Bryan Cranston Fully Commits While Eating Spicy Wings ｜ Hot Ones [OXEteCPQcGc].webm.wav.txt

 It takes a big jump.
 - Ooh.
 - This was a white napkin when I started.
 (laughing)
 (upbeat music)
 - Hey, what's going on everybody?
 For First We Feast, I'm Sean Evans,
 and you're watching Hot Ones.
 It's the show with hot questions and even hotter ways.
 And today we're joined by Bryan Cranston.
 He's a six time Emmy Award winning actor you know
 from acclaimed Broadway performances,
 films that include 2013's best picture,
 Argo and iconic TV shows like Malcolm in the Middle
 and Breaking Bad.
 He also stars in the crime drama Your Honor,
 which returns for its much anticipated second season
 on Showtime January 15th.
 And I for one can't wait.
 Bryan Cranston, welcome back to the show.
 - Oh Sean, I'm already regretting this.
 (laughing)
 - What's going through your head as you prepare
 to take on this gauntlet for a second time?
 - When I did this before, it was like eight years ago,
 when I was promoting Why Him?
 And I thought when I left, I thought,
 that was the most bizarre interview I've ever done.
 This won't last.
 (laughing)
 It's a gimmick.
 No one, no celebrity in their right mind
 is gonna do what I just, oh my God.
 How many years you been doing this now?
 - Since then, so yeah, like eight years.
 (laughing)
 Believe it or not.
 - And they said, do you wanna go on Hot Ones again?
 I go, yeah.
 Wait a minute, what was Hot Ones?
 Wait, wait, wait.
 But I'm up for the task, yeah, I'm up.
 I'm not familiar with any of these hot sauces,
 so you'll have to introduce them to me as we go along.
 - Well, it'll be an education.
 Are you ready to get started?
 - Yeah.
 (upbeat music)
 Now your eyes are already starting to water.
 - Well, I'm just happy and proud to see you again.
 It's more sentimentality than anything.
 - Okay.
 Well, this one is tasty, but not that hot.
 - Enjoy that while you can.
 (laughing)
 So there's some basic similarities
 between Michael, your character, and your honor,
 and Walter White, in the sense of having a good character
 who makes some dark choices
 in an effort to protect their family.
 What fascinates you about the life forces
 that can push an otherwise upstanding member of society
 towards a dark and morally compromised path?
 - Well, from an acting standpoint,
 they're the most fun to play.
 When you have characters that are damaged to a certain point,
 complex, conflicted, flawed.
 But I think what is the key
 to getting an audience behind you on those
 is that they see that there's something else
 trying to get out, trying to be better, trying to improve.
 And as long as an audience sees that someone
 isn't just relishing being bad, they'll root for you.
 You know?
 Shaquanda's Banshee Ranch.
 Ooh.
 Tasty.
 - So in a Fresh Air interview on the heels
 of your Tony Award winning performance as LBJ in "All the Way,"
 you tell a fascinating little detail
 about the vocal strain and physical toll
 of doing an eight show per week Broadway schedule.
 What are silent Mondays and why have they served
 as a secret weapon for you?
 - There's a beautiful and talented actor
 named Audra McDonald.
 And she is not only a great actor, but a terrific singer.
 And she was doing "Porgy and Bess"
 at the time I was about to come in with "All the Way,"
 which is a three hour play.
 And I can already start to feel the strain
 on my vocal cords.
 And I thought, "Oh my God, I'm about to do six months
 on Broadway.
 I need help.
 How did you do "Porgy and Bess?"
 And she told me that she went, I think,
 to her ear, nose and throat doctor.
 And he wrote a prescription for her.
 And the prescription was for silence.
 No laughing, no whispering, no utterance of any kind.
 Completely shut down the vocal cords.
 And I thought, "You know what?
 I'm gonna do that."
 So at first it was odd, but I kept a pad around
 and my wife was there.
 I go, "Hungry?
 Lunch?"
 And I go out and I go to a restaurant.
 What's the soup?
 Pretty soon I started to keep some of these signs.
 Where's my soup sign?
 Here it is.
 It's like, what's the soup?
 And people would go, they didn't get it that I'm on.
 And I wrote one.
 I'm on vocal rest, right?
 And then in response to that, they go, "Oh, okay."
 And I had another one.
 "You don't have to whisper."
 Cadejo.
 Man, that's a nasty looking thing.
 Yeah, it's like a mythical sort of like dog wolf.
 And then when it would attack, its eyes turn red.
 Will that happen to us when we eat its sauce?
 We'll see if it's in attack mode.
 I should do a little special effects right now.
 Okay.
