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Breaking Bad Explained.
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The reason Bryan Cranston ended up as Walter White in Breaking Bad starts with a 1998 X-Files episode called "Drive." Vince Gilligan wrote it,
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and he cast Cranston as the guest antagonist,
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a character the audience was meant to actively dislike.
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Cranston made him human anyway.
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Gilligan spent the next ten years not forgetting that performance.
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"Drive" is a Season 6 X-Files episode with Cranston as the antagonist,
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a character the show framed as a villain.
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What stayed with Gilligan was that Cranston found a way to make someone unsympathetic genuinely complicated.
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That quality is exactly what he needed at the center of Breaking Bad.
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By the time Breaking Bad aired,
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Cranston's public identity was almost entirely comedy.
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He'd played Dr. Tim Whatley on Seinfeld from 1994 through 1997,
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Jerry's dentist, memorable mainly for being obnoxious,
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then became Hal in Malcolm in the Middle on Fox in 2000 and played that for seven seasons,
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151 episodes. Slapstick dad, physically committed, broad.
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That was the established impression going in.
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At the same time,
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he was landing serious film roles,
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Saving Private Ryan in 1998,
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Little Miss Sunshine in 2006.
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Little Miss Sunshine also crossed him with Dean Norris,
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two years before they both joined the show.
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Anna Gunn had spent years in prestige dramatic television before Breaking Bad,
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a recurring role on The Practice on ABC starting in 1997,
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then two seasons as Martha Bullock in Deadwood on HBO in 2005 and 2006.
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Martha Bullock is a character who requires holding onto a specific moral rigidity while everything around her refuses to cooperate.
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Deadwood is one of the most demanding writing and performance environments in prestige television,
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and Gunn was there for its final two seasons.
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The Practice to Deadwood to Breaking Bad is a very specific prestige-television pipeline,
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and she did it in consecutive shows.
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There's also a completely separate strand in her career from the same period,
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she voiced a character named Ariel in the Legacy of Kain video game series from 1996 through 2003.
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Seven years of voiceover work across multiple franchise installments,
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running in parallel to everything else she was building.
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Dean Norris has the most surprising background in the main cast when you actually look at it.
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He graduated from Harvard College in 1985,
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first-generation college student, studied Social Studies,
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was his high school's class valedictorian.
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His career since has been built almost entirely on being cast as law enforcement,
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DEA, FBI, state and local cops,
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based on physicality rather than any credential.
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He calls himself the Alphabet Actor,
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over forty federal, state,
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and local law enforcement roles across more than 150 total credits.
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The film work goes back to 1989: Lethal Weapon 2,
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Total Recall, Hard to Kill, Terminator 2, The Firm,
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Starship Troopers. The American action genre across nearly a decade.
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Harvard Social Studies graduate,
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type-cast that entire time.
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And Norris was in Little Miss Sunshine in 2006,
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the same film as Cranston,
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playing completely unrelated characters,
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two years before they both ended up in Breaking Bad.
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Little Miss Sunshine came out the same year Malcolm in the Middle ended its run.
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Cranston transitioning, Norris still playing what he'd been playing for years.
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No connection between them at that point.
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Aaron Paul had the least visible career of the main cast going in.
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He was born Aaron Sturtevant in Emmett, Idaho,
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changed his professional name.
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Before Breaking Bad he'd done guest roles across various shows,
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music videos, a few minor film appearances.
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The most substantial prior credit was a recurring part on Big Love on HBO,
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the polygamist family drama,
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as a character named Scott Quittman,
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starting in 2007. Big Love ran through 2011,
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so both shows were airing simultaneously for the first few seasons.
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Still largely unknown to most audiences coming in.
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After Breaking Bad, he went somewhere unexpected,
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he voiced Todd Chavez in BoJack Horseman on Netflix from 2014 through 2020,
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and served as an executive producer on it as well.
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Six seasons of animated comedy after years in live-action drama.
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A real genre shift,
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and he committed to the full run.
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RJ Mitte has mild cerebral palsy in real life,
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diagnosed at three years old.
