Audience response to Skyler
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Particular backlash was directed towards the character of Skyler White. It has sparked an ongoing dialog about a number of topics, including society's attitude towards women, feminism, sexism, and double standards.[187][188]
In August 2013 (while Breaking Bad was in its original run) Anna Gunn published an op-ed in The New York Times titled "I Have a Character Issue" in which she discussed her experience playing Skyler, with particular focus on the vitriol that audience members directed towards her character. She compared Skyler to similar television wives who seemed to inspire venom from audience members that their respective husbands did not, in particular Carmela Soprano from The Sopranos and Betty Draper from Mad Men. In Gunn's words, "Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad, wanted Skyler to be a woman with a backbone of steel who would stand up to whatever came her way, who wouldn't just collapse in the corner or wring her hands in despair. He and the show's writers made Skyler multilayered and, in her own way, morally compromised. But at the end of the day, she hasn't been judged by the same set of standards as Walter".[189]
In a 2018 cast reunion, Aaron Paul commented "Why did our audience not sympathize with this poor woman? I really felt for Anna, because she's just such a beautiful human inside and out, and she played Skyler in such a fierce way, and people just dragged her character the most."[190]
Vince Gilligan has defended both Skyler and Anna Gunn, saying at the same 2018 reunion "I figured Walt would be the one that'd be hard for people to sympathize with. Suddenly, lo and behold, we're hearing this animus toward Skyler White. To this day, it confounds me. Anna Gunn gave such a brilliant performance. We never tried for sympathy or lack of sympathy, we let the chips fall where they may. I would change that if I had a magic wand."[190] He later buttressed these sentiments in a 2022 interview, adding "I realize in hindsight that the show was rigged in the sense that the storytelling was solely through Walt's eyes, even in scenes he wasn't present for. Even Gus, his archenemy, didn't suffer the animosity Skyler received. It's a weird thing. I'm still thinking about it all these years later."[191]
Bryan Cranston has also defended Gunn and Skyler, saying "If you look at the elements that were involved in this—husband she finds out is lying, husband she finds out is doing something illegal, is doing something that puts her family in lethal danger, and she's being chastised—it's like, 'Wait a minute.' It baffled me from an objective standpoint."[190]
In 2018, Gunn reflected on her experiences on the show, saying "This is not about me, Anna Gunn, and it's really not about Skyler. It's about the way people are connecting to him (Walter). It's also about the way that people still hold on to, perhaps, older ideas of what a woman or a wife should be or how she should act, or how she should behave. In the end, change isn't always comfortable and isn't always pleasant, but it's good that it was brought to people's attention and consciousness."[190]
Nearly a decade after the show ended, Gunn remarked that she saw an improvement as to how the character of Skyler White was received, as well as in the state of television actresses and female characters in general. She said "when people come up to me, it’s incredibly different ... There’s still a long way to go, but we have made seismic changes since then. So people come up to me now and say, 'You were the linchpin for me. You were the conscience of the show. You were what pulled me into the show.' Or they say, 'The first time I watched it, I hated that character. But the second time I watched it, I realized, 'Oh my God, that poor woman.