We hear all the time about actors having people shout lines of dialogue at them when they’re in public or being asked by fans to recite a particular quote. This can surely be annoying to celebrities when they’re asked to perform on command, but it’s hard to fault the fans for being excited … right? Maybe not. Bryan Cranston admitted that he tends to troll people who ask him to say a famous Breaking Bad line, but after hearing why, I’m actually on the actor’s side.
Breaking Bad may be one of the best TV dramas ever made, with Bryan Cranston making the ultimate character transformation from Walter White, chemistry teacher with cancer, to “Heisenberg,” meth producer and drug lord. There were so many moments in Breaking Bad that blew our minds, so it’s really not a surprise that the actor gets fans asking to hear his most menacing quotes. In a conversation for Esquire, Frankie Muniz asked Cranston what famous line people want him to say, and he admitted to doing what he’s asked, just not in the way they want to hear it. He said:
It’s probably from Breaking Bad, because people ask me to say, ‘I am the danger.’ And I usually joke about it. I go, ‘Nah, I’m not going to say, “I am the danger.”’ I go [in a soft tone], ‘I am the danger.’ And they look at me like, ‘Oh, that’s not at all what I wanted to hear.’
It comes off as a bit rude that Bryan Cranston would agree to say something to an excited fan, only to do it in a way that he knows that person doesn’t want to hear it. Honestly, think about hearing the actor say that famous line in a high-pitched sing-song voice when this is what you were expecting:
It turns out, though, that Bryan Cranston isn’t just doing that to be a jerk. After hearing his explanation, I doubt he’s out there trying to ruin people’s day. He explained:
That’s part of, for me, to allow that character to die off. I can’t keep buying into that thing. I have to kind of help people move away from that.
Walter White was undoubtedly an intense role, and if you’ll refer again to the clip above, it really feels like Bryan Cranston had to go to some dark places to evoke such menace and play a character who was capable of some horrible things. That’s not a place inside yourself that you want to revisit while walking down the street or catching dinner at a restaurant.
Bryan Cranston had to let his Breaking Bad character die, and now fans have to understand, too, that Cranston is not Heisenberg, and he’s definitely not out there demanding that people “Say my name.”
There may be a more gracious way for the actor to deny fans’ requests, but at least this way, people can say they heard Bryan Cranston do the line, and he doesn’t have to conjure any of the Walter White evil that may lie dormant inside of him either. If you want to hear the line as it was originally delivered, Breaking Bad is one of the best shows to binge-watch on Netflix right now, so fire up that Netflix subscription and head to Season 4’s “Cornered” to find the one who knocks.
