TV Verdict

Clark Douglas: We’re joined today by actor Bryan Cranston. Bryan has appeared in many films and television programs over the years, including Seinfeld, The King of Queens, Little Miss Sunshine, and How I Met Your Mother. He received three Emmy nominations for his performance as the dad on Malcolm in the Middle, and last year he won his first Emmy for his remarkable performance on the AMC television program, Breaking Bad. Bryan, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today.

Bryan Cranston: Thank you, Clark. Glad to be here.

CD: Bryan, the first season of Breaking Bad is just hitting DVD, and the season earned a great deal of critical acclaim. When you first jumped into this, did the script give you the feeling that it was going to be something special?

BC: Actually, it did. It had that, "What the hell is going on?" aspect to it that you want to see jump out of a script. I started reading the very first page, and there was this middle-aged man in tighty-whitey underwear driving an RV, wearing a gas mask, two dead bodies sliding back and forth in the back, another body slumped over the front, and I was like, "What the heck is going on?" It got me right away, it was very compelling. And then it slowly allowed us to be introduced to this character, Walter White, and I had tremendous sympathy for him. I got him and understood him right away. I was very fortunate to be able to meet with Vince Gilligan, who wrote it, and we bantered back and forth on how we felt the character should look and act and walk and his background and why he’s in the state that he’s in. It was a great meeting, obviously. We hit it off wonderfully and from that point on we were just destined to make this together.

CD: You mentioned the way the show opens on such a striking note. It really was a very interesting opening… really, the first three episodes just throw people right into this thing, and then later it starts to let up a bit. Was there any nervousness on the part of the network or anyone else about trying to do so much, so fast, in such an intense way?

BC: I think that was just the nature of the story. It didn’t dip it’s toe into the shallow end of the pool, it went to the ten meter high dive and took off. (laughs) But as you said, Clark, that’s true, you have to slow it down at some point. You have to slow it down at some point to let the show get it’s bearings, slow it down a bit, introduce the characters, find out what they’re thinking and feeling, and then the action can be interspersed in and around that, as well.

CD: Your career has largely been defined by comedic roles. There’s certainly an element of very dark comedy in Breaking Bad, but it’s a show dealing with some pretty heavy stuff. Was it a challenging transition for you?

BC: Well, this is my 30th year as a professional actor. In that amount of time, hopefully you’ve gathered a solid amount of dramatic pieces as well as comedy. So yeah, even though I’m best known for comedy… doing 7 years on Malcolm in the Middle and stints on Seinfeld and King of Queens and all that, I did a lot of drama before that. You know, an actor is really just trying to present himself or herself as a well-rounded person so you’re not just pigeonholed as someone who does one thing. When you realize that you can do both comedy and drama, you’ve doubled your chances of getting work. Coming to the end of 7 years of Malcolm, the opportunities were present for me to go back and do more comedies. But I thought, unless the comedies were as well-written as Malcolm, then I’ll stay away from that for now and focus on drama. But even still, the criteria was that it had to be well-written. That’s really the only thing that actors have control over. When we read something that it well-written, it then has a chance to be a good production of whatever, but if it’s not well-written, it can’t be good.

CD: Yeah. Now, your character has a lot of different dimensions… he’s a chemistry teacher, a family man, an aspiring meth dealer, and a cancer patient. Taking all of those things into account, how much preparation was involved in playing a role like this one?

BC: The only preparation that I really focused on was the chemistry background. It had been high school since the last real chemistry I had been involved with, so I shadowed a chemistry professor at a university here for a couple of days, and got back into the sensibility of what chemistry really is and the methodology behind it; the precision involved in chemistry. It’s very mathematical in that sense. Also, the words and nomenclature of the environment: beakers and flasks and the differences between then, what you would cook in and what you would mix in… that was the whole world that I had to be completely reintroduced to. As far as cancer, I didn’t want to know that much about it. I wanted to learn as my character learned what he was going through, and what it entailed. Then the rest… being a 50-year-old man, I did enough research in my own life to figure out what that feels like. Being married and having children; you don’t really have to do research on that, you know what that’s about. Then it’s just about connecting with your cast mates, making sure you’re on the same page and trying to reach the same goals.

