HAVING A LAUGH

Bryan Cranston knows the value of being silly

‘If my daughter had this lunatic as a boyfriend, it would drive me crazy,’ Bryan Cranston laughs, referring to James Franco’s character Laird in Why Him?.

Bryan plays Ned, the protective dad of Stephanie (Zoey Deutch) who’s fallen for an eccentric tech billionaire. When Stephanie invites her family to Laird’s mansion for Christmas, all hell breaks loose.

‘Ned just has this feeling about Laird. He is off his rocker. He’s crazy!’ Bryan explains. ‘Ned goes a little obsessive himself, and the obsession then overlaps into competition and then it’s game on. As men, we have full capability of being idiots, and that’s what happens here.’

Having delved into dramatic darkness playing Walter White in Breaking Bad, Bryan was grateful for some comedic lightness.

‘I missed just having silly fun on set,’ Bryan says. ‘Just the intrinsic value of laughter. It’s a challenge to be able to, at my age, [be] a lead in a comedy for a studio.’