Michele StuevenAfter a Hollywood career spanning decades, award-winning actor Bryan Cranston, who captivated us as Walter White in Breaking Bad, recently turned to his wife, actress Robin Dearden, and said, “I want to start slowing down.”
Since then, he has just come off a 10-day night shoot in the Hollywood Hills with Madonna for the next season of his Emmy Award-winning role in The Studio, returned from London starring on stage in All My Sons just in time to promote the reboot of the long-running hit TV show Malcolm in the Middle alongside Frankie Muniz and Jane Kaczmarek.
“You call this slowing down?” Deardon asked him.
“I’ve been doing this for a very long time. The only way, really, to slow me down is to literally take a knife to my body,” Cranston, who is scheduled for shoulder surgery, tells LA Weekly over lunch.
The break has also given the Canoga Park native a chance to celebrate 10 years of Dos Hombres, the premium agave spirits brand he launched with Breaking Bad co-star Aaron Paul, and to expand the brand beyond its mezcal roots by introducing Blanco and Reposado expressions this month.
“In the three years after Breaking Bad, Aaron and I hadn’t seen each other a lot,” says Cranston, who won four Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama series Emmys for his work in Breaking Bad.
From left: Aaron Paul, Bryan Cranston, and Bob Odenkirk, winners of Outstanding Drama Series for “Breaking Bad” in the press room during the 66th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards in 2014. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
“We went from seven years of intense working together and becoming the best of friends to not seeing each other at all,” he says. “It’s like when you leave college, and tell each other, ‘oh, we’ll see you soon,’ and then life steps in and everyone goes their separate ways. One night, we were on the phone and realized we were both in New York. That night, we made a point of having dinner. We were sitting at a sushi bar telling each other how much we missed each other, and Aaron said, ‘You know what we ought to do? Start a mezcal and tequila company together.’
As with any other project Cranston gets attached to, he threw himself into learning about the subject with the same energy and passion that he devoted to perfecting his Tony award-winning role as President Lyndon B. Johnson in All The Way.
“Aaron and I, as actors, are used to not knowing things we’re going into,” he says. “I’m playing Lyndon Johnson and don’t know any more than when I was a kid. So now I have to dive in and learn everything I can about this man. That’s the same approach we took with the tequila. Let’s dive in and learn how it’s made, why it’s made, and the history of it. We learned that the tequila makers and mezcaleros are like fine chefs. We normally steam 70%, and the rest is cooked in a brick oven for flavor, and combine the two. Our tequila maker, Julio, just knows the recipe and when it’s right. Every batch that he cooks sits for a month. He says it needs time to rest before we bottle it. It needs a chance to calm down and breathe the air. We try to go down at least once a year. The hardest part is pinning down a time in our schedules when we can both go to Jalisco or Oaxaca for the mezcal together.”
Mezcal quality control (Courtesy Dos Hombres)
The hearts of the agave plants, piñas, are cooked in pits in the ground, similar to how barbacoa is made, giving Dos Hombres its signature smoky finish. Dos Hombres is the product of multiple generations of Mezcal producers from the small village of San Luis del Rio, in a remote section of Oaxaca. Gregorio Velasco, a third-generation mezcalero, is a key maestro and partner of the brand. The new tequila can be found at BevMo, as well as Javier’s, Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Escuela Taqueria, Lincoln Fine Wine, and Rancho Park Wine & Spirits.
“It’s hard to believe that we have already been working on Dos Hombres for a decade now,” Paul told LA Weekly in an email. “Building this brand from the ground up has been exciting, but has also come with a fair amount of challenges that we as a team were focused on overcoming. From the very start of this company, we had a clear vision. To bring something out into the world that was pure and rooted in deep Mexican heritage. We’re not interested in adding anything to our Mezcal and now our Tequila that was never meant to be there. Natural spring water and 100% pure agave, that’s it. No reason to hide the flavor of something so beautiful and pure.”
Jane Kaczmarek from left, Bryan Cranston, and Frankie Muniz at Hulu’s “Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair” premiere at the DGA theater in New York in April (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty Images)
As one of the hardest working actors in Hollywood, it’s been a long time since Cranston has taken the time to relax and breathe in the air since his childhood days growing up in the San Fernando Valley, annual Mexico visits notwithstanding.
Born in Hollywood and raised in Canoga Park, Cranston went to Sunny Brae Avenue Elementary, Christopher Columbus Jr. High, and Canoga Park High School, followed by LA Valley College in Van Nuys.
“You went to the school that was the closest to your house,” says Cranston, who admits to having his first margarita at age 15. “I remember the valley in the 60’s when you’d hop on your bike and ride around the orange and walnut groves. It was just miles and miles of nothing but ditches, trees to climb, and old abandoned houses to investigate. In those days, your parents didn’t know where you were all day. You just kinda knew when you had to be home. My mom would use her broken Spanish and yell ‘aquí!, aquí!’ from the back porch at dusk. That was her signal that it was time for dinner. There was tremendous freedom in those days. You played with friends who were in your neighborhood. Driving kids to play dates was completely unheard of; you just rode your Schwinn bike everywhere.”
Seth Rogan and Bryan Cranston in “The Studio” (Courtesy Apple TV)
As for the next generation, his daughter Taylor Dearden Cranston carries on the family tradition as an actor and director, known for her role as Dr. Melissa “Mel” King on the HBO Max hit show The Pitt. In addition to inheriting her father’s sense of humor and sarcasm, as well as his mighty eyebrows, she also shares his take on responsible drinking.
“Aaron and I refuse to take shots,” says the elder Cranston. “I want to taste the spirit. Taking a shot is to try to get drunk quickly. I don’t want either. I don’t want to do it quickly, and I don’t want to get drunk. I want to savor the taste. What I’m proud of in my daughter’s generation is the ride-sharing. If Taylor goes out and knows she’s going to be drinking anything she’ll always take an Uber or Lyft.”