Aaron Paul Kept Getting People to Try “Meth” on the Set of Breaking Bad

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Throughout the course of Breaking Bad one a common plot point is that the crystallised methamphetamine manufactured by the show’s 3rd most popular bald character is of such ridiculously high quality that people will fight and kill for it. Something that actually ended up being sort of true with the prop used to represent the meth. A fact actor Aaron Paul took particular pride in.

To explain, during the events of Breaking Bad a recurring element is that the meth made main character Walter White is of such impossibly high quality that a world-renowned mega-chemist with unlimited funding, a drug-producing super-lab and backing from meth kingpin openly admits he can’t match the stuff White is able to make in in a dusty RV with help from a high school dropout.

Variously described as being as close to pure as chemically possible, with a purity of about 99% being thrown around by numerous members of the show’s supporting case, part of the reason White is able to survive as long as he is without being shot in the back of the head is that every member of the criminal underworld he encounters is forced to begrudgingly admit he’s just that good.

In fact, the only person on the show shown as being close to, if not slightly better than White, is his protege noted wordsmith Jesse Pinkman.

Exactly how close to White’s formula Pinkman is able to get by the end of the show isn’t really made clear, though White himself makes it clear that Jesse has surpassed him as both a chemist and a man before he dies of a self-inflicted machine-gun wound. So it’s probably safe to say he’s at the very least okay at making meth.

Moving on,  something we’ve talked about before is that Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston actually learned how to make meth as part of getting into character as chemists/drug lords and that the show was unerringly accurate at portraying the process of manufacturing crystal meth tot he point DEA agents would routinely comment on how accurate their sets and props were.

Continuing with this theme, the “meth” made by the pair was reportedly just as addictive as the real thing, with Paul consuming pounds of the stuff during production much in the same way his character would frequently test his own product. For anyone curious about what made the stuff so addictive, it was basically made of nothing but sugar, syrup and blue dye.

In fact, according to Paul he would constantly ruin takes by shoving handfuls of it into his mouth between takes and using the “high” it produced to get him through long shooting days. But it gets better because Paul ended up going full method, aggressively pestering new actors to try it. With Paul noting that the harder people tried to wave him off, the harder he’d go in on getting them to have a taste. Usually telling them that you couldn’t work on Breaking Bad without eating half a pound of meth. When the person would inevitably relent and try the “meth”, admit that it was pretty tasty and ask for some more, Paul would dip into character and beam with pride at the fact they liked “his product”.