Walter White’s Secret History Of Nerd Acting

Walter White’s Secret History Of Nerd Acting

OK, so it’s not that secret, but in this, a week where Bryan Cranston’s final performance as Walter White has been the talk of the internet, it’s as good a time as any to look back on a time when he was…doing voice-over work for anime.

Before Breaking Bad, before Malcolm in the Middle and even before his short run as a dentist on Seinfeld before that, Cranston was a guy who hustled working guest stints on TV series like Touched by an Angel, Sabrina, 3rd Rock From the Sun and an assortment of cop shows.

But it’s his turns on nerd series that are way more interesting. Cranston has been:

  • A ship captain on Babylon 5.
  • Two rubber-suited villains on Power Rangers (it’s also claimed that the Blue Ranger – Cranston – was named after him).
  • The star of an awesome off-canon episode of the X-Files.
  • Philip Moses in an episode of The Flash TV series.
  • In an episode of Airwolf. Airwolf!
  • A regular on the Clerks animated series.

He also, for a while, did voice-over work on anime. Really. Yeah, everyone knows he was Jim Gordon in a recent Batman cartoon, but that was recent. In the 1990s, he appears in some of the best anime of all time!

Sometimes credited under his real name, sometimes credited as “Lee Stone”, Cranston lent his talents to anime including Street Fighter II (as Fei Long), the terrific Macross Plus (as main star Isamu Dyson, at 1:53 in the video above) and, best of all, the classic Royal Space Force, where he voiced Matti, one of Shirotsugh’s loser friends.

So the next time you’re feeling down about Breaking Bad coming to an end, remember, you can always get a partial fix by…getting hold of some bad 90’s TV/great 90’s anime!


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