 So while reading your memoir, "A Life in Parts,"
 I was really captured by the romantic way
 that you talk about baseball and being inspired
 by the way Wally Moon would swing for the left field fences
 when the LA Dodgers played in the LA Coliseum.
 Do you have an all-time favorite Vin Scullyism?
 Well, I thought I did in '81 when he talked about,
 "If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky."
 When Fernando Valenzuela pitched a no-hitter.
 But then in '88, Kirk Gibson hits his home run,
 and he says, "In a season filled with the improbable,
 "the impossible has happened."
 Still feel like I'm in mourning for him passing
 because I've been listening to him for 60 years,
 and Vin Scully represented to me just more than baseball.
 To me, it was a sanctuary.
 When I had a rough childhood, I can always tune out,
 put on my transistor, put in my earphones,
 and listen to him take me away.
 And at least for those three hours,
 I felt like I was gonna be okay.
 Everything's safe, nothing to worry about,
 and I would just listen to his mellifluous voice,
 and he would tell stories, and I would just go off.
 And I'd get a baseball game, I'd hear,
 and it just felt like floating sometimes.
 Yeah.
 Los Calientes Verdes, okay.
 - Going in. - Yeah.
 Okay.
 All right, so far, so good.
 There we go.
 What did you mean when you said that an actor
 approaching a comedic scene can't for one second
 think what they're doing is funny?
 - If you're doing a sketch,
 like if you're doing "Saturday Night Live,"
 part of the fun from the audience perspective
 is they're having fun knowing you're having fun, right?
 And so you're kind of in on it.
 We all laugh when someone breaks character
 and starts cracking up, and they're trying to look away.
 We get even more enjoyment out of it.
 And that's legitimate.
 It's fun, it's loose, it's light.
 But if you're doing a film or a television show
 that's carefully scripted,
 if the character realizes something's funny,
 it takes the onus off the audience to laugh
 because they're doing it, you're doing it.
 It's the same thing when a character easily cries.
 If a character cries easily, the audience doesn't have to.
 But if a character tries not to cry,
 that's when the audience will.
 Yeah, a little bit of curry-ish.
 So far, we're five in, five to go, halfway point.
 - Yep.
 - I gotta say, tasty, but not crushing,
 not like, "Oh my God, I can't do this anymore."
 - See, I told you, there's no,
 there should have been no nervousness about coming back.
 No anxiety about coming back.
 You got this.
 - Well, this is only halftime.
 We got the whole second half.
 - We'll all do into a false sense of security
 maybe in the front half, yeah.
 So we talked to actors in the past
 about picking and sequencing roles,
 but you're the first one I've ever come across
 that has a full-blown project assessment skill
 where you break down everything from story to script,
 role, director, and cast.
 Of all the scripts that have come across your desk,
 what percentage would you say failed the writing test,
 and then how early can you tell?
 - So the one I mentioned before
 that didn't have a high scale on the writing was "Why Him?"
 "Why Him?" had a very simple premise.
 "Midwestern dad doesn't like the boyfriend
 of his cherished daughter."
 That's it.
 And I just didn't, anyway, I talked to my publicist
 and I said, "Is it possible that I can get a hold
 of Paul Rudd?"
 So I called Paul and I said,
 "Paul, you worked on these movies before.
 The script seems just kind of there.
 There's some funny situations and jokes,
 but it doesn't like, wow."
 And he goes, "That's kind of the nature
 of this kind of movie.
 It relies heavily on the ensemble cast
 to be able to punch it up and just play.
 So we will do scenes, we will shoot the scene
 as it's written, and then you go.
 Then you're adding lines.
 Then you're, how about this?
 And then someone says something, you add to,
 then pretty soon you're like, woo, woo, woo, woo,
 and it becomes something completely different,
 and you can't script that."
 Several improvisations that I came up with
 ended up in the film and it was like,
 oh man, this is so much fun.
 And so I learned my lesson from that.
 It was a good lesson that that scale
 that I usually go by is not always accurate.
 Mushroom mayhem, okay.
 - More portobello.
 - More portobello-ish.
 - So when we had Margot Robbie on the show,
 she talked about how working in soaps
 was a really great and valuable education for an actor
 because it taught you how to work fast and be word perfect.
 Does that resonate with you?
 - Yeah, fast.
 You gotta work fast.
 And there's a pattern in daytime television.
 I don't even know if the medium really even works anymore.
 But the pattern in daytime was people are watching
 a few times a week, but not every day.
 Like two and a half times a week
 or something is the average.
 So if I said, Sean, I saw you with Margot the other day
 and you're trying to get Catlin away from me,
 I will kill you.
 And then the next day I might say,
 remember Sean when I warned you,
 then when you talked to Margot,
 that if you got in the way of Catlin, I would kill you.
