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Yes, I was well, at least the last minutes of NPR this morning and then well, I always know that NPR sound.

I don't have an NPR voice, unfortunately, here in the small village of San Juan to Nego, you know, they're always somewhere beautiful. That's right.

Come in. They speak very quietly. They do. And slowly. That's right. Yes.

Let's not be sorry. You got the wrong gal here.

Bryan Cranston was a working actor for decades before he got his big break, starring as Walter White in Breaking Bad. It was a career defining role, but also a potential trap. Where do you go after you play Heisenberg? Say my name, Heisenberg. You're goddamn right. And Bryan Cranston case. You go on to play even more powerful men. He was Lyndon Baines Johnson and Broadway's all the way. And he was Howard Beale in Network. He won the Tony for both roles.

And these days he's New Orleans Judge Michael Desierto in the Showtime series. Your Honor, his character's son has just accidentally killed a kid on a motorcycle, but not just any kid on a motorcycle.

The boy you hit this morning is Jimmy Baxter's son. That's who you killed, Jimmy Baxter. He is the head of the most vicious crime family in the history of this city. You understand what that means? Cranston's character has to decide.

Does he stand by his principles and send his child to certain death in prison? Or does he abuse his position of power to save his son? Bryan Cranston, welcome. Thank you, good to be here in Breaking Bad, you play a law abiding chemistry teacher who decides to cook meth, provide for his family. In your honor, you play an incredibly upstanding judge and you subvert the law to save your son. The shift to subversion was rather quick for this judge.

What's interesting to me about the differences is that in Breaking Bad, Walter White methodically planned his next move in life, even though he was given only two years to live. But he he designed his future as short as it may have been in this story. Michael Desierto has no time. He needs to make a decision impulsively that will alter the course of his life for who knows how long. So he's he doesn't have the luxury of time to look back and think, well, wait a minute, if I make this decision now, what's it going to do?

What are the repercussions down the road?

Right. He's portrayed as such a good guy and you begin by liking him. But I have to say, I already dislike him because some of the corners you're cutting and how quickly he went right into criminality, really, I mean, just so easily and sloppily.

By the way, let me turn the tables on you a little bit. All right.

All right. You turn the tables, turn them away. Lazy Susan, May, as I like to say.

That's it. What would you do if you felt that your child was under mortal threat? Would you voluntarily become a criminal?

I had that discussion last night. I have two teenage sons and I thought I would turn him in. Now, wait a second.

OK, I know, I know. I feel terrible, but I know to the mobster.

But if you knew your son was very likely going to be killed in prison, would you still do that?

You know, it was very difficult, but I have to say, yes, so terrible knowing first of all, it's also easy to do it under in a hypothetical situation. But in my character's case, he fully intended to do the right thing, as you saw. Yes. And it was that impulsive moment when he saw that mobster to alter the course of his life by making that decision. All right. What would you do? Let me lazy, Susan.

You bet I would do the same thing, protect your child. Absolutely. Yeah. There's no question if I felt in my heart of hearts that by doing the right thing, it would put my child. In mortal danger and the threat is very real. I wouldn't put them in it. I think the damage to your kit is worth like the guilt that I put on the kit. I don't. It's a very it's a really interesting thing that it draws you and you.

I've read that you step into and out of character really fast. And I was noticing watching you in this role and then LBJ especially and I saw you on Broadway and Network and you were wonderful. Can you talk about how you suffered enough for character? Because a lot of your characters turned dark rather fast and then out of it into charm?

I am attracted to characters that are somewhat damaged. I suppose those are the most interesting, dramatic characters that I see, that as long as you get a sense that they have some level of humanity, otherwise they're unrelatable, you could play a really dastardly character, a vicious killer, but you still need to find threads of humanity to where the audience understands or believes that part of you. That makes it more devastating to me about a human being gone wrong.

Mm hmm.

You describe vulnerability as a power like holding a grenade. And you also talked about crying on stage in Daytona when you were in your 20s. Can you tell that story?

I was in Daytona Beach at the Daytona Playhouse. I walked in because I had some extra time. I was traveling at the time and I was on a motorcycle and I had to stay for the winter. So I walked in and said, do you need some help backstage? Do you know assistant stage manager or props or someone? And the person said, Well, have you acted before? I said, Yeah. And he goes, OK, you're in the show.

