Watching Breaking Bad, the iconic blue meth that Heisenberg became known for has become a symbol of the show.
Never has one drug become so iconically linked to a single show or movie, with even news about meth dealers being caught now leading to Breaking Bad comparisons being made.
This will lead many watching the show to ask, what did they make the TV meth out of?
This is a question Bryan Cranston himself has answered and, sorry to ruin things from the outset, it isn’t actual meth.
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Despite Cranston having revealed in interviews that he knows how to make it due to research for the show, the actual pieces of ‘meth’ on the show were something else entirely.
The Breaking Bad star spoke about what the meth actually was in an interview with Sean Evans on Hot Ones, the interview show in which celebrities answer questions whilst eating the hottest wings known to man.
Asked about the ‘meth’, Cranston said: “TV methamphetamine, the way we made it with a little blue tint, is actually rock candy.”
He went on to tell the story of how they were filming a sequence in which Walter White and Jesse, played by Aaron Paul, were in their ‘dungeon’ of a meth lab cooking for Gustavo Fring.
He described how he saw Paul reach out and throw the fake meth into his mouth, leading him to ask: ‘What are you doing? You can’t eat the product’.
After being told to try it by Paul, he stated he was still ‘in character’ so refused.
He went on to say: “I tasted one it was like: 'That’s pretty good!’ They rolled the camera and he and I are just talking, we’re like eating all the methamphetamine.”
Supposedly, Cranston said the ‘meth’ tasted like ‘Cotton Candy’.
The fake meth was made by the show’s production designer Robb Wilson King, who consulted with real drug dealers and officers of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
In an interview with The Guardian, Robb revealed that the DEA actually had to get involved due to how authentic the fake product was.
He said: “We had to return everything to the DEA, so they could destroy it as if it were real.
“They didn’t want it out there on the streets.”
Some of the fake meth on the show was even reportedly stolen from the set.
He went on to say of dealing with drug dealers and the DEA consulting for the show: “By operating this way, we were able to access neighbourhoods and homes used for cooking meth. We even made friends with some of these people.
“It was pretty scary. You’re dealing with a real dangerous thing.
“If it’s done wrong in your presence, you could suffer. But it’s important to feel it and see it – you can translate that to film.”
Topics: Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston, TV and Film, TV, Drugs
Michael Slavin