No, Breaking Bad isn't based on a true story. The show's creator and executive producer, Vince Gilligan, created the concept. The show first premiered in 2008, and since then, the AMC series has had a huge impact on pop culture, inspiring a spin-off show called Better Call Saul in 2015.
The show is about Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who's struggling financially and finds out he has terminal lung cancer. To support his family, Walter decides to turn an old RV into a meth lab. He gets help from Jesse Pinkman, a former student who's already involved in the meth trade under the name Cap'n Cook.
Vince Gilligan, a talented US TV writer, producer, and director, created Breaking Bad. He devised the idea for the show and was the main writer and producer for all five seasons. His attention to detail has earned the show its critical acclaim.
Who is the inspiration behind the character of Walter White in Breaking Bad?
Breaking Bad is a major achievement in the Golden Age of Television. It's a story inspired by Shakespeare about a chemistry teacher who becomes a big player in the drug world after being diagnosed with cancer.
Bryan Cranston's performance as Walter White is at the heart of the show's success. Walter White will likely go down as one of the greatest antiheroes on screen.
However, a real person inspired Vince to create Walter White, Werner Heisenberg. Werner was a teacher who became a professor of theoretical physics at Leipzig University in 1927. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932 for his work on quantum mechanics and is also famous for his Uncertainty Principle.
Was there a real-life Walter White before the show of Breaking Bad?
Yes, before Bryan Cranston played his role as a meth dealer in the show, there was a real man named Walter White who sold meth in Alabama from 1988 to 2012. He was known for having the best meth in the country. Walter kept a low profile until his arrests in 2008 and 2012 for trafficking. Initially, his bail was set at $2 million, but the judge later reduced it to $10,000 so he could enter a faith-based rehab clinic called "The Foundry" to get help with his addiction.
Was the show inspired by any of the characters mentioned above?
No, Breaking Bad didn't copy real-life drug dealers. Its creator, Vince Gilligan, got the idea while working on The X-Files. He wanted a show with a main character who became a bad guy over time.
He and his friend Thomas Schnauz joked about selling meth out of an RV when they were unemployed. The joke became an idea, and Gilligan pitched it to several networks. FX and AMC liked the idea, and the show became an award-winning hit that ran for five seasons.
In an interview, the show's creator explained how he came up with the idea for the show.
“I was about to turn 40 years old… And, perhaps, I was thinking in terms of, you know, an impending midlife crisis. And to that end, I think Walter White, at least in the early seasons of Breaking Bad, is a man who’s suffering from, perhaps, the world’s worst midlife crisis. And although — actually, to be accurate, I suppose, in the first episode, he finds out it’s more of an end-of-life crisis than a midlife crisis. But maybe that’s what was inspiring me.”
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The king Bad is available for fans to stream on AMC and AMC+. Other alternatives to view the show include Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, and more.
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