Apparently the crawler home in the King. And I had just dropped out and I was instantly cast as the king's right hand man. And I had body paint on me every day. And I had this purple eye shadow that just stretched the eyes very, very politically incorrect. So a friend of mine said, you know, you could put a little thin layer of Vaseline on your eyelids before the makeup and then the makeup comes off easy. Otherwise you're left with a pink tint and you're walking around town all day with pink eyeshadow.

And so, OK, so I put a layer of Vaseline on, but I didn't know how much. Apparently I put on too much. So near the end of the play, just as the king is dying, spoiler alert for anybody who didn't see King and I just as the king is dying and the crawler whom my character's hunched over him and distraught about his king dying and I couldn't help it anymore. The Vaseline has melted so much to a degree.

It got into my eyes and created a fosset of tears. Tears are pouring down my face. I could hear the audience going, Oh, acting. Absolutely. It was unbelievable. And I remember how irritated my eyes were. But yet it was it was a physical manifestation of the irritation. So that was that. But it also taught me it's like, wow, at the right time, if that can happen, how dramatically appealing it can be.

What's the power you have when you are playing a role? How do you think about that? What I realized early on, when you're in school and someone humiliates themselves or trips and falls or is embarrassed publicly, your age doesn't permit you to be mature enough to really embrace that person. You instead you want to distance yourself and laugh and like, oh, I'm glad I'm not that idiot who just fell down or whatever. But once people mature and I think that's college and above and you see someone in a vulnerable situation or embarrassed or humiliated, the great thing about human beings is that they don't feel they want to point the finger.

They don't want to separate. What they feel is they want to embrace that person. They want to protect that person. And it's a really lovely human trait. Well, if you can understand that and put that layer of vulnerability in your characters, that will happen to an audience viscerally when they sense that they will emotionally wrap their arms around the character. And so I look for those opportunities to develop sympathies from the audience by way of vulnerability. So they lean in, you know, they lean into it as opposed to distance themselves.

Is that different?

When you're on stage versus in a TV series, you approach the character the same way.

As far as developmental qualities, you have to be insatiably curious and. Enjoy the research, you have to have talent to be able to bring it out, you have to use your imagination to string together any elements of a character that you have not had personal experience with. And the last part the fourth part is, is that you must be willing and able to open up the cavity of your own emotions to pull out what is appropriate, and that is to make yourself look good.

Too bad it's rage, it's public or physical vulnerability. Like in Breaking Bad. I wanted the character to be soft and pudgy and overweight. So I wanted the love handles to spill out over my underwear. I wanted that I needed the audience to feel sorry for this guy, that he's gone to seed, that he's lost his desire and his hope and his drive. And that's the whole point of the story, is that he gets that back once he makes his decision to do his evil deeds.

So he transforms his body and his look and his attitude and his ability to intimidate and his level of confidence and all those things completely change right off to heart. Yeah. So that was by design. As far as working on stage compared to film, the work itself is very different. In a play you would go through a beginning, middle and every single performance, whereas in film and television you do bits and pieces. You might have a day where it's emotional and then the next seven days it's not.

So it's much more tiring for me to do a play on a long run than it is to do film. You have moments when you can shut down and relax and rest.

So do you have trouble turning it off? I don't mean going home and doing an LBJ accent, but you ever catch yourself acting the role of Bryan Cranston with your family or friends?

I suppose you do it only if you're really troubled, if you're having difficulty getting a character to move into you and your soul and your being, that's the hard way to describe it. But basically, for an actor, when you start developing a character, it's outside of yourself. And the more research, the more thought, the more attention you put on that, the more you start to understand how he thinks and feels. And then you're inviting that character into yourself.

And then almost like through osmosis, it it comes in. And from that point on, you think and feel and act based on the filter of that character. Well, if it's frustrating for you to. It's not coming. It's not coming. Which happens at times. Yeah. I could see you going home and living with it and barking at the dog or whatever. Yeah.

What's been the most difficult character for you to do that of the most recent ones? I guess the most difficult to date was LBJ. I went down to the LBJ Library a couple of times and spent countless hours just trying to absorb the sense of him visually, vocally, just copious amounts of books about him, which were all very helpful and endless. So you could just get completely absorbed. And I did. I got completely absorbed in developing the character that by the time I got to the A.R.T. and Harvard to do the out of town part of it, I was not prepared for the massive amount of dialogue that I was saying.

I was so into developing the character that I looked we did the table read and I read through it. I went, oh my God, I haven't started memorizing any of this. And I was panicked. I was really panicked that I wouldn't get it.

How do you decide you have like a stack ranking of how you decide what roles to take and to turn down? Correct. You have like a list of how you.

