman is the alias of James Morgan McGill, a fictional Albuquerque lawyer and con artist created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould and played by Bob Odenkirk. He is a major figure in Breaking Bad (2008–2013), where he serves as the consigliere to meth cooks Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, and he is the title character of Better Call Saul (2015–2022) and the animated Slippin' Jimmy (2022). Better Call Saul traces how the ambitious Jimmy McGill slides into Saul in the six years before Breaking Bad, and follows him afterwards living as Gene Takavic.
Quick Facts
- Series
- Breaking Bad
- First minor
- Better Call Saul
- First date
- April 26, 2009
- Last minor
- Saul Gone
- Last date
- August 15, 2022
- Creator
- Vince Gilligan; Peter Gould
- Portrayed by
- Bob Odenkirk
- Blake Bertrand (teenage flashback)
- Cole Whitaker (childhood flashback)
- Voice
- Bob Odenkirk (Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul), Sean Giambrone (Slippin' Jimmy)
Facts from the source article.
Background
Within the story, Jimmy was born on November 12, 1960, in Cicero, Illinois, near Chicago, to Charles Willard McGill and Ruth McGill; his older brother Chuck became a partner at the Albuquerque firm Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill. Behind the scenes, the writers needed a guide to steer Walt and Jesse through the criminal world, and a new source of comic relief once Hank Schrader's arc turned dark. The name is a pun on 'it's all good, man', an idea Gould credits to Gilligan. Gould wrote the episode that introduced him, 'Better Call Saul' (2009). Odenkirk was offered a four-episode guest role without an audition, modelled Saul's patter on producer Robert Evans, and got coaching on drama from Bryan Cranston. He joined the main cast in the third season.
Did You Know?
- When Odenkirk could not film the second-season finale, Gilligan created Mike Ehrmantraut to fill in.
- In 2014 a real billboard for James M. McGill, Attorney at Law, went up in Albuquerque with a phone number to an Odenkirk voicemail.
- Gilligan considered using Saul in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie but left him out.
- Odenkirk nearly turned down the spin-off to stay with his family in Los Angeles.
More in Lore & History
Elsewhere in Better Call Saul
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced