Rhea Seehorn woke up this morning to a cat jumping on her head and an Emmy nomination. The cat part she says is normal, but the Supporting Actress Emmy nomination for her role as Kim Wexler in Better Call Saul was a pleasant surprise and a great sendoff to her character. “I don’t think I’ll ever say goodbye to her,” she says, “but I definitely mourn and grieve not getting to play her anymore. That being said, Bob [Odenkirk] and I felt really, really proud of how Peter Gould chose to end the series. I just thought it was so respectful of the fans, the characters, and the story.”
After portraying the character since 2015, Seehorn received her first Emmy nomination last year for the first part of the final season. Her nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series this time is for the last six episodes of the series, which she finds bittersweet. “It’s hard because it’s ending, but also really blissful in that we had poured so much of ourselves into the collaboration of getting to know these characters. Working with the brilliant writers, the brilliant directors, and working with each other all these years to fully three dimensionalize these people and their inner struggles… was really satisfying.”
Bob Odenkirk, who plays the titular Saul Goodman (aka Jimmy McGill), also received an Emmy nomination this morning for Lead Actor. “He is just the most brilliant and generous scene partner and one of my best friends,” says Seehorn. “It was a special thing to get to do those last few brilliant scenes together.”
The most brilliant scene for Seehorn came from the penultimate episode of the season, “Waterworks”, in which Kim moves to Florida and tries to rebuild her life after finalizing her divorce with Jimmy. “I love doing my scenes with Bob, but I have to say this episode that Vince [Gilligan] wrote and directed was so different and so challenging because we had to figure out who is this person that we have not seen before. There’s nothing really wrong with her life, but she’s choosing to be sort of a shell of her former self, and that’s what’s tragic to watch.”
The true brilliance of the episode came in at the end, when Seehorn and Odenkirk acted together over the phone. “I had been away from all of my scenes with Bob and playing this different Kim, and Bob did the phone call for real and was on the other line of the phone when he called her at the office after all these years… It was very upsetting and alarming and we really needed to play that. She knows, at that point, the events of Breaking Bad, but she also still cares and loves this person. It was just really fun to ride that whole story.”
After playing Kim Wexler for so long, Seehorn is excited for what’s next. She’s been working on Cooper’s Bar, her short-form series which has now been turned into a season of full-length episodes on IFC, her film Linoleum, with Jim Gaffigan, released on Hulu earlier this year, and she has even more projects in the pipeline that she hopes to start once the SAG-AFTRA deal is worked out and WGA strike is resolved, including another show with Vince Gilligan. “Vince Gilligan’s new show with the totally different theme, different character, different series that he created with me in mind,” she says. “I can hardly say the sentence without cheering up. So, I’m extraordinarily excited about that.”
