On "Breaking Bad," Bryan Cranston plays Walter White, a man who's transformed from a high school chemistry teacher into a meth-dealing criminal mastermind over the course of four heart-pounding seasons. But in the season finale of the Sundance Channel's "The Mortified Sessions," Cranston reveals that he almost took a very different career path with the LAPD.
"I joined [The Law Enforcement Explorers]. I went to the Police Academy. West Valley Division LAPD was the sponsor, and I did well. I graduated first in my class out of 111 cadets. And so from that experience I thought, 'Oh, so I guess I'm going to be a policeman," Cranston explains in an exclusive clip from the Jan. 30 episode. "I went to a junior college, and thought that after I graduated I would join the LAPD once I was 21."
Cranston's switch from studying criminal justice to pursuing an acting career was motivated by considerations of a far less grave variety than Walter White's devolution. "I go into an acting class as an elective. This was 1975, and the girls are wearing hot pants and tube tops and nothing else, and I thought, 'Oh my god, they're so much prettier in acting class than they are in police science. The discovery of girls in the theatre classes completely twisted me around ... The libido of a 19-year-old boy really steered me towards acting as opposed to police science, [which] apparently I was good at."
The season finale of "The Mortified Sessions" airs Mon, Jan. 30, at 8 p.m. EST on Sundance.
Our 2024 Coverage Needs You
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.