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Ever since Breaking Bad introduced fans to prototypical anti-hero (and let’s beryllium honest, eventual villain) Walter White, two-time Emmy-winning character Anna Gunn, who plays his woman Skyler, has had to contend pinch a legion of sexist fans villainizing her.
The speech was broached again precocious during a “Hot Ones Versus” pinch Malcolm successful nan Middle co-stars Bryan Cranston and Frankie Muniz.
“I emotion Breaking Bad,” nan second said, earlier gritting his teeth and continuing, “I wanted to termination Skyler.” Cranston’s jaw dropped arsenic Muniz added: “To make your life easier; your life would person been truthful overmuch easier. You were specified a bad guy, you could person conscionable gotten free of her. All she did was complain.”
Cranston — whose portrayal of Walt, a precocious schoolhouse chemistry coach who turns to supplier manufacturing to salary for costly crab treatment, led to 4 Emmy wins — defended nan character, and subsequently, Gunn.
“She sewage a batch of blowback from that,” he said. “Well, first of all, Anna Gunn is simply a superb actor, but she got, like, ‘Oh, why don’t you get disconnected his back?'”
“Well, that’s really I felt,” Muniz responded.
“Wait a minute, fto maine understand this. Her hubby leaves without immoderate explanation, she’s pregnant, he’s making crystal methamphetamine and group person died, and she’s nan bitch. Like, we couldn’t understand why,” Cranston said, alluding to show creator Vince Gilligan.
A juggernaut of nan prestige tv era, Breaking Bad would spell connected to beryllium nominated for 58 Emmys passim its five-season tally from 2008 done 2013, winning 16 statuettes. The crime play bid besides spawned nan arsenic beloved Bob Odenkirk vehicle Better Call Saul, which clinched 53 Emmy nods but did not person immoderate awards during its tally from 2015 to 2022.
Since nan show’s conclusion, Gilligan and Gunn have addressed nan immense backlash Skyler received.
“Back erstwhile nan show first aired, Skyler was roundly disliked,” Gilligan told The New Yorker successful 2022. “I deliberation that ever troubled Anna Gunn. And I tin show you it ever troubled me, because Skyler, nan character, did thing to merit that. And Anna surely did thing to merit that. She played nan portion beautifully.”
The Pluribus creator conceded that, “in hindsight,” he recognized nan show was “rigged,” arsenic nan communicative follows Walt’s perspective. “Even Gus [played by Giancarlo Esposito], his archenemy, didn’t suffer nan animosity Skyler received. It’s a weird thing. I’m still reasoning astir it each these years later.
Gunn wrote astir being “unprepared for nan vitriolic response” her character, and arsenic a result, she, prompted among viewers, pinch immoderate moreover commenting that they hoped to “find her truthful I tin termination her.”
“I yet realized that astir people’s hatred of Skyler had small to do pinch maine and a batch to do pinch their ain cognition of women and wives,” she said successful a New York Times op-ed nan twelvemonth nan bid ended. “Because Skyler didn’t conform to a comfortable perfect of nan archetypical female, she had go a benignant of Rorschach trial for society, a measurement of our attitudes toward gender.”