CD: There’s something about Walt as a character that really intrigues me. In some ways, he seems to be a very decisive person. He leaps into the world of cooking meth without much hesitation, and that decisiveness appears again at other points during the season. On the other hand, he seems very reserved and hesitant when it comes to other things, particularly when he’s dealing with his family. What divides Walt’s moments of assurance from his moments of uncertainty?

BC: I certainly didn’t intend him to be that decisive. He ultimately made the decision to become a drug dealer, but that was based on this abject need to fulfill his role as a provider for his family, even posthumously. So, that’s the driving force behind that. He didn’t want to see his wife at his bedside tending to him, wiping his drool, then he still dies and leaves them penniless on top of that. So, he felt backed into a corner. You either allow that to happen, play that out as I just described, or do something about it. He wants to do something, but he doesn’t know what. What could he possibly do, win the lottery? So, he feels the only move he can make is to use his chemistry background to cook crystal meth and become a drug dealer. That’s the avenue that he pursues, but it’s with much duress that he goes into that, so it’s not something that came easily to him at all.

CD: Just something that he was forced into and forced to act on rather quickly.

BC: Yes.

CD: Does any aspect of Walt reflect your own personality, or is he your polar opposite?

BC: I would say he’s closer to being a polar opposite than a reflection, certainly. I’m living my life very happily, and I can’t believe it’s been 30 years since I became a professional actor, and that’s all I’ve done as an adult, and that’s a gift. That’s a blessing. I can’t say that I have any regrets as far as that’s concerned at all.

CD: A two-part question of sorts for you: First, over the course of the entire first season, what was the most challenging scene for you, and second, which moment or moments are you most proud of from that season?

BC: There was one scene… probably the most challenging scene was in the basement. Having to approach a man, another human being that I had come to know a little bit, someone I had eaten with and shared a beer with, coming to the realization that I must kill this man. It goes against human nature. It’s certainly an angst-ridden moment for my character to be forced to go into that environment. What came out of that was so real and compelling that I just adored those scenes played with the actor, Max Arciniega. He was very good, and it was fun to work off him. At the end of that scene, Walt mutters an apology. He starts to weep and say, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He was truly sorry that it had to come to that end. That kind of juxtaposition, it was like… oh my God. It was a difficult scene, but an interesting one at the same time. A rewarding scene… there was a moment in the first season… there’s so many, but the one that comes to mind right now is a scene in our living room, where Skylar has organized a conference, a family meeting. It’s more of an intervention. It had it’s comic moments, because she’s holding the talking pillow, and anyone holding the talking pillow was given the opportunity to speak at that time. Anyway, the talking pillow got to Walt, and Walt simply made the confession that he never felt that he actually had control in his life, or his destiny, and that for once in his life he would like to be able to make a decision that directly relates to his life. I thought that was very profound and effective in the way it was written.

CD: That’s a very interesting scene, and a very effective one, I think. The season slowly seems to be building to scene in a way, due to the nature of Walt as a character… being someone who’s reserved, who doesn’t express himself to the audience or to other characters in the show… giving that character an opportunity to express his true feelings after all of the traumatizing experiences in the show.

BC: Yes, absolutely, I agree.

CD: Is there a definitive conclusion to Walt’s story somewhere down the road, or is the future of Breaking Bad being determined season by season? Is that something you can talk about at all?

BC: I can. I think the nature of the show and the conceit that we must admit to is that he’s in this condition. We wouldn’t cop out and say, “Wait a minute, we’ve got the wrong charts! You don’t have lung cancer!” or provide a miracle cure or anything like that. No, it’s going to come to a natural close. You know, in television we can manipulate time, so just as M.A.S.H. extended the Korean war from three years to ten, we can extend a year or year and a half of living to perhaps 6 seasons. That’s a possibility, and hopefully we’ll be able to do that, because it would really give us time to explore the characters and the journey they’re going to make.

CD: Conversations about the program… at least conversations I’ve seen… tend to focus on the idea that the show is about a chemistry teacher selling meth, but it seems to me that the show is equally concerned with offering a look at healthcare in America. Is that the show’s intention, to try and spotlight the medical side of things just as much?

