Better Call Saul actress Rhea Seehorn was shocked at Howard Hamlin’s death scene in the AMC hit and Breaking Bad prequel. Better Call Saul season 6 finds Seehorn’s character Kim Wexler deep into a con with her husband Saul Goodman (Jimmy McGill), played by Bob Odenkirk. The two lawyers engage in a ploy to destroy the reputation of Patrick Fabian’s character Howard Hamlin, spreading the rumor that he is addicted to cocaine and fraternizing with prostitutes, among other scandalous activities. Their ultimate goal is to discredit Hamlin as a lawyer due to their fraught professional history with him, but Kim and Saul are quickly swept up in the excitement of the con.
In season 6, episode 7, “Plan of Execution,” Hamlin makes the ill-advised decision of confronting Kim and Saul after finally catching on to their actions. He drives to their apartment and walks in, intent on making the couple explain themselves. Behind him, drug cartel kingpin Lalo Salamanca makes his entrance, having finally made it back from the massacre at his house, ready to make someone pay. Howard continues his tirade, unaffected by the presence of Lalo, who then shoots him in the head, leaving viewers (as well as Saul and Kim) in complete shock.
In a recent roundtable interview with Variety Making a Scene presented by HBO, Seehorn made it clear that she was just as horrified as her character about how the scene went down, having been left in the dark about Howard’s death until the last possible moment. Though series creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould had filled Fabian in months prior to filming the fateful scene, Howard’s fate was kept secret from Seehorn and Odenkirk. See her reaction to the scene below:
“Patrick was so convincing in not telling us that I thought that it was possible he didn’t know it was coming, and called Peter frantically and was like, ‘I don’t think Patrick knows! Does he know this is coming out?’ Peter was like, ‘I definitely told him’ and I was convinced that he wasn’t told, so it was a big surprise to me.”
It’s amusing to hear Seehorn express concern over Fabian when he had been clued into his character’s shocking end much earlier. Fabian clearly did a fantastic job keeping the secret, which couldn’t have been easy while on set. In the series, Seehorn’s character is so shaken by Howard’s death that she leaves Saul, realizing that they are bad influences on one another. As for Howard, while his actor Fabian is luckily still part of the series in the form of interviews and roundtables, the upright lawyer suffered a tragic fate even after death, being ‘cleaned up’ by Mike’s crew and buried alongside the criminal who shot him while his death is staged as a suicide.
Luckily, Kim’s exit from her marriage wasn’t the end for Seehorn on the show, since the most recent episode, “Waterworks,” saw a post-Breaking Bad Kim finally confront her past and tell Howard’s wife the truth about what befell her husband. Kim also featured in a cameo from fan-favorite Breaking Bad alum Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), in a scene that some have speculated serves as a farewell to both characters. As Better Call Saul fans await the series finale next week, Kim’s fate as well as Saul’s (Gene in the current timeline) is still uncertain. Based on Seehorn’s reaction to the killing of Fabian’s character, perhaps it will be just as difficult for her to say goodbye to this universe as it will be for fans.
