Aaron Paul knows a thing or two about suspenseful entertainment, having been a key cog in “Breaking Bad,” one of the most relentlessly suspenseful TV shows in history.
“Eye in the Sky,” which explores the sticky moral terrain of a terrorist drone strike that could kill a little girl from many different perspectives, has little to do with the world of crystal meth dealing in New Mexico, but the projects have some overlap.
There’s Paul, the erstwhile Jesse Pinkman, here playing a drone pilot in a Nevada bunker, and the fact that Gavin Hood’s movie generates “Bad”-ish tension from beginning to end.
amNewYork spoke with Paul, 36, about the movie, opening Friday.
How do you get in the head space of a pilot flying a drone and controlling deadly weaponry from thousands of miles away?
It was absolutely on the page when I read the script. My heart started racing. I was there, you know, you were on the front line of terrorism. … Everyone has their own point of view; if you’re in the military, it doesn’t mean that you all think the exact same way. Everyone feels a little different about certain things. I put myself there. Would I do this? Would this character do this?
What’s the key to sustaining tension so well in a movie like this?
This film really humanizes this situation. It’s easy to put yourself in these shoes. … Gavin did such an incredible job at putting humanity into this world.
You and Stephen King exchanged some tweets this week about rumors you’ll be cast in “The Dark Tower” film. Has anything come of that?
Who knows? I am in love with “The Dark Tower” series. I have been in love with it for so many years. Who isn’t a fan of Stephen King and the world he creates himself. These rumors have popped up from time to time throughout the years. It always gets me excited, because I always think, deep down, maybe there’s something I don’t know. I decided to just go straight to the source.
‘Better Call’ Jesse?
Since news of “Better Call Saul,” the exceptional “Breaking Bad” prequel, first broke several years ago, Aaron Paul has been besieged by questions about whether Jesse Pinkman will return to Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s world. The actor, who will soon be seen at the helm of a different show, Hulu’s “The Path” (landing March 30), doesn’t have an answer. Or, if he does, he hasn’t offered it any of the dozens of times he’s been queried about it. But he had plenty to say when asked for his thoughts on the show as a whole:
“It’s absolutely an incredible show,” Paul says. “It’s a standalone show. You don’t need to have watched ‘Breaking Bad’ to really enjoy this world they’ve created in ‘Better Call Saul.’ It has a completely different tone, which I love about it. It’s it’s own sort of world.”
