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Like so many actors out there, Nicolas Cage marveled at the performance of Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad. In fact, it was Cranston’s iconic work as Walter White that made the Academy Award winner comfortable with the idea of starring in a TV show.
In a new interview promoting Spider-Noir, his upcoming Amazon MGM live-action series, Nicolas Cage explained the shift in thinking that led him to his first major television role.
Nicolas Cage says that watching Bryan Cranston stare at suitcases in Breaking Bad made him comfortable with the idea of starring in a TV show
“I began to see that the actors in that show were afforded the luxury of time to tell their story. I saw Bryan Cranston staring at a suitcase for what seemed like minutes. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and all he was doing was staring at a suitcase, and it occurred to me that you can’t do that in movies: You don’t have the time. I thought, maybe with an eight-hour narrative, I can start planting seeds for a character that can bloom into something that I don’t have the luxury of time to do in a movie,” Cage explained in an interview with Variety.
Cage isn’t the only legendary actor to heap praise on Cranston’s performance, as Anthony Hopkins famously told him in a hand-written letter that it’s the “best acting he’s ever seen.”
In Spider-Noir, Oscar nominee Brendan Gleeson stars as the villainous Silvermane opposite Cage’s “The Spider,” who we spoke to at-length about his role in the series, playing Irishmen in old-world NYC, his memories from In Bruges, and more. Cage and Gleeson are joined on the cast list by Lamorne Morris, Li Jun Li, Karen Rodriguez, Abraham Popoola, and Jack Huston.
You can check out that interview below, and watch all the episodes of Spider-Noir on Prime Video.