Aaron Paul left a lasting impression as the crystal meth-cooking Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad. The actor flexed his creative muscles, and in doing so, he won numerous accolades, sketching his name in the annals of television history.
Since then, Paul has gone on to star in other shows after the AMC show came to an end, including the critically acclaimed HBO show Westworld. Continuing in line with his work as Pinkman, the actor’s turn as Caleb Nicols amazed the fans of the show. However, as incredible as he was in the episode that was centered around him, Paul still cannot bring himself to watch it.
Aaron Paul could not watch the Caleb-centric episode of Westworld
Created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy for HBO, the show took inspiration from the 1973 film of the same name. While it is a dystopian science fiction series, the show managed to tell a very intriguing tale rooted in humanity.
Nolan’s show revolved around humans navigating their lives alongside sentient androids that were contained within an amusement park. All hell breaks loose when Rehoboam, a powerful artificial intelligence, takes control of humans’ lives.
Aaron Paul, best known for his award-winning role as Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad, joined the show in its third season. He was incredible from the get-go, but he delivered a powerful performance in the fourth episode of season 6, which showed Caleb’s struggles. The storyline and Paul’s acting managed to make jaws drop because he started the season as a human but ended up as a pearl of consciousness inside an android host.
In the episode, Caleb finds himself being subjected to a series of fidelity tests, each more harrowing than the one before. By the time Nicols makes it out of the prison where he is undergoing the trial, he realizes that he has failed innumerable times before.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2022, he opened up about filming the episode. Shooting it was not easy, and Paul’s struggles came through in his performance. He confessed that he still had not watched it.
“Oh my god, man. Episode six. Yeah, that was a rough one for me, for so many reasons. I couldn’t watch episode six. I haven’t seen it, but I’ve seen everything else. … Yeah, there are just certain things that I won’t allow myself to watch, and that was just such an undertaking. It was pretty brutal on me, so I just didn’t want to relive it,” he said.
The episode, titled Fidelity, earned rave reviews, with Paul’s work greatly appreciated. Now that the show is over, hopefully, one day the actor can watch it too.
What is the Fidelity test seen on the show?
Nolan’s show has been hailed for presenting a dystopic future in a way that does not seem implausible. However, one of the more exciting, albeit horrific, aspects that were shown was the fidelity tests.
First introduced in the second season, it showed James Delos trying and failing to transfer his consciousness to a host. Delos conducted an interview with William prior to the transfer. The main reason behind this was that if the host was able to answer the interview the way its human counterpart had, the transfer would then be a success. Unfortunately, with Delos, the host broke down each time.
In season 4, Dolores-as-Charlotte tries to do this with Caleb. As with Delos, he fails the fidelity tests 277 times, before surviving the 278th attempt.
Fidelity was an intriguing concept that the show could have expanded on, had it not been canceled. Since Max removed the show, Westworld can be streamed on Tubi.