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He moved to Hollywood in 2006,
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when he was thirteen,
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specifically looking for roles where his disability would be integral to the storytelling rather than something to work around.
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He'd had minor sitcom appearances,
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but Walter White Jr. was the role that fit exactly what he'd positioned himself for.
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And Walter White Jr. has a more severe form of CP than Mitte himself has,
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so his preparation involved learning to perform symptoms more limiting than his own baseline.
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Most of the disability-casting conversation runs one direction,
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non-disabled actors playing disabled characters.
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Mitte was working the inverse:
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learning to perform less physical control than he naturally has.
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He was fifteen when the show premiered.
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It's a specific form of preparation,
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suppressing natural ability rather than simulating something you don't have.
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Betsy Brandt had been a working TV actress before Breaking Bad,
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solid dramatic experience across various shows,
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but no single defining credit that made her name immediately recognizable on its own.
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After the show ended she moved into a completely different format:
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The Michael J. Fox Show on NBC in 2013,
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then Life in Pieces on CBS from 2015 through 2019,
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which ran four full seasons.
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Two network ensemble comedies in a row after years of cable drama.
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Cable drama and network ensemble sitcom operate on genuinely different rhythms,
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the pace changes, the blocking changes,
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and comedy timing is a different skill than drama.
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She also did Saint X in 2023,
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which pulled her back toward thriller territory.
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Three distinct formats across about a decade post-Breaking Bad.
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Four full seasons of Life in Pieces means she built a genuinely separate comedy résumé rather than coasting on the previous credit.
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Vince Gilligan spent the decade before Breaking Bad almost entirely inside The X-Files,
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writer and producer from 1993 through 2002,
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across nine seasons, plus co-creating The Lone Gunmen spinoff in 2001.
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The same year Breaking Bad premiered, 2008,
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he also co-wrote the screenplay for Hancock,
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the Will Smith superhero film.
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A completely different register.
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And that year also brought the WGA strike,
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which cut Season 1 from nine planned episodes down to seven.
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Two fewer episodes is a structural difference.
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Seven hours to establish the world instead of nine,
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that changes what you can do and how fast you have to move.
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Most people who've watched the show have no idea Season 1 was supposed to be nine episodes.
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The shape of it came partly from the labor calendar.
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A few of the recurring players are worth a mention.
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Raymond Cruz, who plays Tuco Salamanca,
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had already put in hundreds of episodes on The Closer on TNT as Detective Julio Sanchez,
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a completely different mode,
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and later reprised Tuco in Better Call Saul.
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Jessica Hecht, who plays Gretchen Schwartz,
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spent nearly a decade as Susan Bunch on Friends,
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a recurring role that reached enormous mainstream audiences.
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And Adam Godley, who plays Elliott Schwartz,
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is a British stage actor,
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The Lehman Trilogy on Broadway,
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extensive West End work,
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plus The Umbrella Academy and The Great on television.
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The Friends connection is the one that catches people,
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Susan Bunch was a recurring face on one of the most-watched network shows for close to ten years.
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Godley brings real stage gravity to a role that needs it.
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The supporting ensemble has this mix of long-run TV faces,
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film character actors, and stage-trained imports that makes it feel lived-in.
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What holds the whole cast together is how specifically suited each person was for each part.
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Cranston carrying seven seasons of comedy identity into a dramatic lead.
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Gunn coming straight off two seasons of Deadwood.
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Norris with nearly forty years of law enforcement roles in his body.
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Paul as a genuine unknown with one HBO drama credit.
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Mitte at fifteen, having moved to California for exactly this kind of casting.
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And sitting at the center of all of it is Gilligan holding onto a memory of a single X-Files guest appearance from 1998,
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knowing ten years later exactly who he needed.
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Not luck. Someone paying close enough attention that nothing gets wasted.
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Breaking Bad Explained.
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The reason Bryan Cranston ended up as Walter White in Breaking Bad starts with a 1998 X-Files episode called "Drive." Vince Gilligan wrote it,
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and he cast Cranston as the guest antagonist,
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a character the audience was meant to actively dislike.
