Bryan Cranston Met RJ Mitte at 14, Watched Him Grow into a Breaking Bad Actor and Stayed Close After the Show. Weeks Before Mitte Died at 34, They Were Still Texting
by Jerome London · Thought CatalogUpdated 5 minutes ago, October 13, 2026
Bryan Cranston posted a tribute to RJ Mitte on Instagram the night Mitte died, saying the two had been texting just weeks earlier, trying to pin down a lunch. “I don’t know if that lunch would have changed his future,” Cranston wrote. “But I do know that I loved him.”
Mitte died Monday, October 12, at 34. His representative confirmed he died by suicide in Texas.
Cranston met Mitte when he was cast as Walter White Jr. at 14 and watched him go from a raw teenager on the Breaking Bad pilot in February 2007 into, as Cranston put it, “a really fine actor.” Mitte, who was born with cerebral palsy, played a character who shared the condition.
“I’m in deep despair as I write this tonight,” Cranston wrote. “RJ Mitte, my sweet son on Breaking Bad has died.”
He said Mitte never let the condition be an excuse and met the demanding shoot head on, sometimes ignoring the advice his TV parents, Cranston and Anna Gunn, handed down. Mitte later described the cast as a real family and said he respected Cranston and Gunn as much as his own parents.
Cranston and Mitte’s last public reunion, alongside the broader cast, was at the 2024 SAG Awards. Dean Norris also recalled looking out for Mitte when he was a kid on set, calling him “a sweetheart of a young man.”
Mitte went on to advocate for performers with disabilities and received SAG-AFTRA’s Harold Russell Award in 2013. He served as president of the family-founded Mitte Foundation, which supported South Texas philanthropy and people with disabilities, and as an ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy and Shriners Children’s.
He was engaged to longtime partner Kennedy Suarez, whom he’d known for about 10 years. Mitte proposed on her 30th birthday, October 10, 2025, at a United Cerebral Palsy gala in California. They lived together in Brownsville, Texas, where he died at home.
In the weeks before his death, Mitte was promoting Talking to Strangers, including a September 30 screening and an early-October podcast appearance. Another project was due for release on October 16.
“All that promise and potential now is such a loss,” Cranston wrote. “I’ll miss you soon.”
If you or someone you know is struggling or in a mental health crisis, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
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