Bryan Cranston became an household name thanks to his iconic role of Walter White in the hit television series Breaking Bad. Over the course of five seasons, we see a high school chemistry teacher and Nobel Prize laureate turn into a global drug kingpin, and a demon he once ran from.
Cranston did such a good job in the role that most fans could not imagine another face to the cult-classic anti-hero. Well, it's hard to believe, but had things gone a bit different, that's exactly what would have happened. In Smartless a podcast hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett, Cranston explains how it came about:
“[In 2006] Fox said, ‘Keep the sets up. We might do an eighth season of Malcolm In The Middle,” Cranston narrates. “And everyone was like, ‘Yeahhh that’d be great.’”
“In late April and early May, they called, when the upfronts are going on, they said, ‘Nope, we had a very good pilot season. Thank you guys, you did well. You’re on your own.’ So we thought, ‘Ahh, that’s too bad.’”
Though Malcolm in the Middle wasn’t slated for another run, something else was brewing elsewhere.
“Later that month, I get the call to go see a guy called Vince Gilligan. ‘Do you remember him from X-Files?’ ‘Kinda.’ ‘He wants to see you about a new project called Breaking Bad.’”
Cranston continued, “I read it and I thought, ‘Oh my god this is amazing.’ I met with him. He said, ‘I want to turn Mr. Chips into Scarface and I think you’re the guy to do it.’
"We shot the pilot in February and March of 2007. So had we got that eighth season of Malcolm In The Middle, I would not have been available to shoot that pilot and someone else would be talking to you.”
That "someone else" could even have been Matthew Broderick or John Cusack, had Fox executives had their way in the first place. It’s crazy to even imagine the series without Cranston and his iconic “I am the one who knocks” delivery, but it almost happened.