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Cranston made him human anyway.
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Gilligan spent the next ten years not forgetting that performance.
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"Drive" is a Season 6 X-Files episode with Cranston as the antagonist,
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a character the show framed as a villain.
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What stayed with Gilligan was that Cranston found a way to make someone unsympathetic genuinely complicated.
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That quality is exactly what he needed at the center of Breaking Bad.
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By the time Breaking Bad aired,
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Cranston's public identity was almost entirely comedy.
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He'd played Dr. Tim Whatley on Seinfeld from 1994 through 1997,
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Jerry's dentist, memorable mainly for being obnoxious,
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00:01:01,354 --> 00:01:07,034
then became Hal in Malcolm in the Middle on Fox in 2000 and played that for seven seasons,
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00:01:07,694 --> 00:01:11,854
151 episodes. Slapstick dad, physically committed, broad.
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That was the established impression going in.
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At the same time,
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he was landing serious film roles,
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Saving Private Ryan in 1998,
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Little Miss Sunshine in 2006.
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Little Miss Sunshine also crossed him with Dean Norris,
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two years before they both joined the show.
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00:01:28,434 --> 00:01:32,834
Anna Gunn had spent years in prestige dramatic television before Breaking Bad,
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a recurring role on The Practice on ABC starting in 1997,
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then two seasons as Martha Bullock in Deadwood on HBO in 2005 and 2006.
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Martha Bullock is a character who requires holding onto a specific moral rigidity while everything around her refuses to cooperate.
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Deadwood is one of the most demanding writing and performance environments in prestige television,
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and Gunn was there for its final two seasons.
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The Practice to Deadwood to Breaking Bad is a very specific prestige-television pipeline,
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and she did it in consecutive shows.
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00:02:08,374 --> 00:02:11,894
There's also a completely separate strand in her career from the same period,
33
00:02:12,454 --> 00:02:18,594
she voiced a character named Ariel in the Legacy of Kain video game series from 1996 through 2003.
34
00:02:19,514 --> 00:02:23,174
Seven years of voiceover work across multiple franchise installments,
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running in parallel to everything else she was building.
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00:02:26,194 --> 00:02:30,954
Dean Norris has the most surprising background in the main cast when you actually look at it.
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He graduated from Harvard College in 1985,
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first-generation college student, studied Social Studies,
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was his high school's class valedictorian.
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His career since has been built almost entirely on being cast as law enforcement,
41
00:02:45,774 --> 00:02:48,894
DEA, FBI, state and local cops,
42
00:02:49,314 --> 00:02:52,114
based on physicality rather than any credential.
43
00:02:52,394 --> 00:02:54,254
He calls himself the Alphabet Actor,
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00:02:54,734 --> 00:02:56,234
over forty federal, state,
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00:02:56,334 --> 00:03:00,154
and local law enforcement roles across more than 150 total credits.
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00:03:00,934 --> 00:03:04,414
The film work goes back to 1989: Lethal Weapon 2,
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00:03:04,634 --> 00:03:08,294
Total Recall, Hard to Kill, Terminator 2, The Firm,
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00:03:08,614 --> 00:03:12,754
Starship Troopers. The American action genre across nearly a decade.
49
00:03:13,454 --> 00:03:14,934
Harvard Social Studies graduate,
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type-cast that entire time.
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And Norris was in Little Miss Sunshine in 2006,
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the same film as Cranston,
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playing completely unrelated characters,
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two years before they both ended up in Breaking Bad.
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Little Miss Sunshine came out the same year Malcolm in the Middle ended its run.
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Cranston transitioning, Norris still playing what he'd been playing for years.
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No connection between them at that point.
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Aaron Paul had the least visible career of the main cast going in.
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He was born Aaron Sturtevant in Emmett, Idaho,
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changed his professional name.
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Before Breaking Bad he'd done guest roles across various shows,
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music videos, a few minor film appearances.
