Walter White and Jesse Pinkman won’t make any appearances on the first season of Better Call Saul, the prequel to Breaking Bad. The series debuts Feb. 8 on AMC, with its second episode being televised the next day. Given the commercial and critical success of its predecessor, it’s among the most anticipated new programs of the year. Bob Odenkirk, a supporting player in Breaking Bad, steps up as the lead character, Saul Goodman, in the show focusing on his law practice. But that doesn’t mean Breaking Bad’s two lead characters, played by Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, won’t be seen sometime in the future, said Peter Gould, an executive producer. Gould said he and his partner, Vince Gilligan, want to let Better Call Saul stand on its own. If Cranston and Paul appear in the new series, it needs to feel natural to the story, Gilligan said. “If it feels like a stunt, then those of us in the writer’s room will have done something wrong,” Gilligan said.
Tony Danza isn’t shy about sharing the news that he’s starring in the new Broadway musical Honeymoon in Vegas, and he’s eager to nudge folks to his theater. “I just walk up,” Danza said. “I just convince people. I say, ‘Listen what are you going to do? You come to New York and you see a Disney thing? C’mon! What, are you crazy?’” The pitch often works, mostly thanks to Danza’s boyish charm, impish sense of humor and Brooklyn accent. Co-star Rob McClure has seen the Danza Effect firsthand. He’s been with the Who’s the Boss? star when he tries to turn TV fans into stage ones. “It doesn’t matter where he is. He does it on the subway. He does it at the gym. He is genuinely that excited about what he’s doing,” McClure said. Honeymoon in Vegas, adapted from a 1992 movie starring James Caan, Nicolas Cage and Sarah Jessica Parker, has music by Tony Award-winner Jason Robert Brown and tells the story of a reluctant groom whose bride-to-be is courted by a Vegas wiseguy, played by Danza. Danza, whose Broadway credits include The Iceman Cometh and Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, was initially resistant to another film-to-stage adaptation until Brown visited him four years ago and played one of the songs, “Out of the Sun.” “It was like, Holy mackerel! I get to sing that? I’m in!” Danza said. “It’s the best score I’ve heard since West Side Story.”