Breaking Bad has come to a midseason pause and will return next summer – that’s if the Mayans were wrong. AMC recently sat down with Jonathan Banks, or as we know him as Mike Ehrmantraut from the series, to discuss his take on the show, his character, and other spoilery things. Find out what he had to say after the jump!

Jonathan Banks, by definition, is a character actor. He lands many small roles on television series, gets in and gets out. With Mike, he was able to extend his stay on Breaking Badfor a good amount of time. And although most of what we know about him is very guarded, he was one of the most interesting characters of the entire show.

It goes without saying, there will be big spoilers ahead.

When the seventh episode of season five came to a close, there was a glorious outcry of distraught fan support, anger, and sadness. Mike Ehrmantraut was taken out by Walter White, Mr. Heisenberg himself. I almost thought he would have been able to survive, but this is Breaking Bad, who am I kidding?

(That moment when Walt arrived at Jesse’s in the midseason finale was so tense because Jesse knew what Walt had done. When Walt left and Jesse had thrown away the gun he had concealed, there were so many emotions that you could tell were running throughout his head.) But I digress.

We all knew coming into this fifth season that it would be the last of Breaking Bad, but I never thought we’d lose such a great character this early on in the season. But Jonathan Banks knew. He’s known for about a good half of the year before the season began. Banks knew ultimately that all good things must come to an end:

“Vince [Gilligan] talked to me a long time ago, six or seven months before the season, and he told me I’d die before the end of this eight. We were at Aaron’s engagement party. My feeling is that we assume that most people are going to end in some fashion. My biggest problem is I love Mike; I love the character and I love playing him, but all stories like that do have to come to an end.”

It’s kind of a funny thing to have a character’s death weigh so heavily on us, but we attach ourselves to these people for years, and to see them go is tragic. Even more so for the cast and crew.

“The crew on the set that day all wore black armbands all day long. There are a lot of friends on that crew. It was an emotional day to say the least on set — a lot of tears. Tough day, brother.”

Mike was a character that grew on Banks. Since 1974, of all the years he has been acting, Breaking Bad will be one experience he will never forget.

“I’ll tell you what, I learned that no matter how old you get, you can be crushed with the love of the work and the love of the people you’re around. I didn’t know I could be so open and so grateful for an experience.”

It’s kind of heart breaking to hear how close the actors were, and especially with this fifth season I could imagine how tight knit Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, and Banks had become. They were the three amigos this season, and their chemistry on-screen was perfect.

“Anytime it was the three of us — Bryan [Cranston] and Aaron [Paul] and I — were together we had a great time. Last season when Aaron and I were riding around in the car, we pretty much spent the whole time laughing. The Park Avenue that we drive around in became very dear to us. To get up — and I don’t care if it was 4:30 in the morning — it was a joy to go to work.”

Keeping such a big secret from the press, fans, and family, Banks had a difficult time lying about his fat. But holding such a secret was important to the integrity of that death scene.

“I didn’t tell anyone — not my daughters or my son — nobody knew. When people said, ‘Well, you’re going back in November?’ I wouldn’t say that I was going back because I hate lying. I would say, ‘Yes, they start shooting again in November.'”

Breaking Bad season 5 continues next summer in 2013.

Source: AMC