There’s nothing Bryan Cranston won’t do in the name of art.
This week, Cranston stopped by “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” to chat about the Hulu revival “Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair,” which dropped Friday — nearly 20 years after the original series bid audiences adieu.
Colbert took Cranston on a trip down memory lane, revisiting all the wild stunts the actor would get roped into during the beloved comedy’s initial run.
Cranston, who played Malcolm’s dad Hal on the series, was strapped to the front of a moving bus, painted blue head to toe, drank a concoction of raw eggs and ground meat on camera and learned a disco rollerskating routine that he performed to Queen’s “We Are the Champions” wearing a spandex jumpsuit.
When Colbert presented a photo of the Emmy-winning actor covered in bees during a Season 1 episode of the wacky family sitcom, Cranston recalled a rather unfortunate injury he suffered while filming the Fox hit.
“I had 60,000 bees on me and I was stung twice,” he said. “And a couple things that you realize when you’re wearing 60,000 bees, you should not be surprised if you get stung.”
“So when I got stung, I went, ‘Oh, I think I got stung!’” Cranston said. “And the bee wrangler — he’s ready to scrape it off, right — he goes, ‘Where is it?’ And I go, ‘On my scrotum.’”
“And he goes, ‘You’re on your own.”
According to Cranston, the stunt team was able to cover the actor in bees by using pheromones from the queen bee.
“They take it out on a little eye dropper, and they put it all over,” he continued, adding that the team used insect repellent on his face to keep the bees clear from that area.
Colbert pulled out another series still of the actor who appeared naked and obscured by an open newspaper while his wife, Lois, played by Jane Kaczmarek, shaved his back.
“And here you are being shaved completely,” Colbert joked.
“As one does,” Cranston said.
The four-episode revival, “Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair,” premiered Friday on Hulu, and according to series creator Linwood Boomer, the whole thing was Cranston’s idea. The reunion brings back viewer favorites Cranston as Hal, Frankie Muniz as Malcolm, Kaczmarek as Lois, and a couple of Malcolm’s TV siblings.
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