I do a numerical system. I do I, I give everything a numerical rating. So I actually transfer my emotions into a kind of mathematical equation which helps me look at it from a more objective viewpoint. Because if you stay subjective to it and emotional to it, it's hard to make a decision because you might be swayed by the emotions. Right, right.

So you have numbers. I do like one to ten. No, I give a numerical value to number one is the story. I give it like from one to five on the value of just the story. Did it move me? Was it important? Did it resonate that a stay with me from there I go to the written word which I separate from the story because you can have a great story and. And you read it and it's like, oh, I don't think the writer really got it, so I have to give that a separate.

And the third thing is the character, because I truly believe that it's the story and the power of the written word first that inspires a character. And you could have I say this with all great respect to Meryl. I said if you gave Meryl Streep sea level material, she could get it to be. Her ability is unbelievable.

I saw her in prom and I'm like, she's still fantastic. And this is very light. Let me ask you then so I can get it with the big role. So LBJ, all the others got this recent one in your honor and Breaking Bad. Those are all top numbers, I'm assuming. But I want you to explain how you scored these roles, if you don't mind, if you will indulge me, Rear Admiral Lyle Haggerty and Contagion Ramrod Straight.

Oh, by the way, prescient.

Yeah, very prescient. The story was very good. Scott Burns wrote a really terrific script. So that got high marks. The character itself wasn't as high a mark for me. But then the fourth category, the director was very high, Steven Soderbergh. So all of a sudden the collective cumulative score was very high. All right.

And the harder won net and why him? And I thought, why him? I don't why why I watch all of James Franco's movies, but I do I cannot explain it to you.

This is an interesting one. It didn't make the cut. It didn't make it. I turned it down twice. This is a father whose daughter marries a belly. I only watch you because I deal with billionaires all the time covering tech. And I know that billionaire.

Yeah, those wacky billionaires. So you have a situation where the premise of the story is that a father doesn't like his daughter's boyfriend and that's it. That's that's why it's so thin. Father of the bride, whatever. Yeah. It was too thin. And I thought, well, this is not right. But I knew that I needed to do and wanted to do a comedy. I was doing drama after drama after drama in my whole structure of my approach to the career.

Long term is to keep twisting and turning to comedy, do drama, do stage, do film, do do a don't theme, do a children's show to, you know, whatever. So I knew I needed to do comedy and it was time to do a big studio comedy where I'm one of the two stars. But this was just so thin I thought, I don't know. So I actually called Paul Rudd and I said, Paul, the premise is so thin.

He goes, this is the way those comedies are. When you get on the set, they rely heavily on improvisation. You get these people together, you start improvising and improving, improving, and they call the story out of that. And he said, I think you'll have a great time. And I can honestly say I don't think I've had a better time on any film set than why him in my career.

It was hilarious that that actually I thought you were just going to say I needed to buy a second home or something.

I needed to know it was about that. And I was glad I did it. So you came to success relatively late.

You're 43 when Malcolm in the Middle started. I really enjoyed Malcolm Little, 51 when Breaking Bad came out.

How is that coming to the success that you're age? You've been in tons of movies and a character actor before that, but how do you look at the trajectory of your career?

I was a working actor since the time I was twenty five. I made a living as my career. That's the professional achievement I'm most proud of, is that I crossed a threshold somehow some way when I got a job in New York City, moved from L.A. to New York to be on a soap opera for two years. Was it loving? Yeah, I don't know why, but it just made me feel that, oh, I could do this and I belong.

And anything beyond making a living to me was gravy. I still feel that way.

Were you a bad guy and then became a good guy or good guy who became a bad guy or what was your character now? You know, in soap operas, they pretty were white hat. Black hat. Yes, they are.

But they sometimes shift when they when there are twin shows up or there. Oh that. But that's another person. That's another boat. A twin, the evil twin. It has to be another person.

So were you good or bad. Were you good. I didn't watch loving. I'll be honest with you. Of course. Good. Yeah. You were the good. Yeah. And you stayed good. Never amnesia or brain surgery that caused you to show. All right.

In fact, I had to fight it a little bit. One scene where Patricia Kalumburu played my girlfriend was cheating on me.

Oh, that's a shock. Yes. Terrible. And I visited my mom and she was saying, do you want some coffee? I got no. You sure you don't go? I said, no. You know, I snapped at her and they stopped the tape and they said, no, no, no, you shouldn't do that. You're you're good. You're nice. I go, Yeah, but he just broke up by snapping at someone you love is real and honest.

