'Better Call Saul' Postmortem: Star Rhea Seehorn Talks Jimmy's New Romance

WARNING: This interview contains spoilers for the Season 2 premiere of Better Call Saul.

We waited throughout Season 1 for Jimmy McGill and his best friend and confidant, Kim Wexler, to turn their friendship into a romance, but Better Call Saul writers didn’t take longer than Season 2’s premiere to throw the duo into a full-blown affair.

Related: ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 2 Premiere Recap: ‘I Just Finally Decided to Be Me’

Kim’s portrayer, the fantastic Rhea Seehorn, talked to Yahoo TV about the complicated, sexy, endearing relationship between Jimmy and Kim, and dropped some great insights on what their mutual attractions are to each other, and how their differing career philosophies can be hindrances or boosts for their future together.

Oh, and for those who are already mourning the end of the relationship because we know Kim and Saul aren’t together in Breaking Bad… Seehorn has a very interesting theory on Saul’s relationships in the Bad years.

What a great way to start Season 2 — Kim and Jimmy are together!
Yeah, it definitely gets off to a bang. When I got to that part [in the script], I was like, “Oh, wow! We’re ripping that Band-aid off.” But it’s fun. In the hands of these writers, you know that it’s always going to be textured and real and authentic. It’s not just a clever device. I was excited to start exploring that.

It was obvious throughout Season 1 that Kim liked Jimmy, was attracted to him, but it was much less obvious whether or not she would ever allow herself to act on that. Why do you think she does finally?
You know what? They didn’t tell me anything that was set in stone when we were playing those moments [between Kim and Jimmy]. Wonderful conversations with Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, Tom Schnauz, who wrote [the premiere] and directed it, and Melissa Bernstein, and all of our great producers… there were a lot of discussions about exactly what this moment is: is it new or is it something revisited? There’s a lot more for us to still explore about Kim and Jimmy’s past and what exactly has ever happened or not happened. But in my mind, it was a revisited part of their intimacy. I think of them as having such a deep intimacy and being each other’s confidant for 10 years plus, that I feel like they’ve probably visited a lot of labels. I’ve had a lot of comments from people actually saying that they recognize that kind of relationship, those relationships that are sort of… they operate between the lines and between the labels. It didn’t feel like something new. I always thought that Kim was attracted to Jimmy in that way, and they make a decision in that moment that it is time to revisit that kind of relationship.

One of the big attractions to Kim for Jimmy is that she’s one of the very few people who doesn’t judge him, and she probably knows him better than anyone. But she also has worked very hard, and continues to work very hard, for her own success. Some of Jimmy’s antics could potentially interfere with that. At this point, is there a limit to how indulgent she can be with him and his adventures?
I think so, but drawing those kind of lines in the sand seems to be one of the favorite things to question in this series. I love so much in Season 1, when Kim smiles at Jimmy with the billboards. There’s things like that that always made me realize she loves Jimmy for who he is, not because her head’s in the sand and she has no idea who he is. You’re right: She is one of the few people that doesn’t tag him in a way that’s like, “You’re a bad person,” and she’s not disappointed in him. I think she generally questions his thought process as far as the consequences of his own actions and wants him to get what he wants as much as she wants to get what she wants. But you’re right, there’s a tension there as far as, she still colors inside the lines pretty much, and he’s constantly coloring outside of the lines. How much can you accept of that before it is too toxic for the relationship? And I don’t know the answer to that question.

We do explore a lot of that, but we also explore that Jimmy’s as much Kim’s confidant as she is his. He asks her to take a look at some of the things that she takes as black and white and obvious, justice and ethics and morality, someone like Chuck who ends up being capable of this horrible betrayal of his brother. And Hamlin… she tells Jimmy, “Stop with the personal vendetta. This guy’s not out to get you.” Well sure, he didn’t turn out to be the villain that Jimmy described him as, but he certainly was quick to kick Kim to the curb as soon as she couldn’t hold onto the Kettlemans, and then steal the spotlight on TV for himself when she got them back. There are things like that where I think Kim is also having to question them, and bounce ideas off Jimmy of what’s good and bad, and that’s what makes it interesting. There are no comic book heroes or villains in Peter and Vince’s work. I love navigating that, and it does impact the relationship between Jimmy and Kim, but I don’t think it’s as obvious a result as it might be in someone else’s hands.

She doesn’t just genuinely like Jimmy, she trusts him and his judgment.
Jimmy is the only one who does exactly what he says he’s doing and is utterly transparent about his feelings about people.

The scene in the bar is fantastic, when Kim is really trying to understand why he turned down the job at Davis & Main initially. She isn’t judging. She wants to understand him.
It’s great directing and writing, and of course, Bob [Odenkirk] as a tremendous and general scene partner. None of us ever saw it as “Kim’s a nag or shrew…” Jimmy said he wanted to have this big legitimate legal career, and [wonders] why doesn’t anyone accept him in that world. When Kim’s egging him on and nudging him, like, “What are you doing throwing this all away?” it’s for him. It’s not because she’s trying to make him be something he doesn’t want to be. "You said you wanted these things. I’m telling you to get out of your own way,” she’s saying to him. I loved that they make that distinction with Kim. This is not someone who says, "You’re a piece of dirt, and you’re never going to be anything.” It’s like, “You said you wanted to be this. Let me help you get there.”

Do you imagine that Kim has ever done anything like what she and Jimmy do in the bar, the grift with Ken the wealth manager?
I don’t know. There was a lot of discussion about that, and what exactly is Kim’s past? Is this familiar ground, but uncomfortable, or is this totally unfamiliar and uncomfortable? I wouldn’t spoil anything if I did know anything. I just know that she’s tremendously fun to play; somebody who plays her cards very close to her chest. She is as much about what she doesn’t say as what she does say, and that’s just so much fun to play. It really is. And you see that is a position of power for Kim, because there’s no weakness, and I think you see that throughout Season 2. It’s been really fun to develop that, that standing back and not reacting. For her, it’s a position of power. It is very unlike the people that she’s surrounded by, so it’s a nice juxtaposition.

We know where Jimmy ends up in the Breaking Bad universe. We don’t think Kim is a part of his life at that point. She’s not someone he mentioned to anyone during Breaking Bad. Do you ever think about how great they are together, how there’s potential for this to be an amazing relationship for both of them, but how we know where he ends up… Do you think about that for Kim and how sad an ending their relationship could have?
I like Kim and Jimmy’s relationship. I just love the authenticity and the multiple layers of it, which you don’t see on TV a lot. It’s sexy in a different way. It’s romantic in a different way. It’s challenging. It’s very real, and it is tragic when you feel the presence of something that could threaten it. Personally, as an actor playing that role, I totally have to throw my hands up — and I do it with as much peace as you can in this business — because Vince and Peter will tell the very best story that should be told. And I do know that they have given themselves and their fans, I think, this great gift of this bending timeline that can go past Breaking Bad, before Breaking Bad… it can do whatever they want it to. Included in that is the entire world of what could happen during Breaking Bad. It’s not like we follow Saul home [in Breaking Bad], know who his friends were, or where his brother was.

As hard as it is to watch his relationship with Chuck and how tragic that is, I want to know, I hope, that Chuck still exists. I hope Chuck still exists somehow in the Breaking Bad years. I’m so excited to know what form [Jimmy and Kim’s] relationship took. While the absence of someone entirely can be a driving force in Jimmy’s life, so could their presence in a different form than we know now. If you’re going to trust writers to write the best story that could be told, it’s going to be these guys.

Better Call Saul airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on AMC.