Bryan Cranston I

‘Breaking Bad’ star talks about iconic series on its 10th anniversary

T’S been 10 years since “Breaking Bad” premiered on AMC, revolutionizing the template of television dramas and launching star Bryan Cranston into the show-business stratosphere.

“Without question I owe the career I’m enjoying now to ‘Breaking Bad,’ ” says Cranston, 61, on the phone from London, where he’s starring in a National Theatre production of Paddy Chayefsky’s “Network.” “There’s no question that’s what turned the dial for me completely.”

Cranston won four Emmys on “Breaking Bad” as Walter White, the cancer-stricken high school chemistry teacher secretly cooking (and selling) crystal meth to provide for his wife and two children — leading him down a dark, ultimately murderous path in the New Mexico desert. Series creator Vince Gilligan likened Walter’s five-season journey as “The story about a man who transforms himself from Mr. Chips into Scarface,” and viewers agreed: “Breaking Bad” became a pop-culture touchstone, with catchphrases (“Let’s cook,” “I’m the one who knocks”) and Walter White’s indelible “Heisenberg” getup (glasses, goatee and pork pie hat). The series finale snared 10.3 million viewers in September 2013 — 10 times the viewership for its 2008 premiere. A spinoff, “Better Call Saul,” premiered on AMC in 2015 and is heading into its fourth season.

“Vince Gilligan was able to tap into a sensibility of the country that was ready for a story like this,” says Cranston. “When Vince said, ‘I intend to turn this good man into a bad man,’ I thought about it and said, ‘Vince, has that ever been done before?’ I don’t think so.

“And that’s what so unique [about ‘Breaking Bad’],” he says. “When you think back, all the characters in TV history ... by and large they were the same person, whether it was Archie Bunker or Thomas Magnum or Ross and Rachel or Tony Soprano — they were who they were. As Walter said in the pilot episode, ‘Chemistry is all about change.’ You’re going to meet a very different man by the end of the series, and that’s what made it so remarkable, and that’s just what got under the skin of people. You found them initially sympathizing with Walter White — and, at the end, hating him and realizing he became this despicable person.

“It was groundbreaking. We had a policy to show restraint, to make it cinematic. To follow that kind of traditional television ethos was not part of our vocabulary,” he says. “We wanted low, wide angles, [to] see the vistas, the landscapes, feel the dust and dirt, add the music to it, feel the heat, see the heat rise from the surface. We didn’t always need to see a closeup of the characters; we knew these people by the second season and beyond. So the edict throughout the directing corps was to be more cinematic with it, and the writers were solid and the entire group stayed with us, primarily, throughout the entire run.

“It was brilliant, yet I would say that we owe a debt of gratitude to ‘ The Shield’ and ‘ The Sopranos’ and ‘ The Wire’ — very adventurous, dangerous, eclectic, interesting, honest and uncomfortable shows.”

Cranston’s post-“Breaking Bad” career includes a 2014 Tony Award for playing President Lyndon Johnson in “All the Way” (he also starred in the HBO movie adaptation), an Oscar nomination for “Trumbo” and co-creating Amazon’s “Sneaky

Pete” and “The Dangerous Book for Boys.”

“I suppose if I were to reflect on it ... with the tremendous success of ‘Breaking Bad’ my career started changing because instead of hearing about a movie and going in to audition, I was starting to get offers to do things,” he says. “It was like, ‘This is nice, this is different.’ It was a great experience and now I’m still riding this wave and I don’t know how long it’s going to take until I hit the shore — but I’ll stay on the board as long

as I can.”