CAUTION: This article contains spoilers for El Camino: A Break Bad Movie.
Toward the end of Netflix’s surprise Breaking Bad movie, El Camino, one of many flashbacks depicts Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) and Walter White (Bryan Cranston) having breakfast together after a long binge of meth-cooking. It’s a touching scene, seeing these two characters together onscreen together for the first time in years. It’s also one of the secret movie’s biggest secrets — Cranston reprising his Emmy-winning role as White, who died in the Breaking Bad finale. Now that the film is out, though, the actor has shared a behind-the-scenes moment with his social media followers.
“I don’t know why filming takes so long,” Cranston said in a tweet. “I became Walter White in less than a minute.”
https://twitter.com/BryanCranston/status/1186315365955055616
Along with the above joke and many thanks to El Camino‘s hair and makeup teams, the tweet also included a sped-up video of Cranston being fit for a bald cap, a fake mustache, and other details.
Of course, throughout the filming of Breaking Bad, the actor shaved his head and grew his own facial hair for the character’s look. But since his cameo work on El Camino didn’t require that much time, Vince Gilligan and company opted for the use of makeup and prosthetics. As Cranston explained in an interview with Rolling Stone:
You didn’t have time to shave your head for this, so you had to wear a bald cap. Was it strange playing Walter White under those conditions?
No. As a matter of fact, when we put the bald cap on and glued on the facial hair, it was like, “Wow.” I look in the mirror, and it’s so helpful as an actor to say, “This is what I’m presenting.” This look represented so much to me back then, and it just transports you to that time and your ability to drop into that character.
El Camino and all five seasons of Breaking Bad are now available to stream on Netflix.
