Bryan Cranston opens up about his ‘white blindness’ and ‘privilege’

‘Breaking Bad’ star Bryan Cranston spoke at length about acknowledging his ‘white privilege’ during an interview with the Los Angeles Times, published on Wednesday, revealing that he turned down a theater production after realizing his “white blindness.”

“I’m 65 years old now, and I need to learn, I need to change,” said Cranston, who told the newspaper that the Covid-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter made him face his own “white blindness” and “privilege.”

Cranston revealed that he decided to ditch an attempt at directing his own production of Larry Shue’s 1984 comedy ‘The Foreigner’, which mocks the Ku Klux Klan, after discovering it was privileged to find it funny.

“It is a privileged viewpoint to be able to look at the Ku Klux Klan and laugh at them and belittle them for their broken and hateful ideology,” the actor claimed, adding that “it’s not funny” that the Ku Klux Klan and “white supremacists” are “still happening.”

Cranston said that once he realized he had one or two racial “blind spots,” he started to question what else he was “blind to,” and concluded that he shouldn’t be “taking up space” with a play “where rich old white people can laugh at white supremacists and say, ‘Shame on you,’ and have a good night in the theater.”

Things need to change, I need to change

During the interview, Cranston also criticized the idea of free speech, declaring, “There need to be barriers, there need to be guard rails.”

“If someone wants to say the Holocaust was a hoax, which is against history… to give a person space to amplify that speech is not tolerance. It’s abusive,” the millionaire actor claimed.

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Cranston has previously weighed in on racial issues and expressed his support for the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 after the murder of African American George Floyd.

“I make a good living using my imagination. But I can’t possibly imagine, with any real honesty, what it must be like for a black person living in America,” said Cranston in June 2020.

“It’s not enough for white people to feel compassion for those who are mistreated. Outrage is needed,” he declared.