A fourteen-year-old with almost no professional credits beat a months-long nationwide search to become Walt Jr., because the creator of Breaking Bad refused to let a nondisabled actor play a character written with cerebral palsy.
The search stretched across several months and continued after cameras had already started rolling on the pilot. Gilligan based the character on a college friend with cerebral palsy and drew the line firmly. "Vince only wanted actors who had CP," casting director Sharon Bialy recalled. "So we conducted a nationwide search."
Mitte had come to Los Angeles by accident. His family relocated from Houston after his baby sister was spotted at a water park and booked a Universal Studios campaign; his mother was a single parent, partially paralyzed from a car accident, and his grandparents were dying. Six months of covered expenses bought him time, and he took extra work on Hannah Montana, Weeds, and Everybody Hates Chris while waiting.
His first-ever audition, an anti-meth public service announcement for California, ended in rejection. The Breaking Bad breakdown then read like a personal description: dark hair, big eyebrows, and mild cerebral palsy. Four callbacks and six months followed. At that first meeting, Bialy, nursing a hurt foot, handed him her own crutches. The final round meant a 6 a.m. flight to New Mexico, then a screen test opposite Anna Gunn and Bryan Cranston.
The payoff landed in "Ozymandias," where Flynn throws his father across the room to protect Skyler, and in the penultimate episode's phone call, when he rejects Walt's last hundred thousand dollars with a flat, "Just shut up! Just stop it." Mitte built the moment from his own life, from the point where a kid decides to become the adult.
"I'll always remember him as a young kid, bright, talented, and a real sweetheart," Dean Norris writes of his on-screen son, now collected in the oral history "Do What You're Gonna Do."