‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6: Jeff Actor Pat Healy Collapsed While Filming ‘Nippy’
Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 10, “Nippy,” featured one of the most elaborate schemes of the series. Gene Takovic planned a mall heist so Jeff, the cab driver, wouldn’t turn him into the police. The episode required a lot of running around from actor Pat Healy, who ended up collapsing on set.
[SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers ahead regarding the Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 10 “Nippy.”]
Gene pulls off an epic mall heist in the ‘Better Call Saul’ episode ‘Nippy’
The Better Call Saul Season 6 episode “Nippy” took place entirely in the Gene Takovic timeline. In season 5, a cab driver named Jeff recognized Gene as Saul Goodman. Gene decided to take matters into his own hands. In “Nippy” he befriends Jeff’s mother and convinces Jeff that what he wants is to get in on the game.
Gene then comes up with a scheme to distract the mall security guards, giving Jeff a short amount of time to run around and rob the store. He even makes Jeff practice his speed on a roped-off obstacle course in the snow. Pat Healy went all out for the role and even ended up collapsing on set.
Pat Healy collapsed from running around in the high altitude
Pat Healy worked alongside the legendary Carol Burnett while filming the Better Call Saul episode “Nippy.” Burnett portrayed Marion, Jeff’s mother. “That’s a person who I’ve known as long as I can remember. Carol was on the TV in our house, so it just didn’t seem like a real thing,” Healy said during an episode of the Better Call Saul Insider podcast.
When Healy arrived on set, he was introduced to his on-screen mother. “Somebody said, ‘Oh Carol wants to meet you.’ And in my mind, I was just thinking, ‘Oh, Carol the producer on the show or something.’ And I heard, ‘Is that my son?’ from a trailer and I walked in, and there she was.”
Healy also had a lot of running around to do, and the New Mexico altitude hit him hard. “I came, and we just got right into it, and we started shooting stuff in the mall with me mostly running,” the actor said on the podcast.
“It was probably the second day or third day I was there that I was there, and I was still adjusting to the altitude a bit, and I had been running for about 10 hours one day, and I basically collapsed. I needed oxygen, and I was dehydrated, and I had to be driven home.”
Pat Healy replaced Don Harvey in the role of Jeff
Better Call Saul fans likely noticed that Pat Healy is not the same actor who plays Jeff in seasons 4 and 5 of Better Call Saul. “Don Harvey, the original Jeff the cabbie, has scheduling conflicts, and we were completely unable to get him on the show,” said editor Chris McCaleb during an episode of the Better Call Saul Insider podcast.
Harvey’s version of Jeff is aggressive and a little bit creepy, but Healy brings out a different side to the character. “Nippy” writer Alison Tatlock told Entertainment Weekly, “We meet Pat Healy’s version of Jeff when the tables have already turned. He walks into the kitchen, and here’s this creep, who he thought he had power over, sitting there with his mother, which I think one could argue would be anybody’s worst nightmare.”
Watch the final episodes of Better Call Saul airing on AMC Mondays at 9 p.m. ET.
