Actor Bryan Cranston has said he’ll “absolutely” support Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race — but in an interview Monday morning on NBC, the four-time Emmy-winner said if he could play any real-life historical figure, he’d pick presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.
“I’d like to play Donald Trump at some point,” Cranston said on Today. “He’s huge. He’s this Shakespearean character, this serio-tragic-comedic character. Who wouldn’t want to take a bite out of that?”
Cranston, who snagged multiple Emmys for his iconic role as cancer-stricken chemistry teacher-turned-meth kingpin Walter White on Breaking Bad, said his impersonation of the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee is “huge.”
“Huge, it’s huge,” Cranston said, before launching into his best Trump impression: “Let me tell you something, and this I can tell you, it is huge.”
(Impression starts at around the 4:00 mark.)
Playing a president on film wouldn’t be anything new for the 60-year-old star.
Cranston had a starring turn as President Lyndon B. Johnson in HBO’s All the Way, a political drama about the former president’s first year in office after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
He’s also played other real-life figures like blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in last year’s Trumbo (for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination) and undercover Customs agent Robert Mazur, in this month’s The Infiltrator.
The actor has made it clear that he does not agree with Trump’s policy proposals, though he has in the past called the candidate’s candor “refreshing.” In May, Cranston told CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield that he believes Trump “loves this country.”
But a month earlier, Cranston called Trump a “power broker” who is “devoid of substance” and last week, the actor compared Trump to a “massive” cargo ship without cargo.
“I think [Trump] is like a huge cargo ship. Massive, commands attention. Demands it. His wake leaves tremendous problems. His displacement of water is enormous. And yet, you go into the cargo hold and you go, ‘Hello, hello’ and it’s empty. There’s nothing there,” Cranston said in an interview on Ora TV’s Larry King Now.
According to BillyPenn.com, Cranston is set to attend the final day of the Democratic National Convention later this month in Philadelphia.
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