 It's so similar.
 It's so similar that your brain said,
 no, you just said this.
 And you're going, oh my God, I just said this.
 I'm repeating it.
 And you just go through.
 I learned just plow through.
 'Cause at first I would stop and go, oh, sorry.
 I'm repeating, aren't I?
 And they go, no, that's the line.
 Oh, I'm so sorry.
 Now I'm more sorry.
 So now I just learned just go through and then go,
 was that right?
 Was that?
 Yeah, it was right.
 Okay.
 And you move on.
 Now we're getting psychedelic.
 Angry Goat, Dreams of Calypso.
 Okay.
 That's an interesting taste.
 Smells like Calypso.
 Yeah, I can sense that coming down the line.
 (laughs)
 So I know that herbal tobacco is often used
 as a marijuana substitute in TV and film.
 Do you have any insight into what goes into making TV meth?
 What is TV meth?
 TV methamphetamine, the way we made it,
 with a little blue tint,
 is actually rock candy.
 And the flavor was cotton candy, rock candy.
 I never tasted it until one night.
 We were working, it was probably the 16th or 17th hour.
 We're working in our dungeon downstairs,
 our lab down there.
 And Gus Fring is making sure we're working.
 And we're working.
 And I see Aaron Paul reach into our product,
 our handful of our product,
 and starts throwing the methamphetamine in his mouth.
 I go, "What are you doing?
 "You can't eat the product."
 He goes, "I'm just so tired.
 "I mean, it's like you're really getting a high off this.
 "It's like, well, it's sugar."
 And he goes, "You've tasted it."
 I go, "No, I haven't tasted it."
 He goes, "Oh, you should taste it."
 I go, "No, I don't think so."
 He goes, "And I guess I was still in character
 "because Walter White wouldn't ever."
 He goes, "No, I'm not doing that."
 And he goes, "You gotta have one.
 "Yo, have one!"
 (laughing)
 Is what he would say.
 And so, "All right, all right.
 "You know, to shut you up."
 And I tasted one, it was like...
 That's pretty good.
 And so he and I, they rolled the camera
 and he and I are just talking, we're like eating
 all the methamphetamine.
 And that's what we use.
 We use cotton candy, rock candy.
 It's the bomb beyond insanity.
 - Whoa.
 - Do most people just take one bite?
 - Especially when we get here, yeah.
 - Here it comes.
 - Yeah.
 (laughing)
 - Hello, mama.
 - Yeah.
 - Wow, the bomb beyond it.
 So what you're saying, as I wipe my brows.
 - Yeah, careful around your eyes too.
 - Yeah.
 Is that this is not the hottest one.
 - So here's where...
 This might be good news.
 This might be good news.
 This one is the hottest one.
 - Oh!
 - You know, like...
 - You're switched things up.
 - We start with like the Scoville scale,
 which is a measure of cap station per unit.
 There go the hiccups.
 And this one actually falls here,
 but there's something about it that's crazy.
 You know, like, remember when we did this like seven,
 eight years, seven, eight years ago?
 This was still here.
 It's the only bottle that stayed on the table
 that whole time.
 - Yeah.
 - That one's kick ass.
 - Uh-huh.
 So back in 2019, you and your Breaking Bad co-star,
 Aaron Paul, launched Dos Hombres.
 What distinguishes like a good mezcal
 from the kind that you were exposed to early on
 during like your poker playing days?
 - Okay.
 So the difference is recipe, just like anything.
 I could put in front of you all the ingredients
 to make the perfect dinner.
 But if you're not a chef,
 you don't know what goes with what
 and how to put it together.
 It's the same thing with spirits.
 How long do you smoke it?
 How long do you ferment it?
 How many times you filter it?
 I mean, you know what I mean?
 There's a lot going on.
 You look like you're in substantial pain.
 - Way worse than you.
 Way worse than you, I have to say, you know?
 I'm like amazed at how well you took that.
 - That was a kick ass one, yeah.
 It's still kicking.
 - But the way that you were able to just
 kind of internalize it,
 deliver an eloquent interview answer,
 and then look me up and down and be like,
 "Hey buddy, what's going on with you?"
 - Yes, that's true.
 - I'm impressed.
 I'm humbled from across the table over here.
 - The interesting thing is the perspiration.
 That's what always fascinated me.
 I can understand the power of the peppers
 doing their thing in your mouth.
 What's with the perspiration?
 Woo!
 That one is the hottest.
 This was a white napkin when I started.
 Wow!
 - So this next one is the Butterfly Bakery Taco Vibes Only.
 - Taco Vibes Only.
 All right.
