Vince Gilligan, who created one of the most iconic villains of all time in Walter White, is calling for creators to make more “old fashioned” heroes to contrast the real world “where bad guys, the real life kind, are running amok.”
After creating one of the most visceral and beloved villains of all time in Walter White a.k.a. Heisenberg, as brutally portrayed by Bryan Cranston on Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan should certainly know how to recognize a bad guy when he sees on. Well, he’s seeing too many of them now.
“Walter White is one of the all time great bad guys,” Gilligan said over the weekend. “But all things being equal, I think we– I’d rather be celebrated for creating someone a bit more inspiring.”
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Gilligan was on hand to accept the Writers Guild Award’s top honor for writing, the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement, but despite his own efforts in the darkness, he’s hoping the next generation thinks more aspirational.
“In 2025 it’s time to say that out loud, because we are living in an era where bad guys, the real life kind, are running amok,” he said in his acceptance speech. “Bad guys who make their own rules, bad guys who, no matter what they tell you, are really out for themselves.”
“Who am I talking about?” he then asked. “Well, this is Hollywood, so guess.”
“In our profoundly divided country, everybody seems to agree on one thing. There are too many real life bad guys,” he said. “It’s just that we’re living in different realities.”
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“There’s no simple answer for how we might change that,” Gilligan continued. “Though, if it were, I bet it would have something to do with climbing up out of the cesspool of social media and actually listening to each other.”
The Better Call Saul creator went on to say that he thinks “bad guys” in entertainment have perhaps become a bit “too sexy” in the past several decades, citing representation from The Sopranos to Star Wars, The Godfather, and The Silence of the Lambs.
“I really think that, when we create characters as indelible as Michael Corleone or Hannibal Lecter or Darth Vader or Tony Soprano, viewers everywhere, all around the world, they pay attention,” Gilligan argued.
“They say, ‘Man, those dudes are badass. I want to be that cool,'” he continued. “When that happens, fictional bad guys stop being the cautionary player that they were created to be. God help us, they’ve become aspirational.”
“So maybe what the world needs now are some good, old fashioned, Greatest Generation types who give more than they take,” he said. “Who think that kindness, tolerance and sacrifice aren’t strictly for chumps.”
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Gilligan is putting his own creativity where his mouth is, too, sharing that his upcoming sci-fi Apple TV+ project starring Rhea Seehorn will, in fact, feature an honest-to-goodness “good guy” in the lead.
While speaking with Variety after his speech, Gilligan admitted that he usually doesn’t “go political,” and that his family had even tried to talk him out of breaking that unofficial policy at this awards show … but he felt that he couldn’t.
Gilligan told the outlet that after seeing the direction the United States has gone amid the second rise of Donald Trump, and how quickly things are happening since he took office, he felt he “had to talk about the idea of we have to start celebrating heroes again, good people again.”
He said that he created Walter White as a response to the black-and-white characters he grew up with, people who were clearly in the “good” or “bad” camp. He said he was inspired to explore the grays in between, where he believes most people exist.
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“People are not always good, nor are they always bad,” he explained. And yet, as he joined the growing exploration of this gray area, Gilligan thinks that over time “the point got missed somewhere.”
“The bad guys should be more of a cautionary tale than aspirational,” he said. “It’s just starting to feel that way. If you have enough stories with bad guys in it, who are we supposed to root for?”
He went on to argue, “I really think we have a lot of power as writers and as actors, as storytellers, artists, to show the world in a way that it either is like that, or it could be like that. What kind of world you want to live in?”
“The closer I get to mortality, I think, as much as I’m proud of Walter White, is that the thing you want first on your tombstone?” he mused to the outlet.
