As Breaking Bad is approaching its end, Bryan Cranston reveals his early apprehensions on being accepted in the show
How did you originally envision the ending of WaltIJ
It was in broad strokes and just the notion of trying to take a serialised television series and change this character was never done before and I was aghast by that. I wanted this role really bad. It was easier when I read the pilot episode. When we read good scripts, it instills imagination in you immediately, involuntarily and so our discussion in the first meeting was how we should look and how we should walk and what his sensibility is but we never discussed where it was going to end. It was just too big a subject. And as the season went on, I never found out. I never asked and I never wanted to know. The twist and turns of my character were so sharp that it wouldn’t help me to know. So I was just holding on, much like the audience, almost week to week. I would read the script about five to six days before we shot it and this was no exception. It was about a week or six days before we started shooting the last episode and Aaron and I read the last script together. And it will be in as part of a documentary on the show.
How much bad is left in Jesse and how much good is left in Walt at this pointIJ
I really believe that everybody is capable of good or bad. We are all human beings. We are all given this spectrum of emotions, as complex as they are, and depending on your influences and your DNA, your parenting, your education and your social environment, the best of you can come out or the worst of you can come out. I think, if given the right set of circumstances or dire situations any one of us can become dangerous.
Were you thrilled when you first had a chance to be on Breaking BadIJ
When I read Breaking Bad, I thought it was brilliant. But I was like, there’s no way the network is going to pick up a show where the hero is dying and he decides to start cooking and selling crystal meth. But it was so brilliant and Vince just could not be a sweeter individual. So there’s no question I was so thrilled to have this opportunity.
What is it like working with Vince GilliganIJ
I worked with Vince 10 years ago on an episode of X-Files, where I played this really horrible bigoted character in the back seat of a car that my head was going to explode unless David Duchovny drove 80 miles an hour to some — I don’t know, some silly thing — and for some reason, he thought that was like the prototype to this character. So he remembered me from that and brought me in it and we read. Getting to the story now. So he was my champion to get it but AMC and Sony were saying, ‘We don’t know. That goofy dad from Malcolm in the Middle is going to play this roleIJ You sureIJ’ And so when this offer came in to do this other role, I talked to my agents, and I said, ‘Is there a way that we can get this information out somehow without — getting it out but just kind of talk about it and have it get aroundIJ’ And sure enough, it got back to Sony and AMC and then they offered me the role without having to test for it, which is how it worked.
You spent seven seasons playing a very different character on Malcolm in the Middle. How difficult was it to adapt yourself to Walter from HalIJ
When we read something that is so well written, it makes our job so much easier because it starts seeping into us. And I was having dreams about this character and I’d wake up in the middle of the night with ideas. And so that 20-minute meeting that turned out to be 90 was all about that, and I said, ‘I think he’s got this stupid little mustache that always looks like, you know, what’s the pointIJ And his hair looks like it always needs to be trimmed. And he’s got no colour to his face.’ And so we went back and forth and got charged up on what this guy should look like and how much weight he should carry. But I wasn’t worried. I gave up thinking about other people’s decisions long ago and I only focus on the things that I control. We can’t control whether something is — we get asked a lot if something’s going to be successful. We have no idea. You know if it could be good because it’s well written. It has a chance to be good. But success is a whole different thing.