And Here Comes the Pizza
“Breaking Bad” debuted on AMC on January 20, 2008, and ultimately ran for 62 episodes over 5 seasons. The crime drama centers on the story of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque who, after receiving a cancer diagnosis, turns into a meth manufacturer to ensure that he can provide for his family. Over the course of the show’s run, it became increasingly well-received, earning five Emmy Awards in its final year. And it has lots of fans — the series finale drew 10.3 million viewers and the show’s overall success warranted a spinoff, “Better Call Saul.” Much of the show was filmed in Albuquerque, and its success turned the New Mexican city into a Hollywood-esque tourist attraction, with fans visiting to take pictures of the “real” Breaking Bad.
And, unfortunately, to make a mess with some pizza.
The second episode of the third season of Breaking Bad, titled “Caballo Sin Nombre,” debuted on AMC on March 28, 2010. Most of the episode isn’t important for our purposes, but the 13 seconds in the video below are. As you can see, Walter White, the protagonist (played by Bryan Cranston) exits his home with a full pizza in hand and, in a fit of anger and frustration, launches it onto the roof of his house. The moment became a flashpoint for the show’s fans online, partly because it’s pretty funny to throw a pizza onto your roof, and also because the pizza, for reasons actually explained in the episode (but most fans missed it), was delivered unsliced. Here’s the clip:
(I don’t know why this isn’t embedding. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKAzfd8oTWs)
For most fans, it’s a fun moment in the show’s overall arc. But for Frances and Louis Padilla, it became a nuisance.
The Padillas are residents of the home that Walter White lived in — or, more accurately, the show’s producers used their home for the outside shots of Walter’s abode. (The inside filming was done in a nearby studio.) As a result, fans often came to their house to take pictures, much like one would do for any other tourist attraction. By and large, the Padillas didn’t mind; at times, fans blocked their driveway, and it’s a little concerning to have people driving by at all hours, but it’s mostly harmless fun.
The pizza scene changed that, though. Like the rest of the exterior shots of the White house (as opposed to the White House), the scene was filmed on location at the Padillas. As Esquire explains, “On the day of the pizza shoot, [Frances Padilla] said, stacks of pizza boxes lined her driveway as the prop department struggled to coordinate the stunt. When the cameras started rolling, Bryan Cranston nailed it on the very first take.” And in doing so, he gave the show’s fans something they could also do at the Padilla’s house. They, too, could buy a pizza and throw it on the Padilla’s roof.
As one could imagine, that became annoying — and it didn’t end when the show went off the air. In 2015, five years after the pizza episode debuted and two years after Breaking Bad’s series finale, the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, was on a podcast dedicated to “Better Call Saul.” During that podcast, he asked fans to stop throwing pizzas on the Padilla’s roof. According to Variety, “Gilligan said the woman and her husband who live in White’s residence in Albuquerque are used to fans coming to take pictures, and are fine with it within reason. But the notoriously obsessive “Breaking Bad” fans have gone overboard. ‘There is nothing original, or funny, or cool about throwing a pizza on this lady’s roof,’ Gilligan said. ‘It’s been done before — you’re not the first.’”
Unfortunately, Gilligan’s plea didn’t work. As a local news channel reported in 2017, the Padillas ended up installing an iron fence, six feet high, to keep people off the property and pizzas off the roof. And even that didn’t work immediately; per Entertainment Weekly, “fans have even tried to go through the construction to snap a clear pic of the house.”
Bonus fact: At one point in Breaking Bad, Walter White buries a lot of money in the middle of the desert, only noting the location by memorizing the GPS coordinates. Viewers of the show are shown the coordinates, too, and the show’s producers didn’t want fans to go out into the desert looking for treasure that wasn’t there. So they planned ahead. As Geeks of Doom notes, “A search in Google Maps for +34° 59′ 20.00″, -106° 36′ 52″ reveals that it’s actually not out in the middle of nowhere, but rather at ABQ Studios in Albuquerque, NM, where Breaking Bad [was] filmed (it’s also where some of The Avengers and The Lone Ranger were shot).”
From the Archives: Why You Should Whistle While You Work: Amazingly, this may also a story about Bryan Cranston on a TV set that involves pizza (assuming that’s what they served at the whistle-funded parties).