The hit series Breaking Bad has been widely praised for its powerful ending, but it was nearly ruined by a thief who made off with scripts of the series finale before the episode aired. Originally premiering on AMC in 2008, Breaking Bad was created by Vince Gilligan. It stars Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who turns to producing quality meth with the help of a former student (Aaron Paul) as a way of giving his life a new purpose following a lung cancer diagnosis. The series ended in 2013 after five seasons.
In a new interview on The Late Late Show, Cranston reflected on the time his car was broken into during the production of the show's fifth and final season. He was asked by host James Corden if the rumor was true that he "lost" the series finale script just ahead of filming the final episode. Cranston clears up these claims, clarifying that he didn't "lose" anything, though someone did break into his car and steal script copies. As the actor explained, per ScreenRant:
“I was driving around, I went to the top of the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque and I was looking around, going for a walk, and I come back and someone broke into my car. And in it was my briefcase with the last two scripts of Breaking Bad. I drive down the hill and I go to the gas station, and I said, ‘Where’s the local police station?’ They guided me there. I go to the police station – it’s closed. And it said, ‘If it’s an emergency, call 911. If it’s not an emergency, call this number.’ So I call the second number, not the emergency, and I leave my name."
It was a bad situation, but it was made worse when details about what happened had been skewed in the press. Cranston says the incident fueled rumors that he had tied up the 911 emergency line over the theft when that's not what actually happened. He also recalls the concern Gilligan had over the script details possibly leaking, and while that didn't end up happening, he wound up rewriting some of what happens in the Breaking Bad finale as a precaution.
"So that leaked somehow, some way. The next day on Good Morning America, ‘Bryan Cranston had his scripts stolen and called 911. We have the tape!’ And then, as the social media will have it, I got a lot of blowback. ‘Why would he busy up the 911 signal? Someone may really need that!’ There was rumor [about the script], and then [creator] Vince Gilligan changed a lot of it because he didn’t want it to leak.”
Bryan Cranston Is Still Playing Walter White
Walter "Heisenberg" White had his story come to a conclusive end in 2013 with the Breaking Bad finale, but even after a decade, Bryan Cranston still pops up as the iconic character. Last year, he appeared in multiple episodes of the spinoff series Better Call Saul, which serves as a prequel to Breaking Bad. It was also recently revealed that Heisenberg will be back for a PopCorners ad that will air during the Super Bowl.
You can watch the story of Cranston speaking about the stolen Breaking Bad scripts below.