Bryan Cranston cons his way into ‘ Sneaky Pete’
The actor’s childhood nickname inspired Amazon crime drama
Bryan Cranston takes a very NEW YORK hands- on approach to Sunday brunch.
The Emmy winner is directing a scene of his new series, Sneaky Pete ( streaming Friday on Amazon Prime), in which con man Marius ( Giovanni Ribisi) is polishing off an after- church meal with members of his estranged “family.” Rather than bark “Action!” and “Cut!” from one end of the clan’s Connecticut farmhouse — built to scale in a Brooklyn studio — Cranston is darting between the director’s chair and the dining room. He gently offers pointers on everything from dialogue to dishware, and later hugs cast and crew as they wrap.
“I’m amazed at people like him who have so much going on and have such an ease about them all the time,” says Marin Ireland, who plays single mother Julia. “There’s always such a humor about him, and he’s always so creative.”
Although Cranston, 60, has directed TV before, Sneaky Pete bears even more of his creative stamp than roles on AMC’s Breaking Bad and Fox’s
Malcolm in the Middle. He executive produces the crime drama, and co- stars in all 10 episodes as Vince, a New York gangster to whom Marius owes a serious debt. Newly freed from prison and warned by his younger brother, Eddie ( Michael Drayer), that Vince is out for vengeance, Marius assumes the identity of his former cellmate, Pete, the grandson of a family of bail bondsmen.
As the season progresses, Marius scrambles to maintain his façade as Pete, while simultaneously trying to save Eddie, who is taken hostage by Vince. “All he has is his brother,” Ribisi says. The con game is what he had “to do to get away from himself, but at the core of that, you see this little kernel of humanity, and it’s really about making sure the one thing he has is protected.”
Marius was inspired in part by Cran-
ston, who was nicknamed “Sneaky Pete” as a kid for trying to take shortcuts, such as throwing out most of the newspapers on his route to avoid crotchety customers. He referenced the nickname in his 2014 Emmys speech, and a day later, got a call from Sony Pictures Television president Zack Van Amburg with an idea for a series.
“He called me and said, ‘ I think there’s a show there, about a guy who’s a Sneaky Pete,’ ” Cranston says. “‘ That was OK for you because you were a kid. ... But what if that kid is now 35? What is he now?’ And I said, ‘ I think he’d be a criminal if he didn’t change his ways.’ ”
Cranston began developing the show with House creator David Shore as a procedural for CBS, and when the network passed, Shore was replaced by Justified’s Graham Yost. The series was retooled for Amazon to tell a more grounded, serialized story that was “still trying to keep the grit and the humor,” Yost says.
Ribisi was cast as Marius because “he’s not your average stud, leading man type,” Cranston says. “If you need a gun or a fight, you didn’t figure out your con very well. The genius con is when I convince you that it’s your idea to give me your money. It’s almost like a magician: ‘ Take any card.’ ”