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00:03:53,294 --> 00:03:57,614
The most substantial prior credit was a recurring part on Big Love on HBO,
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the polygamist family drama,
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as a character named Scott Quittman,
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starting in 2007. Big Love ran through 2011,
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so both shows were airing simultaneously for the first few seasons.
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Still largely unknown to most audiences coming in.
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After Breaking Bad, he went somewhere unexpected,
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he voiced Todd Chavez in BoJack Horseman on Netflix from 2014 through 2020,
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and served as an executive producer on it as well.
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Six seasons of animated comedy after years in live-action drama.
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A real genre shift,
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00:04:30,814 --> 00:04:32,534
and he committed to the full run.
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00:04:32,974 --> 00:04:36,234
RJ Mitte has mild cerebral palsy in real life,
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diagnosed at three years old.
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He moved to Hollywood in 2006,
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when he was thirteen,
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00:04:41,974 --> 00:04:48,054
specifically looking for roles where his disability would be integral to the storytelling rather than something to work around.
80
00:04:48,954 --> 00:04:50,594
He'd had minor sitcom appearances,
81
00:04:51,034 --> 00:04:55,994
but Walter White Jr. was the role that fit exactly what he'd positioned himself for.
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00:04:56,674 --> 00:05:00,614
And Walter White Jr. has a more severe form of CP than Mitte himself has,
83
00:05:01,114 --> 00:05:05,694
so his preparation involved learning to perform symptoms more limiting than his own baseline.
84
00:05:06,334 --> 00:05:09,374
Most of the disability-casting conversation runs one direction,
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00:05:09,374 --> 00:05:12,134
non-disabled actors playing disabled characters.
86
00:05:12,134 --> 00:05:14,114
Mitte was working the inverse:
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00:05:14,554 --> 00:05:17,654
learning to perform less physical control than he naturally has.
88
00:05:18,214 --> 00:05:20,054
He was fifteen when the show premiered.
89
00:05:20,054 --> 00:05:22,274
It's a specific form of preparation,
90
00:05:22,774 --> 00:05:26,314
suppressing natural ability rather than simulating something you don't have.
91
00:05:26,974 --> 00:05:30,074
Betsy Brandt had been a working TV actress before Breaking Bad,
92
00:05:30,834 --> 00:05:33,234
solid dramatic experience across various shows,
93
00:05:33,794 --> 00:05:38,794
but no single defining credit that made her name immediately recognizable on its own.
94
00:05:39,614 --> 00:05:43,214
After the show ended she moved into a completely different format:
95
00:05:43,874 --> 00:05:46,594
The Michael J. Fox Show on NBC in 2013,
96
00:05:46,594 --> 00:05:51,454
then Life in Pieces on CBS from 2015 through 2019,
97
00:05:51,774 --> 00:05:53,514
which ran four full seasons.
98
00:05:54,414 --> 00:05:58,434
Two network ensemble comedies in a row after years of cable drama.
99
00:05:58,894 --> 00:06:03,134
Cable drama and network ensemble sitcom operate on genuinely different rhythms,
100
00:06:03,654 --> 00:06:05,714
the pace changes, the blocking changes,
101
00:06:06,074 --> 00:06:08,354
and comedy timing is a different skill than drama.
102
00:06:09,034 --> 00:06:11,074
She also did Saint X in 2023,
103
00:06:11,534 --> 00:06:13,534
which pulled her back toward thriller territory.
104
00:06:14,114 --> 00:06:17,374
Three distinct formats across about a decade post-Breaking Bad.
105
00:06:18,134 --> 00:06:25,154
Four full seasons of Life in Pieces means she built a genuinely separate comedy résumé rather than coasting on the previous credit.
106
00:06:25,674 --> 00:06:30,974
Vince Gilligan spent the decade before Breaking Bad almost entirely inside The X-Files,
107
00:06:30,974 --> 00:06:34,134
writer and producer from 1993 through 2002,
108
00:06:34,134 --> 00:06:39,534
across nine seasons, plus co-creating The Lone Gunmen spinoff in 2001.
