Bryan Cranston got the Weekend at Bernie’s treatment in the Season 1 finale of The Studio. The critically acclaimed Apple TV+ comedy came to a hilarious end with the Continental Studios team pulling off their presentation at CinemaCon following the chaos of looking for Griffin Mill.
After finding Cranston’s character in a fountain outside of The Venetian Resort, Quinn Hackett, played by Chase Sui Wonders, came up with the idea to Weekend at Bernie’s Griffin so they could get him back to the room and ready for the presentation.
“It’s time for some movie magic,” Matt Remick (SethRogen) says before he and Sal (Ike Barinholtz) puppeteer Griffin’s body, dressed in a printed shirt and cowboy hat, through their Las Vegas hotel.
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“A lot of confused Breaking Bad fans on The Venetian floor that night,” Rogen remarks in an exclusive interview with Parade.
The actor, who co-created the hit series, admits they didn’t rehearse the Weekend at Bernie’s scene. “We didn’t rehearse at all. When we wrote it into the script, I remember being like, I really hope this works,” Rogen laughs. “I have nothing other than the movie Weekend at Bernie’s to tell me that this type of joke will work. I remember when we started shooting it and me and [Barinholtz], we were like, practicing,. And we tied our shoelaces to his and we sort of started working, like, ‘1, 2, 1, 2.’ I was like, ‘It’s working! We’re Weekend at Bernie‘s-ing him.'”
And Cranston was on board for all of it. Plus had ideas of his own.
“Bryan does not take convincing. He’s game,” Rogen shares. “If anything, he’s looking for ways to push it further and further. I actually think the leopard thong and the waist trainer and the sock garters were all his idea.”
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“We did not ask him to make love to a statue. He just did that,” Barinholtz adds of Cranston, whom he calls “one of the great American actors.”
At one point in the episode, Cranston’s character emerges from the bathroom, disheveled, wearing a waist trainer, dickey and leopard underwear.
“I’ve watched each episode like dozens and dozens and dozens of times at this point, but still, every time he comes out of the bathroom in his funny little underwear, and we’re kind of carrying him out, I laugh out loud every single time I see it,” Rogen says.
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Barinholtz admits he was in “awe of the majesty” of Cranston’s physical comedy. “Like his body’s incredible,” Barinholtz says. “He’s able just to move it in such a stupid way.”
Rogen points out that Cranston, who starred in Malcolm in the Middle, is a comedian by trade.
“He’s so loose,” Catherine O’Hara says of the Emmy winner.
“He’ll do anything,” Rogen notes, adding with a laugh, “And then he’ll get very scary.”
The Studio streams on Apple TV+
Next, Everything We Know About Season 2 of The Studio
