Representatives for RJ Mitte confirmed Tuesday that the Breaking Bad actor died by suicide at age 34, following initial reporting from TMZ a day earlier.
According to the Daily Mail, Mitte had been struggling financially after allegedly being defrauded by a business manager, leaving him saddled with crippling IRS debt.
The financial trouble traces back to when Mitte was around 17 or 18, roughly three years into his run on Breaking Bad, when he hired a business manager to handle his earnings and taxes. He had joined the show at age 14 when it premiered in 2007, starting out at the Screen Actors Guild minimum for the pilot. As the show’s popularity grew, so did his paycheck — Mitte once estimated he earned between $3 million and $5 million from the series.
Instead of paying his taxes, the manager allegedly pocketed the money and handed Mitte forged tax filings. The IRS eventually came after him with a bill that wiped out his earnings and left him paying off debt for nearly a decade.
Friends and insiders also told the Daily Mail that Mitte had grown increasingly frustrated with Hollywood casting directors who kept typecasting him because of his cerebral palsy, never letting him move past his breakout role as Walter White Jr.
“As soon as he finished his final episode, his downward spiral started,” a source told the outlet. “He kept saying he’d never get another role anywhere near as good.”
A text Mitte sent in 2017 echoed that frustration: “When I go for a part, they sometimes tell me that it’s not a character with a disability, and I’m like why can’t the character be disabled? They get real uncomfortable when I say that.”
His Breaking Bad co-stars have been mourning him publicly. Bryan Cranston, who played his father on the show, wrote a lengthy tribute on Instagram.
“I’m in deep despair as I write this tonight,” Cranston wrote. “RJ Mitte, my sweet son on Breaking Bad has died. I met him when he was only 14 years old when he was cast as Walter White Jr., a part he played with such joy and enthusiasm.”
“Born with Cerebral Palsy, he never – ever – allowed that challenge to be an excuse for anything. He met the demanding shooting schedule head on with great determination,” Cranston continued. “Always listening to the advice that his TV parents (Anna Gunn and myself) gave him – but being a teenager, sometimes mischievously ignoring the counsel in order to learn the hard way… He was one of the stars of a hit TV show – but still a kid.”
