Bryan Cranston is one of the few remaining television stars of the old guard who has earned enough spots to be regarded with awe and veneration even among the new-age, streaming-era audience of modern television. Without his performance in Breaking Bad, the industry would have been a brittle thing of lesser significance.
Breaking Bad [Credit: AMC]
However, the timelessness of the AMC series proves that it is not only the plot that builds a story, but the narrator himself, who breathes life into it, coloring it in his own image, and creating a masterpiece out of the words scripted on paper. Bryan Cranston gifted the 21st-century audience with Walter White and Hollywood is ever the better for it.
Bryan Cranston Takes a Radical New Approach
After being exposed to the modern Hollywood stars and their scary obsession with method acting, it is not an endeavor entirely repulsive to the senses unless one is talking about Christian Bale’s transformation in The Machinist of Jared Leto’s eccentric behavior in the run-up to playing the DCEU Joker.
Bryan Cranston in Your Honor [Credit: Showtime]
However, it is not often that one witnesses a TV star undergoing physical and emotional transformation for a role that could very well earn them their next Primetime Emmy.
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Surprisingly though, Bryan Cranston has risen up through the ranks of unlikely television stars to commit so wholly to a role that he becomes fabled for his on-screen alter-ego more than his real-life self. After a stellar job in Breaking Bad, the Emmy-winning TV star took on a project that could go toe-to-toe with his characterization of Walter White.
The Sophie’s Choice Equivalent for Bryan Cranston
In a world where only one gladiator may walk away alive, Bryan Cranston conceived two individual masterpieces in his back-to-back television performances, namely Walter White (Breaking Bad) and Michael Desiato (Your Honor). Both character arcs, although similar in a lot of ways, have a tragic fate linking them to their filial duties and their personal growth.
Bryan Cranston as Michael Desiato in Your Honor [Credit: Showtime]
However, while Walter White gives in to his baser impulses and fully adopts a life of crime after being subdued by suburban boredom for far too long, Michael Desiato keeps expanding in multiple different directions. His character arc shifts, from pure to corrupt to criminal to redemptive in a matter of 2 short seasons.
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But that is not all that separates Bryan Cranston’s one masterful performance from the other. In an interview with The Wrap, the actor explains how his role in Your Honor could give Walter White a run for his money.
Once I realized what had happened to the character and his lack of interest in life, well, the ripple effect of that is lack of interest in grooming, lack of interest in food, lack of interest in exercise, lack of interest in intellectual activity. His circuits started shutting down. Michael wanted his physical body to catch up with his spirit, which had died. So how does a person who feels emotionally dead and yet physically present face the new day?
Although it is in no way equivalent to Christian Bale putting on weight for The Vice or Matthew McConaughey’s unrecognizable transformation in Dallas Buyers Club, Cranston’s inclination toward connecting his physical transformation to the character’s emotional and mental degradation is what sets him apart from his contemporary and era-defining role as Walter White.
Breaking Bad and Your Honor are both available to stream on Netflix.
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