“We’ve had pizzas on our roof. We’ve had pizzas on our driveway; pizzas until we’re sick of looking at pizzas,” Fran Padilla told NPR in March. Later in the interview she added, “I’ll sit outside with a shotgun in a rocking chair. You know, like Granny from ‘Beverly Hillbillies.'”
Padilla and her husband, Louis, have this unique pizza problem because they happen to own the White family home from the show “Breaking Bad.” The Albuquerque, New Mexico, house — which they’ve lived in for over four decades — is perhaps most famous for the time a frustrated Walter White improbably threw a whole pie onto the roof.
Padilla’s comments came a few days after show creator Vince Gilligan popularized their problem on a “Better Call Saul” podcast, warning fans, “There is nothing funny or original or cool about throwing pizzas on this lady’s roof.”
“It is just not funny,” Gilligan continued. “It’s been done before. You’re not the first.” Tough guy-playing actor Jonathan Banks followed up, saying, “If I catch you doing it, I will hunt you down.”
Now, two-thirds of a year later and curious if the warnings had been heeded, The Huffington Post followed up and found that pizzas are still being tossed onto the Padilla house.
Banks may have to follow through on that promise.
Jackie Sandoval is the co-owner of “Breaking Bad” RV Tours, along with her husband Frank. The couple is close with the Padillas and it’s been Frank’s job at times to scrape and scrub the unwelcome pizzas. “Frank had to remove three pizzas off of their roof that some teenagers had thrown on it a few weeks ago,” Jackie Sandoval said.
A longer interview with her is forthcoming as HuffPost continues a retrospective on “Breaking Bad,” but it seems especially urgent to stress that the Padillas’ problem hasn’t stopped.
“As far as Vince’s warning goes, it’s working for the normal fan base, but what we’ve found is that the younger crowd are the ones doing it, just for kicks,” she told us. “There have been at least six instances since Vince put the warning out.”
At the height of the show’s fandom, around 200 people would pass by the Padilla household every day to gawk at the real-life White residence. Now that number has come down, but fanatics continue to make the pilgrimage. Jackie says, “We also put up ‘Stay Off Property’ warning signs in her front yard to detour people.”
If you’re a real fan of “Breaking Bad,” don’t be the one who knocks on the Padillas’ door and certainly don’t be the jerk making a mess on their roof. Breaking rules is only kind of cool — perhaps ignoring all the murder — if it leads to you becoming a multi-millionaire kingpin. In this case, you’re just wasting perfectly delicious pizza.
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