How did a former sitcom Dad win an Emmy for his dalliance with the dark side in acclaimed drug caper Breaking Bad? And why is he running around in his underwear? Bryan Cranston explains all to JOANNA HUNKIN
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Bespectacled and wan, with limp, mousey hair and an undernourished moustache, Bryan Cranston cuts a pitiful picture as the dejected chemistry teacher Walter White.
The actor is barely recognisable from his former - and best-known role - as the silly but affable father of five boisterous boys on
Malcolm in the Middle.
Which is exactly what he was aiming for.
"I thought it would be nice to get a role that I could hide behind," says Cranston, talking from the set of his new series, Breaking Bad, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
"I wanted something where people would go, 'That's the guy from Malcolm in the Middle!' And be really surprised."
Cranston may have set out to hide behind his role as the chemistry teacher-turned-crystal meth cook but the series has brought him more attention than ever, garnering mass critical acclaim and delivering the actor's first Emmy win last month. (He earned three nods for his work on Malcolm but never took home the trophy.)
Besides, viewers may be fooled by Cranston's sickly pallor, but there is no mistaking the man running through the desert in his white Y-fronts - the same undies Hal used to sport with frightening regularity on the sitcom.
"Seven years of parading around in those tighty whitey underwear on Malcolm in the Middle and now, all of a sudden, I'm in the same tighty whitey underwear. I just have to assume that's what America and the rest of the world want to see," he jests.
"They want to see a pasty middle-aged man parading around in tighty whiteys. What else could it be?"
Jokes aside, the actor was genuinely concerned when he first read the wardrobe description. Determined to move away from Hal and on to new ground, he wanted to snuff out any similarities between the two characters immediately.
But the longer he thought about it, Cranston began to realise the underwear represented a key trait about Walter White.
"In Malcolm, he wore them because he was a boy. And quite frankly it was just funnier," he says. "But when I thought about my character in Breaking Bad wearing them, it made me sad. This person had some emotional stuntedness going on, where he didn't grow beyond a certain point."
Emotional stuntedness is the least of White's concerns. The character is a mere shell of a man, passively going through the motions of life, when he is diagnosed with terminal, inoperable lung cancer.
Husband to a pregnant wife, and already father to a disabled teenager, White is desperate to leave behind more than the legacy of a poor, sickly man.
That desperation sees the dull, law-abiding teacher do the unthinkable as he teams up with a former pupil-turned-drug dealer to work as his personal P-chef, drawing on White's extensive chemistry knowledge to make the best meth this side of ... well, wherever good meth is made.
If Weeds raised eyebrows with its tales of Nancy, the hash dealing suburban mother, Breaking Bad was sure to ruffle feathers as it took on the gutter drug P.
But Cranston never hesitated to take on the controversial subject matter.
"Breaking Bad is not a story about drug making, or about glorifying drugs at all to me. I've heard that from some people but I don't see it," he says. "It's truly about a man who is basically good, who is making bad decisions. That is what came through in the pilot episode that I read and I thought it was brilliant. Somehow I feel for this man and root for him even though what he's doing is wrong and despicable."
Cranston says he was drawn to the character from the moment he first read the pilot script, and began visualising how White should look.
"That's what happens when something is so well written,"explains the actor, who put on close to 6kg to play the role.
"I felt that Walter White was one of those guys who carried his depression inwardly. He was not aggressive, he was not blaming everyone else for his misfortune. Rather he was blaming himself.
"That makes you implode emotionally as a person. The manifestation of that was that his body was soft, and so was his mind."
Cranston put a brown rinse through his hair to get rid of his copper highlights and wore make up to cover his skin's natural colouring and ruddiness.
"I went to the costume designer and said, 'I think everything he wears should be taupe and sand. I think this man should blend into the scenery'."
The irony of the series - and one of the reasons Cranston relishes the role of White - is the teacher's emotional transformation upon learning his dismal fate.
After years of apathy, White is spurred into action and begins living again.
"He's feeling things now that he hasn't felt in 25 years. Passion. Adrenalin. Masculinity and testosterone. He's feeling all these things rushing through him. Even fear.
"I think if you were to ask him, I don't know that he would trade it. Even fear is a more preferable emotion to being numb. Being anaesthetised."
White may only have two years to live but Cranston says the series itself is not subject to such a limited prognosis. After all, there is a big difference between real time and TV time.
Since filming the first series last year, nearly 18 months has passed between the pilot episode and the second season. Onscreen, however, it has only been a few months.
But he is adamant the series will not jump the shark and resort to ridiculous plot lines to extend its life.
"This is not a series where you're going to see me wake up from a dream or have the doctor say, 'I'm sorry Mr White, we got the wrong charts, you're fine.'
"I will eventually succumb. How I succumb, I don't know."
With the support and attention of his recent Emmy win behind him, Cranston is increasingly optimistic the series won't die a premature death.
"Hopefully that will translate to us being able to tell our story for, maybe say, four or five years. To tell the complete story and go on that journey with the audience would be a wonderful thing."