Few characters on “Breaking Bad” suffered more than Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). Jesse endured regular physical and psychological trauma, often finding himself in fights. At one point, filming a sequence facing off against Tuco Salamanca (Raymond Cruz) gave Aaron Paul a concussion.
During a Reddit AMA, Paul discussed filming the Season 2 episode “Grilled” where Tuco kidnaps Walter and Jesse and holds them captive in a desert hideout. “Tuco takes Jesse and he throws him through the screen door outside,” Paul explained. “And if you watch it back you’ll notice that my head gets caught inside the wooden screen door and it flips me around and lands me on my stomach and the door splinters into a million pieces.”
According to Paul, Cruz kept kicking because he thought Paul was just acting, not realizing the pain was real. “I kept pleading to him saying ‘stop.’ The next thing I know I guess I blacked out and I woke up to a flashlight in our eyes and it was our medic,” Paul recalled. “And then I hopped up acting like nothing [was] wrong, but it appeared like I was drunk, and I kept saying ‘let’s finish the scene’ but then my eye started swelling shut so they took me to the hospital.”
Raymond Cruz remembers the scene a little differently
Raymond Cruz recalled filming the scene differently, acknowledging to Mirror that Paul suffered a concussion at the beginning of the scene, which was caught on camera. “The guy suffered a blow to the head and it was from the screen door,” Cruz said. “And you can see it because it’s the actual scene that they used.” Cruz also said that he was the one who noticed something had gone wrong. “I’m actually the one who stopped it,” he explained. “Once we got through the wall … I said, ‘Um, he’s not there.'”
Cruz made his debut as the volatile Tuco Salamanca in the Season 1 episode “Crazy Handful of Nothin’.” His unpredictable nature brought some chaos to Walter and Jesse’s plans. However, the character met his end in “Grilled,” after Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) killed him during a shootout.
Cruz recalled Vince Gilligan’s excitement when it came to shooting his final episode. “I had Bryan and Aaron held hostage in this house in the middle of the desert and Vince runs up and goes ‘Oh my God it’s fantastic, you guys look so frightened, this is great acting’ and then Bryan said, ‘We’re not acting.'” Apparently, Cruz was so convincing, he had the cast genuinely scared.
“Every time I got near, everyone would start shaking,” the actor explained. The level of intensity that Cruz brought to Tuco clearly translated onscreen and his appearance in the prequel spin-off series “Better Call Saul” recaptured that chaotic energy that scared the daylights out of Walter, Jesse, and Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk).