Chris Hardwick Talks NBC’s ‘The Wall,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ & More with Rich

Chris Hardwick walked into the studio and announced himself as the least sporty guest the show has ever hosted. His mother would like a word.

The Wall hits its 100th episode on Monday, August 24, and the executive producer is LeBron James. When Hardwick met him for the first round of press, he brought his mom along, and he opened the way he always opens. Of course he knew who LeBron was. He also knew nothing about basketball. His mother had no such problem.

"She was like throwing out stats from his whole career going back to college," Hardwick said, "and he was so gracious and kind to her." Then LeBron turned the tables. The first thing out of his mouth, according to Hardwick, was "Hey, Singled Out," a reference to the MTV dating show Hardwick hosted from 1995 to 1998. "That totally blew me away. I was like, oh my god, that's amazing that he knew that."

Mom, it turns out, is a lifelong sports person. Miami raised, University of Miami and Dolphins in her blood, and she has spent years trying to talk sports with a son who responds by asking whether it is football time. The one moment in Hardwick's long career that made her cry with joy was not a show or a special. It was a first pitch at a Dodger game around 2012.

Once she wiped away the tears, she went into what Hardwick called sports mom mode. She arranged a pitching coach at UCLA and told him she was not going to watch him wing one into the dirt. He went, he learned to lead with his left hand, and he did not embarrass himself. He also never pitched again. On the day of this conversation, he was taking her back to Dodger Stadium, because NBC invited him out and he agreed to go on the condition that he could bring her.

The other room Hardwick has spent his life in is the one built by Vince Gilligan. As host of Talking Bad, he had a front-row seat to a series he still calls perfect, and his admiration is less about single scenes than about construction.

"Every episode of that show is like a stressful math problem that has to be solved," Hardwick said, and the solutions never felt cheap. He pointed to the way something planted three seasons earlier could pay off later, the recurring bear in the swimming pool and the domino effect that eventually explains it, Hank, the discovery of Leaves of Grass. His pick for the moment Walter White fully crossed over is the scene with Krysten Ritter's character, when he stands in the room and lets her go because she can talk. "That was one of the first moments where you're like, oh, he's really over the line."

Then there is the line Hardwick keeps coming back to, the one Walter delivers to Skyler after a lifetime of feeling powerless. "I'm the one who knocks."

Gilligan himself was the first in-studio guest in this show's history back in 2014, and Hardwick's read on him matches Rich's. Unassuming, generous, and somehow the mind behind X-Files, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and Pluribus. The pitch Gilligan gave the world was Mr. Chips becoming Scarface.

Hardwick also has a new stand-up special, The Middle Ages, arriving in October on 800 Pound Gorilla. He asked permission to plug it, then apologized for name-dropping Patton Oswalt in the same breath, which is a very Chris Hardwick way to close.