Bryan Cranston Adventured Around Albuquerque When He Lost The Breaking Bad Finale Script
It is difficult to imagine "Breaking Bad" without its setting. The quaint suburban neighborhood of the White family's home, the sprawling streets of Albuquerque, the vast and beautiful New Mexico desert that is oddly spooky even in the daytime; all of these worked together to bolster the celebrated series' atmosphere of what RogerEbert.com's Nick Schager called "Stylized Realism." This is a world that veers between the controlled predictability that Walter (Bryan Cranston) tries to impose on his life and death, and the wild dangers exhibited by the tumultuous, neo-western spaces that surround him. It is difficult to imagine any other city being able to provide quite the same moody contrast.
"Breaking Bad" has become such a seminal part of Albuquerque's recent identity that there's even a statue of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) in its city hall (via IGN). In a way, this makes Bryan Cranston literally a part of Albuquerque's landscape. But, much like his character, this doesn't necessarily mean that the landscape was always particularly kind to him.
A recent episode of "The Late Late Show with James Corden" featured Cranston as a guest. It speaks volumes that almost 10 years after its final episode, people still want to talk about "Breaking Bad," and Corden asked Cranston about one strange experience with Albuquerque police in a way that he likely didn't anticipate.
From the one who knocks to the one who calls ... 911
"I was driving around, I went to the top of the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque," explained a rather flummoxed Bryan Cranston during his "Late Late Show" appearance. "And I was looking around, going for a walk, and I come back and someone had broken into my car. And in it was my briefcase with the last two scripts of 'Breaking Bad.'"
Getting your car broken into is always a drag, of course. Cranston got in his car and drove to the nearest gas station to ask where the nearest police station was. "I go to the police station," he continued. "It's closed," though there was a sign informing the public to dial 911 in an emergency, and another number for non-emergencies. Cranston, naturally, called the non-emergency number to report the break-in.
Unfortunately, the recording of that call leaked. "The next day, on 'Good Morning America,' you know, with the bumper music. 'Dun, da-da-dun, da-da-dun! Bryan Cranston had his script stolen, and called 911! We have the tape!'" Cranston recalled. Sure enough, there was the recording of the actor's voice, reporting the break-in to his car.
Though the misreporting predictably resulted in a social media blowback from people angry that he had wasted the time of 911 operators with a situation that was clearly a non-emergency, Cranston soon set the record straight. "It was just a recording that I left on the sheriff's device," he told CNN (via Fox6News.com). Cranston also said that the two scripts were on his iPad, and therefore that it was possible to access them remotely and delete them. Though there was a hard copy of one of them in the briefcase, at least it was not for the final episode.