Bryan Cranston’s insane rejected ‘Breaking Bad’ pitch: “It’s a little derisive”
Some people are of the opinion that television is an inferior medium to cinema, often due to the fact that budgets are typically smaller, the casts aren’t always as star-studded, and there is sometimes less of a cinematic feel. While quickly-produced soap operas certainly give this argument more legs to stand on, as the years since television’s inception have progressed, so has the quality of many TV shows, some of which are full-blown masterpieces.
From Twin Peaks and The Sopranos to Breaking Bad, these shows all produced incredibly gripping and complex storylines, with terrific performances, cinematic photography, and compelling characters. The latter, which first aired in 2008, is arguably one of the most definitive television shows of the 2000s, taking viewers on an unexpected ride into the darkest depths of evil, power, and deceit. We follow Walter White, played excellently by Bryan Cranston, as he transforms from a terminally ill, lonely, bored chemistry teacher into a ruthless drug lord, using the pseudonym Heisenberg.
He starts out a caring family man – the whole reason he gets himself into the meth business is to leave his wife and kids with enough money when he dies – but as soon the money rolls in, he realises that to relinquish his business would be silly. He gets himself in too deep, and it doesn’t take long for him to commit acts of manipulation, betrayal, and worst of all, murder. By the end of the show, Walter is unrecognisable, going to extreme lengths to maintain his power, even if that means putting his family in danger, poisoning a child, letting an innocent character die, and killing anyone who gets in his way.
Cranston’s performance is incredible, forcing us to question how far we’ll go to support and sympathise with Walter. He is charming and desperate for a better future for his family in certain moments, providing comic relief via his interactions with certain characters (who doesn’t like watching the unlikely partnership between Walter and Jesse?), yet he then switches on a terrifying and cold persona when it suits him, resulting in some great tragedies. He is a modern antihero, walking in the footsteps of characters like Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver or Johnny from Naked.
In an interview with The Independent, Cranston once revealed that he had ideas for the character that didn’t make it into the script, stating that what he had in mind would have been rather Trumpian. “I pitched early on that Walter should go through a whole metamorphosis from a man who was at one time very noble and dignified, a family man, a scientist in his chemistry, a learned man, and as he was going through the transition into more of an ego-driven impulsive man filled with common emotions of rage and resentment and greed and competition and all these things, I thought he should have a wild affair with some crazy stripper.”
Cranston continued, “Someone like Stormy Daniels, Have some crazy thing that makes no sense. It’d have been like, ‘I know! I know this makes no sense!’ I thought there’d be an occasion where he could go off the rails that way. He’d be so into his ego like – well, I was going to say like a bizarre Donald Trump character but it’s not so bizarre anymore. Now if you do it, it’s like ‘Oh, it’s like Donald Trump,’ It’s a little derisive.”
While it certainly seems plausible that Walter’s ego would drive him so far from his former self that he might engage in an affair with a stripper – especially someone who is the polar opposite of Skyler – it is hard to imagine he’d have time to fit something else into his busy drug lord schedule.
