Aaron Paul says Bryan Cranston kept tricking him into thinking Jesse Pinkman would die on the set of Breaking Bad.
"He's the hardest worker in the room, the most lovable… but he's also the most immature I've ever met in my life," Paul said during a recent episode of Hot Ones when pressed on Cranston's prolific pranking history. "I say that with just love and respect, the list was endless."
"I remember on Breaking Bad, he came out of the production office and came up to me and said, 'It's OK' and give me this long hug. “I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’ He’s like, ‘At least you go out in a big way, huh?’ And I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ He goes, ‘Did you read the latest script?’ I go, ‘No.’ He goes, ‘Well, just read it, and I’m here if you need me.'”
Paul continued, "So, I sprinted into the production office… of course, I go to the final pages [of the script] and nothing happened, I'm still around. But he just made it seem like I died. He would not stop. He would get everybody in on it, like the costume designers said, ‘Hey we gotta do your measurements for the casket.'"
Mercifully for Paul, it all worked out in the end for Jesse – relatively speaking, that is. In the Breaking Bad finale, he escaped the clutches of Jack and his gang of Neo-Nazis, before his journey continued in El Camino. In the 2019 film, Jesse eventually escaped his past and settled for a new life in Alaska.
Cranston, meanwhile, is set to revisit another past role – as Hal in Malcolm in the Middle. Filming for the upcoming sequel wrapped in May, with star Frankie Muniz describing the revival as a "dream".
He wrote on Twitter, "Reuniting with the cast, getting to know some new characters, laughing till it hurt, and making new memories on set felt like a dream I didn’t want to wake up from. It went by so fast, like a blur of perfect moments. I wish it could go on forever."
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