And now it was tough to fight those battles.

You moved you into a color when they want black and white and that situation. Yeah.

We'll be back in a minute.

Do you like this interview and want to hear others hit? You'll be able to catch up on Hsueh episodes you may have missed, like my conversation with actor and director Marielle Heller, and you'll get new ones delivered directly to you. More with Bryan Cranston after this break.

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Christine grew up in a showbiz family. His mother quit radio acting to raise him and his siblings. His father had small parts on lots of TV shows, but never quite made it. So did your father's trajectory influence your career? My father's dubious acting career did influence to the point where I wasn't going to be an actor. I was going to be a police officer going into college. But it was an acting class in college that changed my mind back to acting because I felt I had an ability.

But I think because of my father's struggles as a professional actor, I didn't set my sights at being a star. My dad needed to be a star. And anything less than that was failure. And so he experienced failure.

Well, thinking this, you once said Walter White was going to be the first line in your obituary. And I think you're probably right. Maybe not. Who knows yet?

Do you worry about that? All because you've gone on to do other things, obviously?

No, no, I'm not a worrier by nature, so I don't focus on any of that. I just I mean, it's just a reality that's I am very proud of Breaking Bad, of course. And it changed the trajectory of my career. And so I'm exceedingly happy that I did it. And what a great series. No, if that is the pinnacle of my career as far as what the critics and the audiences know, then I'm perfectly happy with that.

What do you think the greatest strength of Walter White is? I'd love to go through some of your recent characters like that.

I think his power was determination he's faced with. The idea of his demise within two years, he has a son with special needs, he has a child on the way and a wife, and he has no means of supporting them. When he is on his way out, his body will diminish. His wife will have to wipe his drool and empty his bedpan. His children will only know him as that skinny, sickly man in the other bedroom. And then he's gone.

And that's just not what he wants. So his determination to change the text of his life was what drove him. And then what he discovers purely accidentally is that he's really good at it. And his ego came in and took control. You played the clip where he says, say my name, you're goddamn right. You know, he's he's now fully embraced with that new persona. It was dormant within him, apparently, and that had awakened.

It's an interesting dichotomy because I want to talk about Lyndon Johnson then and all the way because he was blocked everywhere he went, whether it was different groups pulling at him at all sides. So what was your approach to figuring out his power?

Well, he had tremendous goals and ambition to do right, to do good, to leave a legacy. Conversely, he also suffered from deep depression and tremendous insecurities. And so he would swing widely all the way up. We're going to do this. Nothing can be stopped to I can't do this. I'm going to go home, you know. And his Lady Bird was absolutely essential to his success without her. I do not believe he would have been as prolific in his work and accomplishments as he was.

I found him to be a very sympathetic character, which I did not expect. I think that's the part I was surprised by, because he's such a cartoon character of kind of a bully, but he really isn't in a lot of ways.

But remember, the sympathetic part is that he has this tremendous ambition to do good, to be a righteous man. And remember what we talked about, his deep insecurities. Well, doesn't bullying come from insecurity? Really? So that's where that stems from, his fear of failing and oh, my God, I'm going to be known as the worst president drives him to do forces will upon people and give him what was called the Johnson treatment.

Now, Howard Beale is very different. I saw you in network. I loved it. I was not sitting on the stage. My mother was sitting on the stage for the performances she loved. He's a newscaster who famously said, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. It was a very famous movie. He threatens to kill himself on live TV. Tell me about Howard Beale's relationship to power because he's powerless at the beginning of the show.

Real. I mean, he's been this newscaster in a traditional sense and has to shift. I think we all make compromises, certainly in journalism, social graces force you to adjust, you know, you're at a holiday dinner table and what you feel is a direct opposite of what this person saying. Do you open your mouth? Well, maybe sometimes restraint is the better part of valor. And, you know, you pick and choose when to fight your battles.

Howard Beale has been toeing the line for a long, long time and got to a point where it became intolerable and he had a breaking point and then realized, I just don't care anymore. And he decides to hell with it. I'm going to say exactly what I feel when I feel it. When I think it, I'll say it with no filter. And it has a resonance to, you know, Donald Trump's reign in in some ways and in other ways.

Howard Beale had a lot more content.

Tell me about the resonance, because there's a lot of precedence in that movie, in that play, too, of where we are today, where cable has gone, where news has gone.

To explain what you meant by close to Donald Trump and yet not Donald Trump tapped into that.

