The most memorable shot for me this season was after you scored the Mesa Verde deal and Howard sent you back to the basement. The camera was way up at the top of a flagpole.

Yeah! That wasn't in the script. Kelley Dixon, one of our amazing editors, told me once that these super wide shots tend to really underline a gaining of power or a loss of power: They can be epic, but you can also be so tiny in them. As an actor, you don't feel like, "Oh, this is going to be some arty shot, so it doesn't matter what I do." You feel trusted. You feel trusted that the moment will breathe. I don't have to do anything artificial. The audience knows that feeling—everybody has been in the position she was in that day.

The style definitely seems to serve the acting. And your performance has been so great—and so acclaimed, as I'm sure you've seen, by critics and on social media.

I have seen. I enjoy social media so much, and I love, love, love Twitter. There are always going to be people who want to be contrarian or say awful things. But for now… it isn't even that I wake up and I'm like, "I need some praise!" But the fans online want to talk about character. That's why it's so much fun to talk to the fans on this show. They're into nuances and story, and why Kim is wearing a Kansas City Royals shirt. Someone will tweet in real time, "Oh my god, my husband and I just stood up and cheered when you told Chuck off." They're so into it! It's thrilling. It's like we're all reading the same book at the same time. It almost makes me a little weepy.

Were you worried about expectations, going in? You're the most major character in the series who wasn't in Breaking Bad.

Well, you knew at the back of your head that it could all go south. People could hate it just because it isn't Breaking Bad season six. There's nothing you can do about that. And in the wee hours of the worst day when you're lying in bed you think: Oh, right, you could be the weak link. It could be great and you just can't pull your own weight. But the showrunners don't pick Post-Its to appear in an episode without choosing them carefully. They thought I was the right person to tell this story. So now all I can do is tell this story the very best that I can.

When Breaking Bad was on, Anna Gunn wrote this editorial for the Times about the fan reaction to her character, Skyler—did you ever read this?

I did—only after the fact. I started Breaking Bad when everyone was between seasons three and four. I was late to the game. So I was watching it by myself, and because I didn't want spoilers, I somehow missed that whole thing. It wasn't until after I was cast that I looked it up. It's so sad that she would have to go through that—that any actor would have to put up with death threats and things like that. On top of that, I was just mystified by the reception to her character anyway. I thought she was brilliant. The character responded to the situation she was in utterly realistically and heartbreakingly and heroically. I was pretty lost, when that came out. People were angry, why? Because she was impeding the protagonist?

"I think it's awesome that Kim protects her owns ambitions. It's not a slight against Jimmy when she tells him not to tarnish what she's trying to do."

I guess so. Men who love Walt and couldn't stand the idea of a woman standing up to him.

But she aids him sometimes, too. Wow.

It seemed for a while that Saul might be setting Kim up to impede Jimmy in the same kinds of ways.

There are some big differences, though. I never saw myself as being negative to him. It was important to me, because we're supposed to be such close confidants, that the times I tell Jimmy to watch it or reconsider, it's because he's in his own way. I'm telling him, "Dude, you're so much bigger and better than this." It's a different cog in the wheel of the storytelling. Chuck is disappointed, and tells Jimmy he's no good. Kim doesn't do that. I never in a million years approached it as being negative or picking at him. She's worried about the consequences of his actions. And she's worried about the person she cares about. She sees the best in him because the audience does too. She's trying to help Jimmy.