Miles Allen is best known for impersonating all characters from the TV show Breaking Bad. During his first show in the country, he tells Shrabasti Mallik that as a child he used to make up characters and scenarios in his mind
We all love the show Breaking Bad, don’t we, especially the charactersIJ Now imagine if someone were to enact those characters from the show — just one person. Sounds impossible rightIJ Well, then you have not seen Miles Allen on stage, or seen his videos on the Internet. The show that he conceptualised is called One Man Breaking Bad, and it has, quite literally broken several records with over a million hits on YouTube and sold out at comedy festivals in Melbourne and Edinburgh.
“Once a season ended, there was a huge hole in my heart and I had no idea of what to do. I figured that everyone who is a fan of the show must be going through the same feelings and sentiments. Because the wait till the next season seems like a million years. I thought how much fun it would be to relive the entire Breaking Bad experience in a 60 minute show. And that was it,” he said. Every show helps him to relive the show, “Without anti-depressants,” because he breaks an entire season down into just one show.
People have a hard time believing that he can do about 40 different impressions from the same show. “That’s what happens when you have a multiple personality disorder. It becomes easy to pull of multiple people at the same time. People don’t believe it but it’s all a crazy love where it comes from. My love for Breaking Bad, love of expressions and comedy everything — blended in for this show,” he added.
This 25-year-old chooses to impersonate people and shows that he likes and enjoys. Although he has done impression of shows, not many people would now remember. “I do a lot of impression of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show and no one has seen the shows since the 60s. I like impersonating unique people and unique voices and Breaking Bad is a garden of unique people and voices,” he pointed out.
Allen has been impersonating since he was 13 and there is no specific way in which he chooses his subjects. “They just have to be unique and have unique voices. It doesn’t have to be necessarily people,” said Allen minutes before his show at antiSOCIAl. We asked him about the first character he impersonated and instead of saying it, he did what he does best. “I can’t see my forehead,” he impersonated in the familiar voice of a cartoon character,Patrick Star from SpongeBob SquarePants.
For Allen, impersonating was not a decision that he made, it just came to him. He told us that he was a loner while growing up and used to spend hours in his room. “I was not one of the cool kids. I was a loser, doing different voices and talking to myself in my room. So most of the time, I was on my own and it was then that I would make up different stories and scenarios and characters, which I am doing now in my shows, to keep myself engaged and entertained. And I guess it turned out ok at the end, performing this show all around the world,” he shared.