He did tap into that. Some people felt it was the right thing to do to say, and they followed him by the millions as we find out. However, when you look at it and assess it and I think history will be accurate in this, they will realize that there was emptiness to Donald Trump's words, that there was impulse to it, but not strategy. There was hyperbole without wisdom. And I think that's what will be his legacy, whereas Howard Beale spewed emotional frustration and intellectual thought and then let the chips fall where they may.

And I think that's the difference.

Would you like to play Donald Trump? I mean, as of right now, no, he's too much in the public eye. Every single talk show host does an impersonation of him. He is ubiquitous to the point of overkill. And that's not good for an actor to take on a character that's so indelible. I was once offered to do the Scarecrow and a play version of The Wizard of Oz. And I thought, oh, my gosh, that will be exciting.

How fun will that be? Until I thought about it and realized, wait a second, that character is so specific and indelible in the minds of everyone who's ever watched Wizard of Oz. If I didn't do an impersonation of Ray Boulger doing the Scarecrow, I'd be booed because people go, Oh, that's not the scarecrow. So it didn't leave any room for the actor to carve out my impression or my sensibility of where the Scarecrow could be. You had to stand in line and march exactly to the drumbeat of what that movie role did.

So that I realize, oh, that's that's a trap. I don't want to do that role. And I think the same thing is right now for Trump until 10 years from now, if you ask me that five to ten years from now, hopefully when he's no longer in the public arena, is there any other public figure you'd like to play?

I'm not sure there are certain goals that I have, I want to do a Broadway musical, I want to do a one man show at some point, but it has to be the right character, the right story for me to get excited about doing that and putting that work in a musical.

You're going Hugh Jackman on us here. What do you want to do? What musical would you like to do?

I can assure you that Bryan Cranston will never be a huge.

He's phenomenal. I know, because I don't consider myself a singer. I'm not trained in that area. But I think I've been a moth to the flame on a lot of the things that I've done in my career. Anything that kind of scares me, I'm attracted to and being on stage and singing is a fearful position to be in the scarecrow role still is there, you know, redefine it.

We've forgotten about Ray Boulger and I would walk all the way to and see with the flowers consulting with a ray.

Oh, wait, you can sing. What do you talking about? Oh, you know, in the comfort of my own home, it's like like a shower singer, you know? Yeah.

All right. Tell me how Broadway is going to come out of the pandemic if you're talking about a musical or it's closed down. And how will it be different, huh?

Well, the one thing I know for sure is that human beings love being told a story. And whether you're two or one hundred and two, you want to be told a story, you want to be taken away.

Do you think there'll be fewer theatres? Obviously, the economics have been hit incredibly hard. Would it be a different experience?

Well, I don't know if the experience will be different. I think writers would then write from with the knowledge of covid and what that's done to us current times. Actors have to feel comfortable and that intimacy on stage, and maybe even more importantly, is that audiences need to feel comfortable in sitting shoulder to shoulder again with strangers and a thousand people in an auditorium and watch stories.

I have a feeling people will forget that and then be right back there after a while, once everyone's vaccinated and the pandemic has ended or it is close to ending. Well, I hope so. I'm curious if producers be less willing to take chances on risky place. That's where I see the thing. And a friend of mine just told me they thought that there'd be more frivolity and sort of vapid fluff because playing it safe and fun people are want after this era of both Trump and the pandemic and all this partisanship, they might play it safe with revivals and shows based on pop music and lighter fare.

That's probably a good assessment. I think that's probably right. And then, as you said, people will forget and they'll come back in and then they will demand more weighty storytelling. Yeah, I think that might happen.

We might see a lot of like that comes up all six or something like that.

But you would be good in that. It would be very good if you want to sing and dance.

I'm right at the age for for a revival of LA.

Like you said, I loved that play. It was a great play.

How do you see TV changing in the next decade and what are you worried about and what are you looking forward to?

I'm a little worried that there's going to be too much content and by having too much content, the bar of high end storytelling will be dropped because they need more product on these platforms. Yeah, they'll just say, that's good, bring it in. We need it. We need it. We need it. Bring it on. Bring it on. Bring it on. On the other side, that kind of thirst for product gives unproven writers or new writers a chance to shine.

And there will be exceptional writers that will come out of that. And like my experience on a soap opera, they will say, well, I'm doing this kid's series on Disney plus. And that's not tremendously challenging. But man, it started my career. And I think what you'll see is the further erosion of broadcast television and the platform scenario that when you turn on a television, it'll all be just platform. It'll be like you have to go to Warner Media and go, let's go to HBO.

That's fine. All right.

