Who would have thought Malcolm in the Middle’s Hal could have come this far? Bryan Cranston, now more known as Breaking Bad’s drug dealer/chemistry teacher Walter White, co-stars in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive alongside Ryan Gosling and Albert Brooks. While Gosling may be considered an actor of all trades, Cranston may just be up there right alongside him.

From sitcom to high-intensity television drama, Cranston is a three-time Emmy winning actor, and deservedly so. He brings a similar layered intensity to Drive, and with over five films currently in production, including Ben Affleck’s Argo, and his own screenplay, Home Again, in the works (which he will also direct), Cranston is only getting better.

The Underground: There’s a kinship between Nicolas and Ryan, the director and star. What was it like to work with them?
Bryan Cranston: What was terrific about it is that Ryan wanted Nicolas to direct the movie because of Bronson and Valhalla. This is Nicolas’s first Hollywood picture. But as you can see, the result—it’s still a Nicolas Refn movie. It’s like a hybrid, a mix of a Hollywood action plot-driven movie combined with a European sensibility. It’s a slower paced, character-driven movie and somehow, some way, it blended, it came together. …And it still has the excitement, the drive and the violence…and then it slows down and there are scenes where there’s no dialogue, and wow, it forces the audience; just relax, we’ll take you on this trip.

TU: Were you familiar with Nicolas’s work?
BC: I saw Bronson and Valhalla, and [they] knocked me out. I was like, where is this going? I don’t know, it’s like, it kinda scares me because it’s not conventional or linear in that sense. So that was easy, to meet with him. And he’s a fan of Breaking Bad, and that’s why he wanted to meet me.

Breaking Bad has a cinematic feel to it as well, it’s a slower pace, and then quick and then slow, etc. Hopefully what the rest of Hollywood has learned from our series and Drive and other movies is that they think American audiences want the quick cut instant gratification, no. What they want is to be taken away with a great story.

Breaking Bad will never have huge audiences of millions and millions of people watching it—why? Because it’s so specific, it’s a specific taste. It’s like when you’re a kid and you don’t like a certain kind of cheese, but when you get older, ‘I kinda like this now’. The most popular flavour of ice cream in the world is vanilla. But I don’t want to make vanilla as a film or a television show so that the entire world can embrace it. Few people can do that really well. Pixar is one, where they can make a cartoon that adults can watch. There shouldn’t be a one size fits all, there should be a movie, a TV show, just for adults to see.

TU: How were you approached to be a part of Drive?
BC: Nicolas offered it to me in the course of our conversation, and I said, “Well, I’d like to, can I think about this?” And he goes, “What’s there to think about?” And I said, “Well, I have ideas about the character.” And he said, “Well, what do you want to say? What do you want to do? Say whatever you want to say, do whatever you want to do, you can do whatever you want to do.” Which I thought, hmm, I can do whatever I want to do [in context], that’s intriguing.

And he doesn’t drive! [laughs] So he’s doing a movie about driving. …But we all got together, we’re all pitching ideas; what do we want to say, what about this? And they’re writing it all in. We get on the set and he’s saying, where do you want to be, what do you want to say?

…It forces every actor out of any type of laziness. …I like to get into it, so this was my playground; it was fun to work every day.

TU: You’ve been in a lot of gritty territory lately, are you ever planning on getting back into comedy?
BC: I know, please, have you heard anything? [laughs] I’d love to do something funny! Little by little, it’s not what I’m being offered for the most part right now. I just did some voice work for Madagascar 3 and The Simpsons, and another thing is coming up that’s not quite done yet so I can’t talk about it, but there are some things coming up, so it’s fun. It’s a good observation, because it’s funny, I finished Malcolm in the Middle after seven years, and now I have to be patient to pull back from the drama, so that more comedies can come back into the world.

TU: What can you tell us about Home Again?
BC: Ah! It’s a book, a novel, I’m adapting into a screenplay. It has a very strong father-son relationship and a murder mystery; I just loved the combination of the two in the novel. And in my neophyte take on it, I want to see if I can make this story work where you have two things going on. Make it muddy, make it uncomfortable, make it messy, and it seems to work to me. So I’m very pleased with where it’s coming and hopefully it’ll progress to the point where I can finish writing and direct it, and we can make this movie at some point in the next one to two years.