After the cult favourite series ‘Breaking Bad’ ended around five years ago, public appetite for the series was so big that it seems inevitable that its spin-off series, ‘Better Call Saul’, would also become a hit.

Not in the eyes of its star, Bob Odenkirk, however, who felt that the series was a “huge risk” and didn’t feel that the public would be interested in his character of Jimmy McGill, and his transformation into the morally questionable lawyer Saul Goodman of ‘Breaking Bad’.

“I always thought it was a huge risk, and all I wanted was them to do it for their own reasons, and not because I asked them to do it or pressured them to do it,” the actor told Entertainment Weekly in a new interview this week. “So I basically backed off every single time it was suggested to me.”

Bob OdenkirkBob Odenkirk had reservations initially about 'Better Call Saul'

“I think Vince [Gilligan, co-creator] might have thought it was kind of weird to suggest to an actor, 'What if I create a show for you?,' and have that actor look at him and go, 'I dunno. It's your free time. Do what you want with your time’. I didn't want to be hoping, counting on it, and I didn't know what it was. We didn't really know who the character was when we left ‘Breaking Bad’.”

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With the fourth series of ‘Better Call Saul’ coming in around a month’s time, Odenkirk admits that it was a stunning success, but his initial hesitation was based around the fact that he didn’t even find his own character likeable.

“My first question when we talked was, 'How do you make him likeable?' Because I didn't like that guy. I mean, I like watching him - like a car wreck when you're not in it. It's intriguing. It pulls you in. But he's a bad guy.”

“They made him such a likable guy, and yet kept it organic. It's not a completely different person, but I really like the guy. I'm having to confront the fact that he is becoming Saul, and I don't like Saul," he said about the character's transformation.

‘Better Call Saul’ season four arrives on Netflix on August 6th in the U.S., and the following day in Britain.

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