Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston’s unlikely friendship on the cult favorite Breaking Bad might be an unlikely thing in the show (one’s a high school dropout and the other a high school science teacher who link up to cook meth in a van in the desert) but off the screen, the pair are enjoying quite the enduring bromance. It has all the hallmarks of a lasting IRL union: they share a mezcal company, called Dos Hombres (loosely translated as “Two Dudes”), they look for ways to support the community where their spirits are sourced, and now Cranston is godfather to Paul’s second child with wife Lauren Parsekian.
In a January interview with Esquire, the pair talked their partnership in Dos Hombres as well as their friendship. “He became one of my closest friends—my mentor—very early on,” said Paul. “Someone I can confide in. And when [Breaking Bad] was done, it was a very hard goodbye.” As for Cranston, he adds: “I will say, when I met him (Paul) he was in his twenties. And now he’s in his forties and it’s changed. He’s a husband and a father now.”
Which brings us to the role of father and godfather. Paul has publicly talked about his reversal from not wanting children to yearning for them. When he and his wife were expecting their first child, Story, now 4, he wrote “Hey everyone. Look what I did,” as the caption to an Instagram photo of his partner cradling her baby bump in a tight dress. “Words can’t express how excited I am that this little one has entered our lives. Just thought it was time I would share this beautiful news with all of you.” In December, the couple announced that they were expecting a son.
“You’re such a great dad, by the way,” Cranston told Paul during his interview with Esquire, adding with humor “Speaking of babies, he sent me pictures of his little baby boy with a big nose. Just a huge, huge honker. I’m sure, you know,” tapping his nose, “cosmetic surgery down the road. Is there infantile cosmetic surgery?”
Kidding aside, the actors and business partners seem like they have the stuff a lasting friendship is made of—so it’s no surprise that Paul revealed to Jimmy Fallon “I asked Bryan on his birthday if he would be our baby’s godfather. He said no. He’s very busy.” That’s the thing about The Bromance. Someone is always cracking a joke. “No, he was very excited, very honored,” Paul said. “I love the man to death. He’s one of my best friends in the world, and so it was just a no-brainer.”
As for good deeds, other than giving the universe the wonder that is Breaking Bad, Cranston and Paul have made a mission of supporting the tiny village in Mexico from which the Dos Hombres mezcal recipe hails. Even before launch, they succeeded in getting a water filtration system installed for the town of 400 people. Sure, fresh water benefits the production of mezcal, but Paul added “We did not want to be viewed in any way as these two gringos, going down and … taking ill advantage of a group of people. It’s the opposite of where our heads are.”
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