RJ Mitte was only 14 years old when he was cast as Walter White Jr. (also known as Flynn) on “Breaking Bad,” playing the son of a teacher turned drug kingpin. In a 2016 interview with Vice, Mitte recalled his reaction to reading the character breakdown, which called for an actor with brown hair, big eyebrows and mild cerebral palsy. “That was my life,” he thought, “except for the methamphetamine.”
Mitte’s arc as Flynn is one of the most heart-wrenching on the AMC crime drama, created by Vince Gilligan. Throughout its five seasons, he was a steady moral compass, tracing a painful journey from earnest teenager to collateral damage of his father’s dark turn. Over those same five seasons, his offscreen relationship with his TV parents and the rest of the cast blossomed into a genuine family unit.
In 2021, Mitte told Courageous Nerd that Cranston, Anna Gunn, Betsy Brandt and Dean Norris, “all of them, were like my mom, dad, aunt and uncle, on TV and in real life.”
“It was a special group and I don’t think when it comes to cinema or television that we’ll really have that again,” he added. “That was a perfect storm, man.”
On Monday evening, his TV dad, played by Bryan Cranston, remembered the actor, who died by suicide earlier in the day at age 34.
In a tribute on social media, Cranston wrote, “I’m in deep despair,” alongside a photo of himself and Mitte smiling from what appeared to be the early days of the show, which ran from 2008 to 2013 and would become one of TV’s most celebrated series. Mitte was “pretty raw when we started shooting the pilot in February of 2007, but little by little we watched him grow into a really fine actor.”
“Always listening to the advice that his TV parents (Anna Gunn and myself) gave him — but being a teenager, sometimes mischievously ignoring the counsel in order to learn the hard way,” Cranston continued. “He was one of the stars of a hit TV show — but still a kid.”
Cranston admired Mitte, who was born with cerebral palsy and appeared in 56 of 62 “Breaking Bad” episodes, for never letting his disability hold him back: “He met the demanding shooting schedule head on with great determination.” And he praised Mitte for parlaying his fame into advocacy work for performers with disabilities as well as toward philanthropic efforts focused on disabled people.
“All that promise and potential now is such a loss,” Cranston wrote. “It is especially devastating to hear that he took his own life. Why? We were texting each other just a few weeks ago — figuring out when we could meet for lunch. I don’t know if that lunch would have changed his future … But I do know that I loved him,” Cranston concluded. “I’ll miss you, son.”
On Tuesday, in a statement to The New York Times, Gilligan said, “We couldn’t have picked a better young man to play that role,” but “more importantly, RJ was a good person.”
“He was fun and kind and he had a big heart. He had an ever-present, crooked grin,” Gilligan said. “In my mind’s eye, I never picture him without it. I always picture him as happy. I’ll continue doing that.”
“Our crew is devastated. We all watched RJ grow up together, and we were proud of him,” Gilligan went on, adding that he’d communicated with Mitte as recently as September about a “Breaking Bad”-related business idea of Mitte’s. “The world has never made much sense to me. It makes even less sense now.”
Norris, who played the D.E.A. agent Hank Schrader, uncle to Flynn, also shared his reaction to the news on Monday. “I am heartbroken,” he wrote. “Though RJ didn’t play my TV son, I always looked out for him as a young kid on set. He was a sweetheart of a young man and will be greatly missed. This is so heartbreaking, I can’t believe it.”
On Tuesday, Giancarlo Esposito, who played the meth kingpin and primary antagonist Gus Fring, shared a few photos of himself with Mitte, including one of the pair laughing together on a Comic-Con panel.
“No words can express what your friendship has meant to me,” Esposito wrote. “I will remember the laughter, the rapture of pure joy in the loving moments we have shared. I will remember the magnitude of your kindness, your philanthropy, your being in service to others before yourself.”
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