Bryan Cranston had reason to be in good spirits when we chatted Tuesday night on the Sony lot in Culver City. It was a splashy premiere party for his buzz-worthy AMC series "Breaking Bad," which premieres on Sunday night.

There was a screening and a party and I gotta say, I've never seen anything like it!

Bryan plays a high school chemistry teacher sleepwalking through life. But in a Jekyll and Hyde twist, turns to making and selling drugs (after finding out he has terminal cancer) to leave his family taken care of financially.

"When I read it I thought, Well, this isn't even an issue of breaking the Hal on `Malcolm in the Middle' scenario," said the actor, nominated for three Emmys for his role as the dad on "Malcolm." "It transcended that. When you have this kind of character and this kind of writing, it's rare and you have to take advantage of that. We have such a great cast and it's all coming together."

"Breaking" is only the second series to air on AMC, the first being "Mad Men" which won the Golden Globe Award this week for Best Drama series. But the execs at AMC and at Sony Pictures Television who produce the show weren't immediately sold on Bryan.

"They were thinking, and rightfully so, `Wait a minute. The goofy dad? He's not right for this guy. This guy is a weighty, deep kind of character."'

But Bryan had a champion in series creator Vince Gilligan who he had worked with on an episode of "X-Files" more than a decade ago.
"We scheduled a 20-minute meeting and it turned out to be an hour and a half and we just hooked in. I locked into the character, he locked into me and he was my champion from that point on and he told Sony and AMC, `This is the guy, this is the guy I want.' Trust me, it'll work."'

After seven seasons on a successful show like "Malcolm," which ended its run in 2006, Bryan was content to keep steadily working in TV and films without any thought to lightning striking twice as far as being a series lead.

"I've never felt like the industry owes my anything," he said. "I work hard and whatever comes my way I take advantage of. I actually thought - and deservedly so - that `Malcolm' would be the lead line in my obituary at some point but who knows? Maybe it won't."