On the way to meeting Bob Odenkirk, I see him in the bright California sky. Not a vision, but a huge advertising billboard, floating above Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. I half expect to see a tiny him up there, too, reaching down to rescue ... “rescue” the man who went up to take the billboard down, on legal grounds, and who slipped (“slipped”). You’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen Breaking Bad spin-off prequel Better Call Saul; it’s one of the most memorable scenes from a memorable first season. If you haven’t seen Better Call Saul, here’s what you need to know: Breaking Bad (if you haven’t seen BB then God help you, frankly) creator Vince Gilligan and co-writer Peter Gould needed a lawyer for Walter White. And they wanted some levity at a time when everything was getting a little heavy. So they brought in Saul Goodman, played by Odenkirk, who grew as a character as the show went on, to the extent that when Breaking Bad finally came crashing splendidly to a halt, Gilligan and Gould felt that their dodgy lawyer was worth further investigation.

Turns out Saul Goodman’s not his real name (it’s made-up, and made-up Jewish, a play on “S’all good, man”). Really he’s Jimmy McGill, with a colourful (murky colours) past and a complicated relationship with the law, with his more successful lawyer brother, and with himself. He’s a more sympathetic, more interesting character than we knew from Breaking Bad, more than just an ethically challenged slickster in a cheap suit. And his show – although it shares DNA with the behemoth that gave birth to it (it’s about transformation and change and has much of the same dark humour) – became a thing in itself. It may not have the epic scale of Breaking Bad, but it makes up for that in warmth and wit, and tragedy. Perhaps it’s easier to identify with; the things that drive the character, as Odenkirk will tell me, “almost anybody can relate to ... trying to please your family or your older brother or win a girl, trying to be effective in the world and have people appreciate your skills – things that everyone’s working on nearly every day”.

In short: great character, great performance, great show. Better Call Saul is that rare thing, the spin-off that works. What do you need to know about Bob Odenkirk? He’s 53, from a nice suburb of Chicago; Catholic mother, absent alcoholic father. He’s a comedian, director, actor; he has written for Saturday Night Live and The Ben Stiller Show. He created the sketch show Mr Show With Bob and David, with David Cross. He was cast in Breaking Bad, played Bruce Dern’s news-anchor son in the film Nebraska and a cop in the first TV series of Fargo, and so on and so forth. He’s successful and seriously respected in the business without having made a massive impact on the general public consciousness, or the billboards of Sunset Strip. Until now.

Here he is then, in the flesh, on the ground, the right size, in a hotel room. How does he feel when he sees himself like that, immense and in the sky? “I feel like I hope the show does well enough to justify that announcement.”

The show has already done well – big ratings (it’s on AMC in the US, but streams on Netflix in the UK), awards and plaudits from critics, from hardcore Breaking Baddites, from people who have never even seen BB and have come to BCS fresh; it’s a success, you’re a success, Bob. “Yeah, but what about season two? I never see it as me, I see it as the show, and I think that the show is made by such an amazing group of people who are all working at the top of their game and ...”

Yes, Bob Odenkirk is modest. But it’s not modesty for modesty’s sake, it’s thought-out, measured, confident modesty, coupled with a healthy cynicism and a nicely pessimistic worldview. If he was younger, he says, maybe he would look up at the billboard and go: “Look at me, look what I did.” But he’s at a stage where he can’t see himself through that lens: “There’s no way to pull it out of the muck of my everyday strainings and efforts.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest With Jonathan Banks in Better Call Saul. Photograph: Ben Leuner/Netflix

He’s making his work sound like defecation. Odenkirk speaks more slowly and more softly than his character does, pausing to think as he goes, but, he says, “weirdly, I have more confidence than Jimmy does. Jimmy has these skills that he enjoys putting on display but that he’s ashamed of as well, and he’s aware that the world as seen through his brother’s eyes – which is how he sees himself – does not respect this specific skillset that he has. Whereas I feel like whatever my skillset was, for being funny or working with funny people to create something funny, I kind of had a weird confidence in it from a pretty young age, and that if I just hung in there I would find a place for it. I’m nowhere near as concerned about getting the adulation of the people around me as Jimmy seems to be.”

Hence the billboard not being so important? “I don’t give a shit.”

I’ve been fishing around hopefully trying to find links between the character and the man who plays him. Specifically, there’s a bit in the first season in which Jimmy’s brother Chuck tells Jimmy it’s time for him to build his own identity instead of riding on others’ (Chuck’s) coat-tails. And I’m wondering if – after all of the years of working on other people’s shows, as well as helping other people get ahead (of which he has done a lot) – this is the moment Bob is finding his identity? “I don’t think there are a ton of similarities,” he says.

But not dismissively. And when I just won’t drop it, and wonder if there are any similarities between him and his younger brother, who works in the same kind of world (he works on The Simpsons) and whether he resents that and wants Bill to fail and tries to block Bill’s path, as Chuck does to Jimmy ... well, the answer is, again, no. Bob only has nice things to say about his brother, and says he’s funnier than he is. “If I had a parallel in my life,” he adds, “it would be with my mother, who is very Catholic and is wonderful and loves me, but cannot ever watch anything I do.”

Because? “Because it’s too ...” He pauses.

Uncatholic? “Uncatholic. She never watched Saturday Night Live, has never seen anything I’ve done in comedy, can’t watch this show, there’s too much violence and crude language.”

Does it sadden him that he doesn’t have his mother’s approval? “Yes, it does, but it clearly hasn’t stopped me. And it’s something I knew when I started. I always wrote risque comedy and crude comedy. I enjoy crude behaviour and language. I revel in it.”

What makes him laugh? “Stupidity, idiotic behaviour, scamming people. I mean, Trump is hilarious. To see an ego on display and maneuvering so joyfully and in such a destructive way, it’s the craziest, it’s hilarious to see.”

Is there a point where it becomes less funny? “Well, if he gets elected, that’s a point where it’s not funny, it’s not a joke any more. But until you get elected, keep doing the show, for all of us, please, we’re all enjoying it, you’re a fucking riot, keep it up, please Donald Trump, don’t write anything down, don’t prepare anything, just go by the seat of your pants, it’s a wonderful show.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest With Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in Breaking Bad. Photograph: AMC/Everett/Rex Features

I think I’ve kind of fallen for Bob Odenkirk a little bit. Maybe not what you want in an interview, but I can’t help it. I’m not proud, I asked for a selfie – a Saulfie! – I got one, too, though being middle-aged, I had my phone the wrong way round and ended up with a wallfie. He’s generous and modest, but not too sickeningly so, because it’s believable and because he’s also aware of his talents. He’s confident and funny, and he likes rude stuff. And guess where he last went on holiday? Scotland! Walking with his daughter, the Great Glen Way (“I wanted to be as far away from LA as I could, but still be in civilisation”). It was always going to be hard not to like Bob Odenkirk.

At the beginning of the second season – I won’t give anything away – Jimmy is lying on one of those inflatable chairs in a U-shaped swimming pool with a cocktail in his hand and a little bowl of snacks on a separate float, a kind of peanut raft tethered to the main event. No, not a midlife crisis, he claims. “Midlife clarity.”

It’s clearly not entirely true in Jimmy’s case, but has Bob reached any kind of midlife clarity? “Erm, hmm ... no. Jesus Christ, I hope I get it by late-life. I hope I get some clarity. Maybe I have a little, I don’t know, maybe I have a little.”

• Season two of Better Call Saul is available on Netflix from 16 February, with new episodes weekly.