EXCLUSIVE: Breaking Bad star will play Walter White in reverse for his next role

 
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Rashid Razaq13 September 2013

He plays a mild-mannered chemistry teacher who morphs into a ruthless drug lord in hit TV series Breaking Bad.

But in his next role Bryan Cranston will be Walter White in reverse – a gangster who becomes a family man.

The actor is appearing alongside British star Alice Eve in Cold Comes the Night, a low-budget independent film which gets its world premiere in London next Thursday.

With only three more eagerly anticipated episodes of Breaking Bad to go, Cranston, 57, compared the Polish immigrant character, Topo, in his new film with Breaking Bad’s Mr White.

He said: “There are some similarities. Though you may not see it upon first look. Both men are task oriented, disciplined, and intelligent in their chosen field. Restless and troubled - also a shared trait. The differences are more apparent. Walt has definitely become prone to emotions, but Topo let that die long ago. They are clearly from different worlds. Their native language, education, influences, upbringing, cultural differences and many more.”

Directed by Tze Chun and set in upstate New York, the story centres on a single mother forced to help a hardened criminal, who is going blind, retrieve a stolen package from a crooked cop.

Chun, 33, whose last film was the critically-acclaimed Children of Invention, told how the Polish accent was not in the script and was actually Cranston’s idea.

Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

He said: “Bryan’s the hardest working man around. He arrived on location at 1am and we were on set filming at 6am for 17 days straight before he flew straight back to New Mexico to shoot the final season of Breaking Bad.”

Cranston and Eve were only able to meet briefly in Los Angeles before filming began but hit it off immediately.

Cranston said: “Alice is a delightful person to be around. We shared many moments on and off screen together, and I liked her immensely, which made it all the more fun to terrorize her in the film.”

Shot in just over three weeks, the film is a major departure for Eve, 31, who was last seen as Captain Kirk’s love interest Carol Marcus in Star Trek Into Darkness. She spent a week working as a maid cleaning rooms in a grotty motel for research as her character lives and works in a motel.

Eve said: “You don’t have council houses like we do so you get people living in motels. There are a lot of drug addicts, people in difficult circumstances.

“You get these pill parties, where people put whatever drugs they’ve got into a bowl, ecstasy, Vicodin, OxyContin and then take a handful and see what kind of trip they take. There were two deaths at a local motel just before we started filming and when I went there sitting outside was a couple with their baby. They were surprised anyone wanted to hear their story. My character is a single mother fighting for her child and to undergo her experience, it was traumatising. I was sad for quite a while after filming. But I also found strength from playing her. It’s rare to find such a rewarding role as an actress.”

The actress also told how she would “really love to do a play” in London but has to divide her time between LA because of the “sheer scale” of the number of roles available compared to the UK.

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