Breaking Bad fans should be extra excited for the Super Bowl this year thanks to PopCorners. Bryan Cranston (Walt Whitman), Aaron Paul (Jesse Pinkman), and Raymond Cruz (Tuco Salamanca) all reunited for PopCorners’ debut Super Bowl LVII commercial (watch below) that will air during the big game on February 12, almost ten years after the hit AMC series finished airing. Raymond, 61, spoke to HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY and said it was “surreal” to reprise his role as Tuco, the iconic drug kingpin. But Raymond also admitted that he’s unsure if he’d play Tuco ever again in a possible future Breaking Bad-related project.
“It’s a difficult task. I say it with trepidation, because it wasn’t easy to do the first time,” Raymond explained. “It wasn’t easy to reprise it on Better Call Saul. And it definitely was not easy to do in the PopCorners ad,” he added. “It’s so taxing on you. It’s so high energy. Even when Tuco’s not saying anything, it’s bubbling underneath.”
The actor admitted that he doesn’t “miss anything” about playing Tuco, who met his demise in season 2 of Breaking Bad, but popped up again in the prequel series Better Call Saul starring Bob Odenkirk. “It’s so difficult to do,” Raymond also said about the role.
Raymond also opened up about how he got back into the mindset of Tuco to film the commercial. “Luckily I write everything down. So whenever I build a character I write everything down. So I had my notes,” he said. “You have to do all the work again. I’m not like Tuco. So I had to go back and find exactly where I was at. How I built it, you know, mentally, physically, emotionally, where the character lives. And then you have to recreate that. And to have this platform to do it was amazing.”
Raymond told HL how thrilled he was to play Raymond again, and reunite with two of his former co-stars, for the PopCorners Super Bowl commercial. “It was amazing to have PopCorners contact you that they want to recreate the whole Breaking Bad environment and bring these iconic characters together once again,” he told HL. “To back in the same environment with the same RV that they used in the show, and to be wearing the same wardrobe, it all felt very surreal. It’s almost like it never happened. It’s like a dream.”
Raymond said that filming the commercial with Bryan and Aaron “felt as if we stepped back into the Breaking Bad universe. It felt as if we had never left, even though all this time has passed.” Raymond also said Breaking Bad fans will “get a huge laugh” out of the commercial, thanks to PopCorners’ “twist” on it. “They’re gonna love it,” he said.
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