109
00:06:40,294 --> 00:06:43,074
The same year Breaking Bad premiered, 2008,
110
00:06:43,074 --> 00:06:46,034
he also co-wrote the screenplay for Hancock,
111
00:06:46,554 --> 00:06:48,194
the Will Smith superhero film.
112
00:06:48,814 --> 00:06:50,374
A completely different register.
113
00:06:51,194 --> 00:06:53,234
And that year also brought the WGA strike,
114
00:06:53,574 --> 00:06:57,214
which cut Season 1 from nine planned episodes down to seven.
115
00:06:57,494 --> 00:06:59,934
Two fewer episodes is a structural difference.
116
00:07:00,614 --> 00:07:03,274
Seven hours to establish the world instead of nine,
117
00:07:03,714 --> 00:07:06,474
that changes what you can do and how fast you have to move.
118
00:07:07,154 --> 00:07:11,434
Most people who've watched the show have no idea Season 1 was supposed to be nine episodes.
119
00:07:11,894 --> 00:07:14,314
The shape of it came partly from the labor calendar.
120
00:07:14,954 --> 00:07:16,934
A few of the recurring players are worth a mention.
121
00:07:17,694 --> 00:07:20,014
Raymond Cruz, who plays Tuco Salamanca,
122
00:07:20,414 --> 00:07:25,594
had already put in hundreds of episodes on The Closer on TNT as Detective Julio Sanchez,
123
00:07:26,234 --> 00:07:27,514
a completely different mode,
124
00:07:28,114 --> 00:07:30,514
and later reprised Tuco in Better Call Saul.
125
00:07:31,494 --> 00:07:33,554
Jessica Hecht, who plays Gretchen Schwartz,
126
00:07:33,994 --> 00:07:36,374
spent nearly a decade as Susan Bunch on Friends,
127
00:07:36,894 --> 00:07:40,154
a recurring role that reached enormous mainstream audiences.
128
00:07:40,724 --> 00:07:43,234
And Adam Godley, who plays Elliott Schwartz,
129
00:07:43,614 --> 00:07:44,934
is a British stage actor,
130
00:07:45,574 --> 00:07:46,894
The Lehman Trilogy on Broadway,
131
00:07:47,514 --> 00:07:48,714
extensive West End work,
132
00:07:49,034 --> 00:07:51,934
plus The Umbrella Academy and The Great on television.
133
00:07:52,354 --> 00:07:54,514
The Friends connection is the one that catches people,
134
00:07:55,094 --> 00:07:59,874
Susan Bunch was a recurring face on one of the most-watched network shows for close to ten years.
135
00:08:00,534 --> 00:08:03,414
Godley brings real stage gravity to a role that needs it.
136
00:08:04,094 --> 00:08:07,514
The supporting ensemble has this mix of long-run TV faces,
137
00:08:07,514 --> 00:08:12,574
film character actors, and stage-trained imports that makes it feel lived-in.
138
00:08:12,574 --> 00:08:18,154
What holds the whole cast together is how specifically suited each person was for each part.
139
00:08:19,014 --> 00:08:23,294
Cranston carrying seven seasons of comedy identity into a dramatic lead.
140
00:08:23,994 --> 00:08:26,254
Gunn coming straight off two seasons of Deadwood.
141
00:08:26,974 --> 00:08:30,214
Norris with nearly forty years of law enforcement roles in his body.
142
00:08:31,054 --> 00:08:34,774
Paul as a genuine unknown with one HBO drama credit.
143
00:08:34,774 --> 00:08:39,634
Mitte at fifteen, having moved to California for exactly this kind of casting.
144
00:08:40,134 --> 00:08:46,494
And sitting at the center of all of it is Gilligan holding onto a memory of a single X-Files guest appearance from 1998,
145
00:08:47,194 --> 00:08:49,514
knowing ten years later exactly who he needed.
146
00:08:50,314 --> 00:08:54,154
Not luck. Someone paying close enough attention that nothing gets wasted.
