While recently appearing on the Kelly Clarkson Show, television legend Bryan Cranston talked about the scene he found most challenging while working on the series Breaking Bad, which ended one decade ago.
Cranston made a guest appearance to promote his latest show, Your Honor, which recently aired its second season premiere last Sunday on Showtime. Clarkson started the interview by asking about his Breaking Bad tattoo, which Cranston said he got on set from a tattoo artist he hired for the series wrap party.
Cranston went on to talk about the complex subject matter of Your Honor – which revolves around the loss of a child amidst a web of gang violence – when Clarkson asked Cranston if it’s difficult, as a parent, to go there emotionally as a performer, to which the actor responded:
“I did a scene on Breaking Bad where I was watching a woman die in the second season, and [despite] being prepared for that, all of a sudden, her face left and the face of my real daughter showed up, and I was watching my real daughter die. It choked me. I’m even getting a little choked up now. For about two or three seconds, I saw my daughter’s face and I [gasps], it choked me up, and that went away and Krysten Ritter’s face came back, and there she was, and it was like, ‘Oh my god.’ It is an emotional risk that actors go through, we have to put ourselves in a position of vulnerability for that to possibly happen, because you’re willing to go into the unknown.”
Revisiting Breaking Bad Season 2
Sony Pictures Television
This particularly gut-wrenching scene from Breaking Bad’s second season happens at a point in the plot where Jesse Pinkman falls in love with a girl named Jane (played by Krysten Ritter), who relapses into heroin addiction and takes him along for the ride. Their love story plays out to a tragic end after Jane confronts Walter White over Jesse’s diminished earnings from a recent heist, threatening to expose the chemist-turned-meth cook if he doesn’t pay up. Eventually, Cranston’s character breaks into Jane’s home at the exact moment she starts overdosing in her sleep. While White could have intervened and saved her life by simply flipping her over, instead, he chooses to watch her choke on her vomit, letting inaction quietly solve his “business complication.”
As a viewer, it’s hard enough to watch. But, as an actor – who isn’t a ruthless, cartel-slaughtering drug lord in real-life – it makes sense that the scene weighed particularly heavy on Cranston himself.
Your Honor recently aired the second episode of its much anticipated second season on Showtime at 9 PM EST.
