Tina Parker Looks Back on Better Call Saul and Forward to Dallas Theater

Every major character on the AMC dramatic series Breaking Bad and its spinoff Better Call Saul has gone through a major transformation.

First in Breaking Bad, Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston, went from being a jilted chemistry teacher suffering from cancer to becoming the meth kingpin of the Southwest. White's partner Jesse Pinkman, played by Aaron Paul, went from a drug-dealing delinquent in Breaking Bad and in the spinoff film El Camino to find redemption and the ability to find peace with himself and his mistakes.

The show's equally successful spinoff Better Call Saul showed the other end of this tawdry slice of criminal symmetry with the story of White and Pinkman's conniving, crooked criminal attorney Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill, played by Bob Odenkirk. The six-season arc of Goodman's story is one of a habitual conman who always tried to find the easy way out of any situation and is always in it for the money, but the finale (without giving away spoilers) cleverly finds a way to give Goodman a way out using his uncanny aptitude for playing mental chess with law enforcement, federal prosecutors and even the people he loves.

The one person tying them all together is Francesca Liddy, Saul's disenchanted assistant whom we watched go from an ambitious, eager worker dedicated to making the most of her talents to a jaded, trapped woman worn down to her emotional core.

Tina Parker, the North Texas actress who plays Francesca on both shows, says her character was much more than the person who did clients' paperwork and put up with Saul's inappropriate sexual comments. She's the reason the shows' main characters made it as far as they did.

When you think about it, Francesca Liddy is to Saul, and therefore to Walter and Jesse, what NASA's mission control team was to the Apollo 13 mission or what Samwise was to Mr. Frodo in the Lord of the Rings. She's the real legal glue behind it all.

"I will argue I'm the reason [Saul's] alive, because I ran his damn office," says Parker, who's also the co-artistic director and company manager of Kitchen Dog Theater. "I know where the bodies are buried and she didn't turn on him."

Francesca's first appearance on camera happened in the second season of Breaking Bad when White and Pinkman venture to a dusty strip mall in search of Goodman's legal services, because as Pinkman put it to White, "You don't want a criminal lawyer. You want a 'criminal' lawyer."

Francesca appears to be someone who's seen and heard it all in the lowlife world. She speaks in a monotone and has a no-bullshit attitude, even in the face of White. Francesca's jaded presence is in stark contrast to the Francesca we meet in the third season of Better Call Saul. As a new hire for Jimmy McGill (the real name of Saul Goodman) and Kim Wexler's private law firm, she's an eager, outgoing employee who gets the job just minutes after her initial interview.

Francesca's hiring is also similar to the lightning-fast time it took Parker to learn that she'd gotten the role working with Odenkirk — who until Breaking Bad was mostly known for his work in comedy with roles on shows like The Larry Sanders Show and the HBO sketch series Mr. Show.

"When I got hired to do Breaking Bad and my hiring was last minute because I literally got a call saying, 'Can you be on a plane in three hours?'" Parker says. "They put your sides in a brown envelope and I remember looking at the call sheet and going, 'Oh my God!' because I'm a huge Mr. Show fan and he's just lovely. It was really a unicorn place. It really was a land of enchantment because everyone was invested in the scripts and I had a front row seat for that."
Parker says every scene was tightly scripted and there was no room for improv because the scripts written by the crew, including the show's co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, contained so many important plot points and golden moments that didn't need rewriting.

"People are like, 'It must be fun to improv with Bob,'" Parker says. "There's almost never any improv because the scripts are rock solid. You'd want it to be letter-perfect and with scripts like that, you lean into the words."

Both shows also had supremely dedicated staffs from top to bottom.

"These were unicorns of shows in that every department really is working hard and energized to make it the best show ever," Parker says. "I could have a scene where I only have two lines but they would go through wardrobe and figure out what palette is right and what jewelry she would wear. The specificity of how she would dress is amazing and I'm really a minor character."

Parker says there's one detail even eager fans may not notice, but says a lot about her story even if we didn't get to see exactly what happened to Francesca the last time she took a call from Saul Goodman.

"They had her looking at travel magazines to show the trips she never got to take," Parker says. "That's why she has the Eiffel Tower keychain. They wanted a shot where they could see that in episode 11 and it's very sad. I think she's a person who keeps her passport updated in case she and Saul need to skedaddle, but she has no stamps on it."

Fortunately for Parker, the shows gave her a chance to travel but mostly they allowed her to work with a talented and caring cast of people who cherished the time they shared together.

"I would fly in for my two days and they're like, 'Oh, how is the theater?'" Parker says. "How are you remembering this? They're genuine. They care and they're kind. It was always remarkable to me to remember any details about anything we said the last time we were together."

The success of both shows and Parker's performance has also brought additional attention and support to Dallas' Kitchen Dog Theater, which is about to start renovating the space it has owned in the Northern Design district since 2016. She says KDT has received some preliminary designs for a new black box theater and hopes to start building at the end of the year.

"If somebody wants to name a urinal after an ex-boyfriend, I'll do it," Parker says with a laugh.

Even if she has to fly out of town to film and TV sets —because states such as Oklahoma and Louisiana offer incentives for filming productions — Parker says she'll always come back to her first love, theater.

"I would argue that if we can solve our space issues, I think we have the best theaters in Dallas," Parker says.