Call it “The One Where Aaron Paul Nearly Starred in a Sitcom From the Co-creator of Friends.”

On the latest episode of Hot Ones, the Breaking Bad alum looked back on the time he auditioned for The Class, a short-lived CBS comedy from Friends co-creator David Crane, during his early days in Hollywood. When Paul failed to book a role on the buzzy show, he admittedly felt dejected about it.

“It was already picked up for two seasons,” the actor recalled between bites of fiery chicken wings. “It was going to be, they were saying, ‘the next big Friends.’ All my friends that were actors were trying out for it, and everybody really wanted it.”

Paul tested for an unspecified role with the studio and network, “and then I didn’t get it,” he said. “But then they had me audition for another role, and I went to studio, and then I went to network with me and another person, and I didn’t get it.”

He continued, “I can’t tell you how depressed I was for just way too long. And the show was good. It lasted about a season and a half. And you know, some people liked it, but it wasn’t Friends.”

Turns out there was a silver lining, because if Paul were to have done The Class, “I wouldn’t have been available to audition for Breaking Bad.“

The point of the story, Paul said, is that “you never know what’s right around the corner, you know. So just keep pounding the pavement.”

The Class premiered in 2006 and lasted just one season, following a group of former third-grade classmates who reconnect as twentysomethings. Members of the ensemble cast would go on to find considerable success in Hollywood, including Jason Ritter, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Lizzy Caplan, and Jon Bernthal.

Paul’s breakout role would come two years later as Breaking Bad‘s Jesse Pinkman, a high school dropout who teams with his former chemistry teacher (Bryan Cranston) to launch a meth empire. He won three Emmys for the role, which he reprised in the 2019 Netflix feature El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie and episodes of the spinoff show Better Call Saul.

Jesse, unlike Cranston’s character, remains alive and well in the franchise, beginning life anew under a new identity after all the bloodshed and turmoil that unfolds — though Paul recalled a time Cranston pranked him by making him believe that Jesse would be killed off. “He came out of the production office, came up to me and he goes, ‘Come here. It’s okay.’ And he gives me this long hug,” Paul recounted on Hot Ones.

Paul continued, “I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’ He’s like, ‘At least you go out in a big way, huh?’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ He goes, ‘Did you read the latest script?’ And I go, ‘No.’ He goes, ‘Oh, well just read it and I’m here if you need me.’”

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Paul then “sprinted into the production office” and asked for the latest script, only to discover that his character was still alive in the final pages.

“[Cranston] just made it seem like I died,” Paul said. “But he would not stop. And he would get everybody in on it. Like the costume designers said, ‘Hey, look, we got to do your measurements for the casket, so if you could stay after work, that would be great.’”

Watch Paul’s full Hot Ones episode above.

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