 - Now this one, hot, but after the last one.
 Kind of a walk in the park.
 - Yeah, so far.
 - Look at you.
 When you think about the odd jobs that you had
 before your breakthrough in Hollywood,
 is there one that you'd say was most paramount
 or helpful in your acting career?
 Like I've heard you talk about
 when you worked at the dating matchmaking service,
 greater expectations or great expectations,
 that it was almost like taking an acting class.
 - Great expectations.
 Great company, very successful company.
 It was the precursor to match.com and all those things.
 And you'd go in and depending on your proclivity,
 you look at the men's or the women's,
 and you're looking and you go, oh, she smokes.
 I don't want to be with a smoker.
 And then, oh, she's close.
 She's, oh, we went to the same school.
 We love basketball.
 Oh, this looks like a nice person.
 And then you'd go to see her tape.
 And that's where I come in
 'cause I did the videotape interviews.
 I would sit across from someone and I had a camera here,
 but I would never turn it on until I felt
 that that person's essence was real and alive.
 And then at some point, they really did relax, calm down,
 and they'd laugh.
 And usually when they laughed at something, I'd start it.
 So the first thing that the person watching their tape
 would see them laughing,
 which is the most engaging thing you can see.
 Someone letting go and they laugh.
 And then they're talking and we'd talk
 for a minute and a half, not long.
 And I turn it off and I go, good, we're done.
 And I go, well, wait, but I didn't get out,
 you know, that I like to do this.
 And I go, that's not about that.
 This is about them seeing you as you are most of the time.
 That's what they want to see.
 How is this person going to act
 when I'm sitting across from them drinking coffee?
 And it was unbelievably successful.
 It was really good.
 - Well, I can see why with employees like that.
 All right, Brian Cranston.
 - Uh oh, what's happening?
 Okay, here we go.
 Put a last dab.
 Okay, last dab.
 Last dab, last dab will do you.
 We're through, look at that.
 - We did it, again.
 - We survived. - Look at us,
 who would have thought?
 - Okay, here it goes.
 - Cheers.
 So to close things out, if you would,
 I'd love for you to unpackage this quote of yours.
 "The homework doesn't guarantee anything.
 "With luck, it gives you a shot at something real."
 - I often get asked by young acting students
 in high school and college, how do you do it?
 Where, how can I, you know, leap?
 And I go, "Shortcut, you live for the shortcut."
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 (mumbles)
 Like a drug, give me the shortcut, give me the shortcut.
 I go, "There isn't any, there's no shortcut."
 Sorry.
 Damn.
 - Ooh.
 (laughing)
 - The sweating thing is surprising.
 But that's what a real love of acting is,
 is it's a relationship.
 It's not a fling.
 It is committing to something for the rest of your life.
 When I think of acting and I think of creating and writing,
 I mean, it occupies all of me and I love it.
 If I ever start to complain about having to go to work
 at six o'clock in the morning
 or not wanting to do anything,
 I don't wanna do that, I don't wanna do that.
 Then that's the sign.
 I've lost the flame and it's time to hang it up.
 - Mike, drop and look at you.
 Bryan Cranston for the second time,
 taking on the hot ones gauntlet and living to tell the tale.
 Now there's nothing left to do,
 but roll out the red carpet for you.
 This camera, this camera, this camera,
 let the people know what you have going on in your life.
 - Woo.
 Well, second season of "Your Honor."
 I'm very proud of it, it's on showtime.
 First season ended in tragedy.
 Now we're exploring the world of grief and forgiveness.
 Is that still, are we still able to have that in our society?
 And some people will think that asking forgiveness
 or granting forgiveness is a weakness.
 I think it's a human strength.
 It's a human strength, it'll allow you to be
 with other people, especially with an intimate partner.
 If you can't say you're sorry,
 you will never be in a long-term relationship.
 (clapping)
 - Woo.
 - And that's the hot ones experience.
 - Hot ones experience.
 Do it again.
 I'll see who would like, would you like some more?
 I have eight, I have nine.
 Woo.
 Woo.
 (dramatic music)
 - Hot ones fans, exciting news.
 The season 20 hot ones 10 pack is now available.
 If you've ever watched from home and wondered to yourself,
 how hard are the wings really?
 Or been one of those people that's like,
 oh, they're only taking one bite.
 Well, you know what?
 If you think you can do better,
 now is the time to put your money where your mouth is,
 literally, with the hot ones season 20 10 pack
 available exclusively at heatness.com.
 That's heatness.com, heatness.com, heatness.com
 to get your hands on the season 20 hot ones 10 pack.
 Get them while they're hot.
 (upbeat music)
 (upbeat music)
 (upbeat music)
 you