Sharon Bialy of Bialy/Thomas & Associates is a revered, Emmy-nominated casting director who is perhaps best known for Breaking Bad, but has also cast many other high-profile projects including The Walking Dead, The Handmaid’s Tale, Barry, Dead to Me and Pluribus. Below, she pays tribute to the actor RJ Mitte, who died on Oct. 12 at the age of 34.
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The first time I met RJ Mitte was when he came in to audition for the role of Walt Jr. on Breaking Bad.
Vince Gilligan wrote the character as having cerebral palsy because he’d had a college roommate with that affliction and wanted to pay tribute to him. My partner, Sherry Thomas, and I, and Vince and his producers, Melissa Bernstein and Mark Johnson, were very firm on only casting the part with somebody who had CP.
We had never done a search for an actor with cerebral palsy, and we knew we had to search the entire country. We couldn’t just do the standard posting, because we wanted to explain what we were trying to accomplish with the part and the show — that a husband and wife had a son who had cerebral palsy, but it wasn’t really talked about. We reached out to cerebral palsy organizations all across the country, as well as local schools and nonprofits that supported disabilities.
I’ve kept notes on my sessions with the actors I have auditioned for every job I’ve ever done, and I just found my notes for Breaking Bad. It was Feb. 23, 2007 when RJ came in to audition. He was 14 at the time, so he came with his mother. He was repped by a small agency at the time. He might have done a commercial audition or two, but he was very green, so we spent a lot of time together working on the scene, because he hadn’t had an opportunity for a role this big.
It didn’t matter that he’d never done anything before, because he was so joyful and happy to be there. He was completely open to playing with the scene, and after the audition he was willing to talk about the struggles he’d gone through as someone dealing with cerebral palsy. He’d had years of physical therapy in order to be able to walk without crutches, and years of speech therapy in order to be able to be understood. We filled Vince in on his personal history.
We ended up seeing approximately 20 actors before narrowing it down to two. We flew both RJ and the other actor out to New Mexico because Vince was already there in pre-production, so they both read with Bryan Cranston and Anna Gunn. After that, there was quite a bit of discussion, because it wasn’t a matter of one actor being better than the other — they were quite different from each other, and there were a lot of things taken into consideration.
I felt strongly about RJ for a variety of reasons. One plus was that he was so good-looking. I remember saying to Vince, “How great would it be if he was on the cover of Teen Beat magazine, a young actor with cerebral palsy?” The other actor may have been a little harder to understand. Vince’s writing was so beautiful, and we wanted to make sure that the audience would be able to hear all the dialogue. Eventually, Vince told RJ directly that the part was his. But we also called RJ and his mom to celebrate.
Over the years, we stayed in touch with RJ as best we could. Because Breaking Bad was shot on location in New Mexico, we didn’t spend much time on set; I would see him when we went to New Mexico, but most of our interactions were at Emmys parties and things like that. And during one hiatus from the show, we also cast him in a guest spot on the TV show Vegas. It was incredibly meaningful when, in 2011, Sherry and I were honored with the Media Access Award for fostering opportunities for actors with disabilities, and RJ presented it to us.
We didn’t get to spend as much time with him as the rest of the Breaking Bad family, who are just gutted, but we spent enough time with him to get to know and love him. The fact that he took his own life came as a big surprise to most of us. But given how hard life is today for all actors, I can only imagine how much harder it must have been for an actor with a disability, especially one who went from being a series regular on an amazing show with amazing people, to then having to go back out there and fight tooth and nail again just to be able to do what you love.
When people think of RJ, I hope they will remember how talented he was, how he overcame so many struggles, how he approached everything with joy and fearlessness, and how he advocated for other people with disabilities to be considered for roles of all sorts. I know that I will remember all of that, and his million-megawatt smile.
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