Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul looks out a floor-to-ceiling window in a Toronto hotel. He’s in town to promote Need For Speed, about a vengeful ex-con, with his director, Scott Waugh.
As they watch the snow pile up, we wonder whether their flight to Dallas (the next stop on a PR tour) will be cancelled.
“I’m opting out,” Paul says on the subject of whether he’ll board a plane if the bad weather continues.
He has his reasons. “My wife was in a pretty serious plane crash.”
The incident on a small plane headed into Telluride happened just before Paul met his wife, Lauren Parsekian. She wasn’t injured, but that doesn’t take away from the terror.
“Everyone on the flight thought they were going to die,” Paul recalls. “They were in the fetal position with the masks on, trying to call their families to say goodbye. There was a crash landing. The plane came in, the wheels broke off and it slid to a stop.
“The actual landing wasn’t the worst part,” Paul adds, referring to the half-hour of turbulence and the panic of passengers anticipating death. Flying is now an anxious ordeal for the couple.
“It’s really sad to see her go though such crazy emotions,” says Paul in the affectionate tone he uses whenever discussing Parsekian. “She has to be by a window. Her pretty eyes have to see the ground. That gives her some sort of calm or peace.”
Paul’s trip into Toronto was already delayed by a snowstorm in New York City on February 3 (The weather seems to be following him.) That made him a no-show at the Need For Speed premiere that night, but Disney acted fast to set up a second showing in T.O. on Tuesday night.
Paul himself tweeted the details of the new screening and how to score tickets, and wound up being mobbed by local Breaking Bad fans.
Check out NOW’s complete interview with Aaron Paul and Scott Waugh in the March 13 edition of NOW in print and online.
