Body Language of Breaking Bad – The Weight Of The World Posture
Christopher Philip
Are you Walter White? Do you walk around with the weight of the world applied to your shoulders – rounding them?
Watch Bryan Cranston explain in his own words how he crafted his character Walter White’s persona and how it developed over the course of the series (start at 6:20). If you’re unfamiliar with the story, the character Walter White in Breaking Bad begins the series as a downtrodden high school teacher struggling to support his family from whatever fate befall them. As the season progresses, his character develops into a villain who controls his world and writes his own destination.
In the early episodes, Cranston says he rounded his shoulders as if the weight of the world was being applied to them. He would bow his head. In the interview he shows how he would hang his head bobbing it forward. He says this represented the “tension and depression held inside him.”
As White develops into the Heisenberg persona of the super-meth-villain Cranston says the character takes on a more upright posture with shoulders back. He says the posture is “greater, more powerful and in control.” He wanted the character to “manifest his stateliness.”
So now ask yourself, how do you manifest yourself? Do the results in your life cause your head to drop, your shoulders to round or do you write your own persona and control the results you desire?
Resources
Images courtesy of AMC.