Bryan Cranston praises Anna Gunn while defending Skyler White

Walter White may not have been the best husband, but Bryan Cranston will furiously defend Anna Gunn until his dying breath.

While doing a Q&A with his Malcolm in the Middle costar Frankie Muniz for Hot Ones Versus on Tuesday, April 7, Cranston was asked who the better TV wife was: Skyler White portrayed by Anna Gunn in Breaking Bad, or Lois portrayed by Jane Kaczmarek (Lois) in Malcolm in the Middle.

“Well, strictly from a character standpoint… Louis,” replied Cranston, prompting Muniz to echo the general viewer sentiment towards Skyler: “I wanted to kill Skyler… Your life would have been so much easier! You were such a bad guy, you could’ve just gotten rid of her. All she did was complain!”

That’s when Cranston interjected to offer a more nuanced take on Skyler and criticise the real-life hate and death threats that Gunn received.

“She got a lot of blowback from that. Well, first of all, Anna Gunn is a superb actor,” said Cranston, who then pointed out how absurd the hate was. “Her husband leaves without any explanation. She’s pregnant. He’s making crystal methamphetamine. People have died… and she’s the b*tch?!”

Gunn herself has opened up about the extreme backlash that she faced by Breaking Bad fans. In a 2013 New York Times Op-ed, she acknowledged that “viewers are entitled to have whatever feelings they want about the characters they watch.”

“But as a human being, I’m concerned that so many people react to Skyler with such venom,” she continued. “Because Skyler didn’t conform to a comfortable ideal of the archetypical female, she had become a kind of Rorschach test for society, a measure of our attitudes toward gender.”

Over time, the reception towards Skyler has shifted. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2024, Gunn noted that fans have told her Skyler was the “conscience” of the show.

“Or they say, ‘The first time I watched it, I hated that character. But the second time I watched it, I realized, ‘Oh my God, that poor woman,’” said Gunn.