Pass It On: Heisenberg Delivers ‘One Who Knocks’ Speech To Baby, Is Ultimately Humiliated

In August 2013, the actress Anna Gunn penned a now-famous opinion piece for The New York Times, in which she discussed the reality of playing the most hated woman on one of the world’s most popular shows: Skylar White on Breaking Bad. “As the one character who consistently opposes Walter and calls him on his lies, Skyler is, in a sense, his antagonist,” Gunn writes. “So from the beginning, I was aware that she might not be the show’s most popular character.”

But she was unprepared for the vitriol that was waiting for the character online, with Facebook groups and message boards describing Skylar as “a ball-and-chain, a drag, a shrew, an ‘annoying bitch wife'”. The hatred culminated in death threats and personal attacks made against Gunn herself. “Besides being frightened, I was also astonished: how had disliking a character spiraled into homicidal rage at the actress playing her?” she asks. “I finally realized that most people’s hatred of Skyler had little to do with me and a lot to do with their own perception of women and wives.”

Was she right? Was the anger directed at Gunn emblematic of a society that just doesn’t like women who stand up to men? How would the audience have responded if White’s familial antagonist was actually a man?

Or, as Marca Blanca ponder, a baby?

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