Bryan Cranston may be renowned as a prestigious, highly talented actor following his time playing Walter White, one of TV’s great anti-heroes, in the show ‘Breaking Bad’, but he used to torment his co-star Aaron Paul on-set in the meanest way you can imagine.
Fans of the show – and mind because, obviously, there are MAJOR SPOILERS for the series ahead – will likely know that Aaron Paul’s character, Jesse Pinkman, wasn’t even meant to make it past the first season of ‘Breaking Bad.’ However showrunner Vince Gilligan loved the actor’s performance so much that he ended up being kept on, until the end of the series in fact.
The series celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, with San Diego Comic-Con marking the occasion by reuniting the cast and dedicating a panel to them.
At the show, according to Vulture, Paul explained how Bryan Cranston used to exploit his fear of being written off by with a running gag about Jesse being killed.
Gilligan had actually told Paul late in the first season that he originally intended for Jesse to die off, which he intended to give the actor confidence that he was doing a great job. Telling Paul this actually ended up giving him anxiety about when his character's time would be up for good. Cranston lived to exploit this.
“[Cranston] came up to me the first time he did it, and he just gives me a really long, exaggerated hug,” Paul explained. “I’m like ‘What’s going on?’ And he goes, ‘Hey man. It’s been a fun ride. You read the script right?’ And then he just walks away! I run into the production office and I’m like ‘Where’s the script?’ He’s like, ‘It’s not available yet.’ I’m like ‘No, please God tell me!’ And I read it and I was alive still.
“Then there was another time where they did a fitting and they were like, ‘We need to measure you for the coffin.’ And he’s like ‘Oh! You don’t know yet! Oh, man!’” At which point Cranston threw his hands up and chimed in with, “Forget I said that! You’re getting cremated. Don’t worry about it.”
Cheeky Bryan Cranston!