BC: Well, I’ve never thought of the show as being about a man who deals drugs. It’s really, in an overall view, a story about a good man who makes bad decisions, and about what one person would subject himself to in order to provide for his family. I contend that if Walter was a mathematician, instead of becoming a drug dealer and cooking crystal meth, he would go to Las Vegas and try to count cards to make as much money for his family as he can before dying of lung cancer. I think it’s conditional and circumstantial that he’s doing what he’s doing. Certainly not a decision that was made easily… it was that level of gravitas that the decision came out of.

CD: We were talking about comedy earlier. There’s certainly an element of comedy in the program, but unlike some of the other stuff you’ve done, this is a character who isn’t in on the joke necessarily. Is that challenging, handling very darkly funny material but not being able to acknowledge that in any way?

BC: That’s the joy of it. It’s to allow the audience to laugh, not to allow the character to laugh. In fact, in comedy… in the world of stand-up comedy, if the comedian laughs, the audience can laugh right along with them. If you’re a character in a story, and you’re laughing because you think what you say is funny, the audience won’t laugh and you’ve destroyed everything you were trying to do. (laughs) If the actors think the characters are funny, it’s the kiss of death in comedy.

CD: Another noteworthy aspect of the show is the level of violence in the program. Particularly in the early episodes, there’s some very traumatizing material in there. Was there ever any hesitation about plunging into that so forcefully?

BC: No. The only think you need is justification. If the world you’re entering is that of nursery schools, and there’s an abundance of violence, then there’s something wrong with that set-up. This set-up is dealing with the world of drug-dealing… nefarious characters and really bad people. It’s an environment that is conducive to violence. If it wasn’t there, nobody would believe it. They would say, “That’s not the world that I’ve heard about or read about or that my brother or sister was in.” You have to be honest about the environment that you’re reproducing. In this case, it’s not only warranted, but necessary.

CD: Yeah. You’ve done a lot of television work, but obviously a show like Breaking Bad, a lot more seems to go into it than what might go into the filming of the average sitcom. Is it more in-depth and challenging as a shooting experience than most of your television work, or is it comparable to that?

BC: It is. It’s physically and emotionally demanding, you have to have a lot of stamina, you have to know when you’re needed and know when you’re not so you can rest, and rest your mind as well. It takes a tremendous amount of concentration to be able to do this. When we work, we work 5 days a week, 13 hours a day, and that’s the minimum. It just gets very exhausting, and that’s why your weekends become more precious. You don’t want to spread yourself too thin. On the other hand, it’s very rewarding because the story we’re telling is honest in it’s portrayal of these characters and the situation that they’re in.

CD: Now, the second season of Breaking Bad starts in March, correct?

BC: Yes, March 8th. Then it runs every Sunday uninterrupted through the month of May.

CD: 13 episodes?

BC: Yes.

CD: Can you give us a preview of what to expect in the coming season?

BC: It’s so difficult in a serialized series to be able to say what’s happening without giving away a lot. Here’s what I can say. Walter White jumped into this world that he really has no skill set for, that he has no history in, no experience in. In the second season, we explore a lot of those avenues. The repercussions of hasty decisions, the near misses, the fact that I’m doing this all for my family, and the thing that I want to preserve the most is the thing that is jeopardized the most. My wife finds out certain things that I’ve been lying about, but I don’t know to what extent she knows, so I have to kind of tip-toe around, so that infuriates her even more, and that all comes to a head near the end of the season. My brother Hank in the D.E.A. gets closer and closer and closer, and sometimes I wonder if he knows and just isn’t saying anything just to trap me. So I’m developing a sense of paranoia as well, and still dealing with all these bad guys like Raymond Cruz’s character, Tuco, and that comes to a head during the season. Also my partner Jesse develops a relationship that becomes very detrimental to our business, and that comes to a very, very surprising ending that is rather disturbing in some ways. It’s a roller coaster ride, and jumps off from right where we left off. The end of the first season is the beginning of the second season, and it races from there.

CD: Sounds like another tense and involving season of the show.

BC: Yeah, it is, and I’m really excited about it.

CD: Well, I know myself and others are really looking forward to it. Bryan, I’ve really enjoyed your performance and the show, and I want to thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us about your work on Breaking Bad.

BC: Thank you Clark, anytime. I appreciate it.