How do you look at the controversy right now? I just interviewed Jason. Kylah caused quite a stir. What are the messages you're getting from your agents?

You know, just being in touch with it and having my own television production company for seven years now and realizing that it's shifting and adjusting and, you know, the business will always shift and adjust. I hope that we don't see the end of movie theaters. They're on life support right now. And understandably and I don't want that to go away. I don't want it to only be the big superhero movies are in the theaters and everything else is on on your home screens.

That experience of witnessing a story being told in a cinematic way and you're in. A room with a bunch of strangers is really rewarding, and I hope that comes back in the movie theaters and on Broadway.

I take sort of an opposite side because I think it's a little romantic on Hollywood executives part because they make more money doing that also.

And it's also sort of a faint because most consumers really do like watching limited series. They like bingeing, they like their home things. Consumers seem to be saying a different thing. If anything, this technology has taught us is they will get what they want when they want it and where they want it. Is that a problem for you from a creative point of view?

No, I don't think so. Whether you're I mean, if you look at what's happened, the reason that home viewing has, you know, exploded not just because of covid, it was. No, it was before that. Exacerbated because of covid accelerated. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. You have the technology caught up. The screens are phenomenally clear and beautiful. They're much cheaper. And the sound in the scale of it, you're watching from your living room, it's almost the same scale as if you were in the theater.

Would you defend you?

You know, I watched the LBJ. I had seen it on stage on my iPhone in bed. I think it was fantastic. Ouch. Why ouch. Well, Brian, come on. Why?

Because you are then hyper focusing on a very small screen.

You are up in my grill. I loved it. I like the whole thing in the dark. It was fantastic. You Millennials, I tell you, you are. So I'm not a millennial.

I'm I'm older than you. I think I might be older than you are very close. I have no millennial. A millennial thinking is what I am. But that's what you that's what I am. I had a very profound experience watching it. That was mostly because everyone was asleep and I didn't want to make noise. I watched your other one on the big screen in my home, your other one, which was great and with a great sound system.

So but do you think it's going to affect Hollywood itself because these streamers are where things are going?

Well, it already has. Everything is going to go streaming. The studios know that. The networks know that.

Does that affect your income? This idea of Netflix started it by paying people up front and then moving on.

Personally, I don't really focus on making money. I have more money than I ever thought I would have. And it's certainly not what motivates me to work. But I don't want to sound flippant because money is important and it's great. I have been very, very poor in my life and it's not as good as being wealthy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have agents and lawyers who look out for that. They're incentivized to do well by me and that's great. But I certainly don't make my decisions based on financial considerations.

But in Hollywood in general, everything will have to be renegotiated every single contract. Yeah.

When you're talking about box office bonuses and what's reported. Yeah, yeah. That's all shifted now. So now negotiations going into that would have to be an exceptional upfront money or some other matrix, some other way of subscription matrix. I guess you know something, but the platforms don't want to reveal those numbers. No.

And sometimes they have other motivations. Amazon is to get prime bigger. Google is not yet into this, but Apple wants to sell more phones.

Well, and, you know, speaking directly, I was told that subscriptions for Showtime has really risen a lot because of your honor. Should you get a big little vig? A little taste? Yeah, a little slice, though. I'm happy for that. And I know Showtime is happy for that.

You need a big just say, you know, you need a break.

I will give you a word. Rundell, do you know that a Rundell recurring revenue bundle, you're part of a recurring revenue bundle which is a bundle. It also sounds like an Amish practice before marriage, but it's not.

It's like a cleaned up version of West Side Story. Let's get into a Rundell. Oh that's. You could be on that.

No, no you go with the whistle's. All right, last question.

And you articulate a lot of characters who are middle aged, unhappy, like you talked about. You represent people who have been frustrated and. Yeah. Which is happening in this country, which is an interesting juxtaposition. Do you have any advice to them?

Keep moving behind her. My mother in law said that to us once and I thought that's a great aspect of life. Keep moving and be kind. It's kind of says it all.

All right. Perfect. That's a perfect way to end. Mr. Cranston, thank you so much for doing this. It was a really fascinating conversation.

Well, thank you so much. Hsueh is a production of New York Times opinion, it's produced by name Marasa, Matt Brassica, Hepple Urbani, Matt Quong and Vishakha Darba, edited by Paul Asuman with original music by Isaac Jones, mixing by Erik Gomes and fact checking by Michele Harris.

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Thanks for listening. Now I'm going to go make sure my sons don't commit any crimes so I don't have to turn the men.

But I would.