Representatives for Breaking Bad actor RJ Mitte confirmed Tuesday that he died by suicide at age 34, a day after news of his death first emerged. The confirmation followed initial reporting from TMZ.
According to the Daily Mail, Mitte had been dealing with serious financial strain stemming from an alleged fraud by a business manager that left him saddled with a large IRS debt.
The trouble reportedly began when Mitte was around 17 or 18, roughly three years into his run on Breaking Bad, after he hired a business manager to oversee his earnings and taxes. Mitte had joined the show at age 14 when it premiered in 2007, initially earning the Screen Actors Guild minimum for the pilot. As the series became a hit, cast pay rose substantially, and Mitte once estimated he earned between $3 million and $5 million from the show overall.
Instead of paying his taxes, the manager allegedly kept the money and supplied Mitte with forged tax filings. The IRS later came after Mitte for a bill that consumed his earnings and left him with debt that reportedly took nearly a decade to pay off.
Friends and other sources described Mitte as increasingly frustrated with how Hollywood, and casting directors in particular, viewed him after Breaking Bad. Mitte has cerebral palsy, and those close to him said he felt typecast as a disabled actor and unable to move past his role as Walter White Jr.
“As soon as he finished his final episode, his downward spiral started,” a source told the Daily Mail. “He kept saying he’d never get another role anywhere near as good.”
A text message Mitte sent in 2017 appeared to reflect that frustration directly. “When I go for a part, they sometimes tell me that it’s not a character with a disability, and I’m like why can’t the character be disabled?” he wrote. “They get real uncomfortable when I say that.”
Co-stars react
Bryan Cranston, who played Mitte’s father on Breaking Bad, posted a lengthy tribute on Instagram.
“I’m in deep despair as I write this tonight,” Cranston wrote. “RJ Mitte, my sweet son on Breaking Bad has died. I met him when he was only 14 years old when he was cast as Walter White Jr., a part he played with such joy and enthusiasm.”
“Born with Cerebral Palsy, he never – ever – allowed that challenge to be an excuse for anything. He met the demanding shooting schedule head on with great determination,” Cranston continued. “Always listening to the advice that his TV parents (Anna Gunn and myself) gave him – but being a teenager, sometimes mischievously ignoring the counsel in order to learn the hard way… He was one of the stars of a hit TV show – but still a kid.”
