Aaron Paul Interview

In the Sundance drama Smashed, Aaron Paul plays an alcoholic married to another alcoholic (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). The happy drunks spend their evenings singing karaoke and frequenting bars with their enabling friends, but when the wife decides to sober up, Paul's character keeps on boozing. Paul, who’s currently on Breaking Bad hiatus, sat down with Vulture to talk about playing an alcoholic, getting wasted as character research, and what he really thinks of Mr. White.

Obviously people will draw parallels between this role and Jesse Pinkman on Breaking Bad, since they both have addiction problems. Do you think playing Jesse helped prepare you for this character?
I don’t know if he necessarily prepared me for it. Alcoholism is such a different animal from what Jesse has ever really dealt with. I’m not saying one’s worse than the other. They’re both horrible addictions, but all I did for preparation was — I’m not really a big drinker, but I definitely drank a lot on set. No, I’m kidding, I’m joking. I did have a couple nights drinking and filming it, just having friends filming a night of going out. Actually, one night going out and one night at my house getting pretty much obliterated.

You filmed yourself or you filmed them?
I filmed myself and my buddy Phil. We grabbed my phone and just filmed me. It’s interesting watching the next day because a lot of the stuff I didn’t remember doing. I just wanted to take it to that level and we definitely did. Researching those videos really helped me prepare for this role because 90 percent of the time [my character], Charlie is drunk or drinking.

Where are those videos now?
I have one video saved because it was shot on a Flip cam, but the really priceless video is lost because it got deleted. My phone took a dive in some water and lost everything on it.

Sad, it won't be a DVD extra.
No DVD extras. Yeah, that would actually be pretty nice to have.

Continue reading at Vulture, and find out why Jesse from "Breaking Bad" hates Walt.