Aaron Paul, interview: 'For some reason I am always gravitating towards the darker side of things'

In Breaking Bad and new movie Triple 9, Aaron Paul plays dark, twisted characters that couldn’t be further from his happy, clean-living self, he tells Nick Curtis 
Breaking even: Aaron Paul was barely earning enough to pay his bills before landing the role of Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad
Larry Busacca/Getty
Nick Curtis @nickcurtis17 February 2016

Aaron Paul is thinking of applying for asylum. “My wife and I have already decided we are going to try and convince Canada to let us ‘move upstairs’,” the 36-year-old star of Breaking Bad tells me. “Or if you guys would have us here, that’d be great. I’ll write the Queen a very lovely letter: ‘Please let us become citizens...’ ”

As Jesse Pinkman in five riveting series of Vince Gilligan’s superlative drug drama Breaking Bad, Paul suffered acts of brutal violence and degradation, and witnessed the slow moral disintegration of his former teacher turned meth-cooking svengali Walter White (Bryan Cranston). But none of the horrors in the hit show — the murders, the torture, the time Jesse’s girlfriend choked to death on her own vomit beside him —­­ can compare to the thought of Donald Trump as president, it seems.

“Absolutely not!” Paul continues. “I think he is terrifying. If he becomes president — and he will not become president — I just do not believe he would know what to do. It’s just shocking to me that 100 per cent of the public doesn’t feel the way I do. Everyone thought it was funny at the beginning but he is still in the race and that is so bizarre to me.”

Paul is slight, bright-eyed and gravel-voiced in person, hunched over a coffee to combat jet lag. We meet in London’s Corinthia Hotel to talk about Triple 9, the intelligent and brutally effective thriller by director John Hillcoat (The Road, Lawless) in which Paul stars alongside Chiwetel Ejiofor, Woody Harrelson and Kate Winslet.

The film is set in downtown Atlanta, in a violent moral wasteland where little separates cops and ex-soldiers from gangsters. It starts with five men staging a bank robbery — and the tension barely lets up after that.

“When it landed on my desk the first thing that stood out was John Hillcoat — I am such a huge fan,” says Paul. “And the script was impossible to ignore: a gritty, exhilarating, insane ride from the beginning. So I just had to jump on board.”

Paul’s character Gabe is — like Jesse — a bit of a screw-up, an addict and low-level criminal, but brought into a bigger game by his brother, played by Norman Reedus. Like Jesse too, Gabe provides a sort of m oral centre to the story — someone with whose struggles the audience can empathise.

“I am drawn to emotionally conflicted characters, something that as an actor I can sink my teeth into,” says Paul. “For some reason I am always gravitating towards the darker side of things. In my real life I would like to think I am a happy guy who enjoys life. But I also enjoy zipping on a skin where the character is going through hell. And back.”

'I think there should be more opportunities out there for everyone. I was part of Exodus, where they hired American or Australian actors to play Egyptians. They so easily could have hired incredible Egyptian actors. '

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He “just clicked” with the rest of his on-screen criminal gang: Ejiofor, Reedus, Anthony Mackie and Clifton Collins Jr. The fact that the group is racially mixed — two black, two Anglo-Saxon, one Hispanic — is never remarked upon, and is probably more representative of US life than, say, the current Oscars shortlist.

“We all have views on that and I have to agree,” Paul says of the all-white list of actors nominated for Academy Awards. “I think there should be more opportunities out there for everyone. I was part of [Ridley Scott’s] Exodus, where they hired American or Australian actors to play Egyptians. They so easily could have hired incredible Egyptian actors.

“I am proud of the movie and the people I worked with were incredible: Joel Edgerton gave a fantastic performance but he had to have a spray tan every couple of days to make him look Egyptian. Hopefully Hollywood will learn.”

One of the old white men nominated by the academy this year is Paul’s 59-year-old Breaking Bad co-star and close friend Bryan Cranston, up for Best Actor for Trumbo. “I saw it with Bryan the first time he saw it with his wife and daughter,” says Paul. “I told him, ‘You are going to be nominated for an Oscar for this.’ He was like, ‘No, not you too...’ Of course I would love to see him live that moment. I will always be in his corner.” The affection between the men is well-known: there are online mash-ups of the “Bryaaron” bromance. “It’s impossible not to love that man,” Paul shrugs.

Paul was born prematurely on the bathroom floor of his family’s Idaho home, the son of a retired Baptist preacher: “I was doing church plays from five or six years old. I always loved performing, and in eighth grade I decided it was what I wanted to do.” Did being the youngest of four have anything to do with it? “Probably,” he laughs.

After graduating from high school at 17 he took his car and $5,000 he had saved and moved to Los Angeles. Looking back, he is horrified at his naivety but it seems he had a fairly strong moral compass even then. “I lived on my own in LA for two years until I had my first alcoholic drink,” he says. “I split a six pack of Red Stripe with a buddy. I felt so rebellious.” Although Jesse Pinkman cooked meth, Paul has always claimed not to know what it actually is.

Professionally in those early years he had “lots of ups, lots of downs”. He was in a bunch of music videos and commercials, had bit parts in Beverly Hills 90210, The X-Files and ER, and appeared in the movies K-Pax and Mission Impossible: III. But even when he was cast as a recurring character on the HBO series Big Love, about polygamous Mormons, he was “only making five or six hundred dollars for an episode, and I couldn’t pay my bills on that. Breaking Bad was the first project that upped the game a little bit.”

He has a few more movies in the pipeline, plus The Path, the first original drama series from streaming service Hulu. “With film they are either making $200 million huge franchise movies or really small, passionate independent projects,” he says. “The middle-ground movies are turning into TV series, which is great for television. You don’t even have to leave your house!”

Paul may be the most grounded Hollywood actor I have ever met, which is perhaps due not just to his parents, but to his wife. He met Lauren Parsekian, co-founder of the anti-bullying charity Kind Campaign, at the Coachella festival (“before that, the people I dated had the worst taste in music”) and they married in 2013. Is it good to be involved with someone out of the business? “It works for us, and I am so proud of my wife,” he says.

Our time is up and we shake hands goodbye. In stark contrast to Jesse Pinkman, Aaron Paul genuinely seems to be the “happy guy” he describes himself as. Just as long as Donald Trump doesn’t get in. Fingers crossed.

Triple Nine is in cinemas from tomorrow

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