USA TODAY International Edition
Bryan Cranston’s history lesson
He also steps into the shoes of LBJ in ‘ All the Way’
WASHINGTON Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and President Lyndon B. Johnson have more in common than just Bryan Cranston.
The Tony winner and six- time Emmy honoree goes back to a fearmongering era as the bestknown member of the Hollywood Ten in the big- screen drama
Trumbo ( in select theaters now and nationwide later this month) and revisits a year in the life of one of our more effective leaders in HBO’s All the Way, an adaptation airing in May of the Broadway play starring Cranston.
The two roles didn’t come out of a hankering for history after
Breaking Bad or a pressing need to hit the books, Cranston says. “It was all because the stories are so fantastic and the depth and the ambition of these characters and their accomplishments.”
Trumbo and Johnson had foibles and eccentricities, according to Cranston, and both didn’t sleep a whole lot or treat their bodies right. “They didn’t eat well and they drank too much at times — Trumbo smoked like a chimney,” the actor says. “Both didn’t live very long because of it.
“There is a price to pay when you ignore other aspects of the human experience and just hyper- focus on your agenda.”
Cranston figures the men were myopic when it came to their chosen field. And with Trumbo, that meant a dogged desire to write scripts in Hollywood even after being blacklisted. Just trying to survive professionally, he would constantly write movies under different names and created an underground network of writers to undermine the House Un- American Activities Committee and its witch hunt.
“As far as his legal issues, he didn’t want that fight. It came to him,” Cranston says. “He used his own self- defense by way of his own ability to write.”
The actor was the perfect man to play Trumbo because he was the right look and age, “but more importantly, he had the soul of the man within him,” Trumbo screenwriter John McNamara says.
“Bryan is in a very, very small category of actor who can do almost anything. I’ve never seen him do anything where I thought, ‘ Oh, that was kind of fake.’ ”
Trumbo director Jay Roach adds that Cranston is “the perfect overlap” for the real Trumbo: When he had his shadow operation, Trumbo was older and known as the “Knight” to his younger “Squires,” and similarly Cranston, a director himself, would often take lead in figuring out scenes while filming Trumbo.
As Johnson in All the Way, however, Cranston has to play the larger- than- life Texas persona, one who’s a staunch champion of people and freedom but isn’t afraid of being a force of nature when needed, says Roach, who also directs the HBO film. “He would corner you and tower over you and make you an offer you couldn’t refuse. In a way, Bryan gets to use even more of the leadership aspects of his personality.”
While Trumbo covers decades in the life of the screenwriter, All
the Way focuses on 1964 — what Cranston calls “the halcyon year” — when Johnson assumes the presidency after John F. Kennedy’s assassination and pushes through landmark civil rights legislation.
LBJ was “one of the top five presidents in history as far as achievement,” Cranston says. “He felt he had a window of an advantage, and that was the country still in mourning over President Kennedy. The sympathies would be with him for a while, and if he let that lapse, it’s gone. So he felt, ‘ We’ve got to drive this, we’ve got to move it ... right now.’ ”
The man’s “tremendous heart and compassion and empathy for those less fortunate” was a really attractive appeal for Cranston, he adds, yet, as with Trumbo, so was the ambition that could never be satiated. “Johnson especially was a man who couldn’t receive enough love and affirmation and affection. That kind of fragility and vulnerability, juxtaposed with his fierceness and aggression and knowledge and political acumen, was a wonderful combination dramatically.”
The roles meant a great deal of research for the actor, such as sitting down with Trumbo’s daughters to find out about their father and traveling to the LBJ museum and library in Austin to help realize his take on the 36th president. Yet, when playing these great figures in history, Cranston felt the learning never stopped.
“The idea of locking in a performance, I don’t know about that, because the next day will be another time and place,” he says. “You’ve grown a little, you’ve aged a little, you’ve had an experience that day and you take it in with you, just like these living human beings who we’re playing had to make adjustments along the way, depending on what was going on in their families and what was going on in the world.”