By Considered one of the most influential and acclaimed series ever made, AMC’s “Breaking Bad” remains in that highest echelon of TV alongside series like “The Wire,” “The Sopranos,” and “Mad Men”.
Like any show it isn’t perfect however and some characters came under fire more than others across the years. One of the show’s most famous targets for criticism was Anna Gunn’s Skyler White – wife of Bryan Cranston’s Walter White.
The character was widely hated at the time with people seeing her as arrogant, annoying, hypocritical and condescending. No matter what heinous actions Walter did, he was beloved whereas Skyler was seen as a killjoy.
With time and larger societal change, there seems to have been a reversal of sorts on her character with people finding her more sympathetic and her actions more understandable.
Gunn herself, speaking with THR, says she’s witnessed first-hand that public opinion change in regards to the Skyler character as during production she looked into what people were saying – something she admits was a mistake. That led to:
“A great deal of soul searching and me thinking, ‘Well, is it me?’ And I think the writers went through the same thing: ‘Is it the way we’ve written her?’ Vince would sometimes say, ‘My gosh, no matter what we do with Walt, no matter how bad he breaks, people are still going, ‘Yay!’ They’re still in his corner and they’re still behind him.’
So I really just had to go through that ring of fire, for lack of a better phrase, to understand that a lot of it was, frankly, misogynistic. A lot of it was the way that female characters were treated, and I think we’ve come a long way since then.”
Gunn found herself the subject of early social media criticism and bullying with online harassment and threats becoming bad enough to fear for her own physical safety. She goes on to explain how things have changed in the years since:
“I felt that it was my responsibility to stand up and answer to it [the bullying], which is what I did. And now, when people come up to me, it’s incredibly different because of all the seismic changes that have happened.
There’s still a long way to go, but we really have made seismic changes since then. So people come up to me now and say, ‘You were the linchpin for me. You were the conscience of the show. You were what pulled me into the show.’
Or they say, ‘The first time I watched it, I hated that character. But the second time I watched it, I realized, ‘Oh my God, that poor woman.’”
Gunn played the role across all five seasons of the series from 2008-2013 and won two Emmys for her work along with plenty of critical acclaim. The overall series received 16 Primetime Emmy Awards and entered the Guinness World Records as the most critically acclaimed TV show of all time in 2013.
The post “Breaking Bad” Star Talks Skyler Reversal appeared first on Dark Horizons.
