“The X-Files” gave Vince Gilligan his major break in TV, and it’s also where he first discovered what Bryan Cranston was capable of. In the Gilligan-penned Season 6 episode “Drive,” Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) is trapped in a speeding runaway car driven by crazed conspiracy theorist Patrick Crump (Cranston), whose head will explode if he doesn’t keep driving at increasingly fast speeds.
In an interview with the Archive of American Television, Gilligan revealed that he didn’t want Crump to be “some nice poor schmuck,” but rather he used the episode as a challenge to create a terrible “creep” and “racist” who audiences would nevertheless feel sorry for by the end of the episode. “We never saw an actor who could pull that off, until … and I was getting nervous because the day was fast approaching when we had to start shooting.” But that changed when Cranston walked in the door.
“Bryan comes in, and he just nails it,” Gilligan explained, highlighting the actor’s impressive ability to “[commit] completely to the nastiness” of the character while still finding a way to make him “sympathetic.” The experience proved to Gilligan that Cranston was a “chameleon” who could disappear into a role — which came in handy when he had to pull off some of the cringiest moments on “Breaking Bad” a decade or more down the road.
Gilligan saw that Cranston could disappear into the role of Walter White
The year after “Drive” aired in 1998, Cranston’s other major television role as Hal on “Malcolm in the Middle” saw him as a wholesome family man. This raised Gilligan’s estimation of him even higher. “I didn’t know he could be funny,” Gilligan recalled. So, when the role of Walter White began to take shape, Gilligan instantly had Cranston in mind.
“Because he can be dramatic as hell, he can be funny as hell, and he’s got this deep, abiding humanity that just pours out of him, whether he means for it to or not,” Gilligan told IGN early in the AMC run of “Breaking Bad.” “You need that humanity and basic likability and Bryan’s got the whole package.”
Walter White was certainly not an easy part to play, but Gilligan could confidently put so much faith in Cranston after what he accomplished behind the wheel in “Drive” — which is certainly one of the best “X-Files” episodes.