Perhaps what we should remember RJ Mitte first for was his acting talent — the way that, as a young teen, he conjured the deep and complete inner life of Walter White’s son on “Breaking Bad,” helping lend the show’s criminal hijinks an underpinning sorrow. Then there was his advocacy, speaking in interviews about how his cerebral palsy diagnosis hadn’t stopped him from fulfilling a dream and urging greater representation throughout the industry.
Mitte, who died Oct. 12 at only 34, had the most charmed of breakouts: After some early acting work, he got cast on “Breaking Bad,” which went from promising-but-flawed pilot to cultural phenomenon as it ran on, and that still — as its placement as the best TV show of the century in the New York Times’ recent survey shows — commands a powerful legacy.
But Mitte wasn’t merely along for the ride. He made the role of Walt Jr. his own, and his journey throughout the series tracks his father’s degradation. As Walt Sr. (Bryan Cranston) picked up steam as a small-time druglord, his sweetly naive namesake delighted in his father’s presence, rooted for his recovery and couldn’t understand why his mother (Anna Gunn) stood in the way of family happiness. By the end of the series, by the time the senior White has taken control of the drug trade across the American Southwest in bloody fashion, Walt Jr.’s renunciation of his father is one of the few things Walt Sr. can still feel. Mitte’s character wishing his father dead — when earlier in the season he’d so desperately hoped his father would live — was an acting showpiece, and a testament to how deeply “Breaking Bad” allowed Mitte to burrow into character over the long term.
By the time of this final confrontation, Walt Jr.’s (and Mitte’s) cerebral palsy had become something other than noteworthy. It was a fact about both young men, one that the viewer noticed but that didn’t define either. The younger Walt was loyal, or thwarted, or heartsick — or, it ought to be said, tall and strikingly handsome — before he was anyone’s idea of an object of pity. (Indeed, his final interaction with his dad proves he might have been twice the man his father could’ve been.) The character, a 2008 profile of Mitte in the Los Angeles Times said, is “just an everyday teenager who cracks jokes, takes the bus to school and gets busted for trying to score some beer. The effects of cerebral palsy are there — he uses crutches to get around, though in reality Mitte doesn’t need them — but the words ‘cerebral palsy’ have yet to be mentioned on the show, nor have his parents made a single reference to his affliction or hardships.”
That’s a testament to careful, thoughtful writing on the part of creator Vince Gilligan’s “Breaking Bad” team, but also to Mitte’s own ability to balance the reality of his situation (a reality that, as the Times notes, he amplified in order to play Walt Jr.) with thought about who else Walt Jr. might be. This was the power of what is still rare now and was rarer in 2008, when “Breaking Bad” began: Hiring an actor with a disability to portray that disability. (The 2016-2019 ABC sitcom “Speechless,” starring Micah Fowler, an actor with cerebral palsy, in a story about the complications a tough, loving middle-class family face, strikes me as but one example of a show made possible by the positive reception to Mitte’s performance.) Mitte’s work, off-camera, continued to shine a light on what might be possible if Hollywood looked as open as real communities do; his work on-camera had already made the point, over five seasons.
Mitte continued to work after “Breaking Bad.” He was doing press for the movie “Talking to Strangers,” which is on VOD, even recently. And it’s hard not to wonder what else he might have achieved. Just last week, he appeared on a podcast and responded to speculation that “Breaking Bad” might someday return to the airwaves with new episodes. “If we came back,” he said, “I would want it better than ‘Breaking Bad’… And it’s really hard. I set really high standards for myself that I can never meet. But I would really hope that if the show does come back for a sequel, it would raise the bar on a higher level.”
That was Mitte in a nutshell — and why the work he did at such a young age still resonates.