Skyler White

Skyler White is a fictional character in the American television drama series Breaking Bad on AMC. She is portrayed by Anna Gunn. On July 19th, 2012, Gunn was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her work on season four.

Character biography
Over the years, Skyler has had several meager sources of income; writing short stories, selling items on eBay, and eventually working as a bookkeeper for the Albuquerque firm Beneke Fabricators. She and her husband, Walter White, have two sons, Walter Jr, Mike Ehrmantraut, and an infant daughter, Holly. Skyler is approximately eleven years younger than Walter, whom she met when she was a hostess at a restaurant near Walt's former place of work, near the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Season One
When Walt is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, he initially does not tell his family. When she learns about the diagnosis, Skyler is both devastated by the news and outraged that Walt witheld the information. Their relationship becomes strained, both from Walt's reluctance to seek treatment and from his unexplained absences following his diagnosis. Skyler figures out Walt's connection to his former student, Jesse Pinkman, and confronts Jesse at his house; when she confronts Walt, he claims that Jesse is his marijuana dealer. Unbeknownst to Skyler, Walt has taken up cooking methamphetamine with Jesse in order to ensure his family's financial security after he dies.

Skyler faces other problems, as well. When her sister Marie offers an expensive diamond tiara as a gift for Holly's baby shower, Skyler attempts to return it to the jewelry store, only to learn that her sister — a kleptomaniac — had stolen the item. Skyler is detained by the store's owner, escaping arrest only after faking labor. The incident causes serious problems in Skyler's relationship with Marie, who pathologically denies that she has done anything wrong.

Season Two
When Walt is kidnapped by Mexican drug kingpin Tuco Salamanca, his family — unaware of the connection to Walt's criminal activities — organize a search for him as a missing person. When Walt escapes, he attributes his disappearance to a non-existent "fugue state". The marriage continues to go downhill thanks to Walt's continued absences, devolving to the point where Skyler refuses to speak with him. Skyler is also perturbed by Walt's resistance to his son's efforts to raise money for his exorbitant cancer treatments, unaware that most of the donations actually constitute drug money laundered by Walt's corrupt lawyer, Saul Goodman.

Continuing to be unaware of Walt's meth business, Skyler believes that his illness has strained the family's finances and returns to her old job working as an accountant for Ted Beneke, whose sexual advances had caused her to quit earlier. She increasingly relies on Ted for emotional support as her husband grows distant; she also reluctantly covers up Ted's tax fraud. Shortly afterwards, Skyler gives birth to a daughter, Holly; Walt is absent for the occasion, being forced to appear for a meth transaction with the drug kingpin Gus Fring.

When Skyler becomes suspicious that Walt owns a second cell phone, Walt emphatically denies the charge. However, while Walt is doped up prior to cancer surgery, he indicates the opposite when he asks "which" cell phone she has packed for him. After Walt recovers, Skyler confronts him over his lie and leaves him.

Season Three
In the third season, Walt has moved out of the house. Skyler appears at his apartment, having deduced that he is in the drug trade. When she confronts Walt with her idea that he is selling marijuana, he admits instead that he is a meth manufacturer. Skyler demands a divorce from Walt in exchange for her silence about his criminal activities. She also demands that he move out of the family's home. Her subsequent cold behavior towards her husband, arouses curiosity in Marie and her husband Hank, as well as anger and rebellion from Walter, Jr. When Walt forcibly moves back into their home, she retaliates by initiating an affair with Ted Beneke and coldly informing her husband. She enjoys her affair with Ted, as they skip work frequently to go to his home.

Even in her anger, Skyler is conflicted; she permits Walt to take care of Holly and defends some of his actions to her lawyer, who advises that she leave him immediately. She later finds that Walter has signed off on their divorce and left the house for good. When Ted arrives at her home and tries to clarify the nature of Skyler's feelings, she refuses to answer and asks him to leave.

Following Hank's shooting, Skyler tells Marie that Walter earned millions through card counting at underground blackjack games, and offers to pay for Hank's physical therapy and anything else not covered by insurance. She later admits to Walt that she never filed the divorce papers, slyly beginning to work her way into Walter's criminal activities by reminding him that spouses cannot be forced to testify against each other. She suggests an alternative money-laundering scheme after being thoroughly unimpressed by Saul's plan to launder the money through a laser tag facility. Skyler suggests Walter instead purchase the car wash facility where he worked in the pilot, and offers to run the business for him. She tries to frame these decisions as being forced on her by Walt's criminal activities, but she ends up letting Walt spend more time with the kids and having dinners as a family when Walt, sensing an opportunity to regain his place in the family, tells her that's the only way her cover-up can succeed.

Season Four
Skyler, through a combination of business planning and underhanded tactics, buys the car wash and begins laundering Walt's drug money. There is a growing perception that Skyler is starting to enjoy her new life as a criminal accomplice, becoming much more confident in her abilities to carry out the money laundering operation and becoming less concerned about his criminal transgressions. She and Walt eventually have their first sexual encounter since the divorce and slowly begin to rebuild their relationship. Her fear of Walt is brought up however, as she begins to understand what kind of man he has become and what troubles he has gotten himself and their family into. At one point, she's so consumed with panic that she considers fleeing the state with Holly. Later, when Hank and Marie are under witness protection at their house, she, Holly, and Walter Jr. join them while Walt deals with Gus.