Breaking the mold in 'Breaking Bad'

Ursula Coyote

Laura Fraser as "Breaking Bad's" Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, with Bryan Cranston (top l.) as Walter White and Jonathan Banks as Mike.

The violent, amoral world of AMC’s "Breaking Bad" is also a man’s world.

With one exception.

Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, played by Laura Fraser, took over Walter White’s meth-dealing network when Walt made his futile attempt to cut his ties with the bad guys and break good.

Lydia was the perfect choice, says Fraser, “because she’s crazier than the guys around her. She’s a crypto-Nazi. She’s more than a match for all the other psychopaths on the show.”

Working in that world, Lydia naturally has faced a few of the same situations and choices as the menfolk. She’s had a loaded gun pointed at her head. When the quality of the meth was slipping early this season, she approved the personnel reductions necessary to ensure brand integrity.

Whether she ultimately beats the guys at their own game is one of the many questions that may or may not be answered this Sunday and the following Sunday, in the final two episodes of the series.

Whatever happens, though, says Fraser, Lydia’s character has been well established.

“She’s become more and more morally bankrupt,” says Fraser. “I had no idea when I started what her trajectory would be, and after a while I stopped asking.”

At the base of it, Fraser suggests, Lydia is driven by the same raw instincts that drive most of the male characters: “No matter how much she has, she wants more. She can never get enough money or control.”

The Scottish-born Fraser, 37, was originally cast as Nicholas Brody’s wife in “Homeland,” though the role finally went to Morena Baccarin. She had never seen “Breaking Bad” when she did a blind audition tape.

“I did it in my apartment, and it wasn’t even a scene from the show,” she says. “But apparently they liked it.

“When I got to the set, I was a bit intimidated and nervous. I felt like I was gate-crashing this amazing party. But they made me feel welcome. They even played a few practical jokes on me. It’s a happy, light set.”

That doesn’t exactly describe Lydia, and Fraser admits the role raised a few eyebrows back home.

“My mum and dad were a bit shocked,” she says. “They said it didn’t look or sound like me.

“My sister started laughing. My husband feels it’s quite absurd.”

For Fraser herself, who says she’s “just slacking” at the moment but expects she will be getting back to work, Lydia at times became intense.

“After a day of Lydia,” she says, “I’d sometimes feel like I had to shake it off.”