Diksha Sundriyal
Showtime’s ‘Your Honor’ follows the story of a man named Michael Desiato. He is a judge, which means that it is on him to uphold the law under all circumstances. However, when his son gets embroiled in a hit-and-run case that leads to the death of a mob boss’s son, Michael leaves behind all of his ideals of justice and breaks all sorts of laws to save his son’s life. It doesn’t end well for him as all of his lies pile up over time and come crashing down on him. In the second season, we find him in a pitiable situation. He appears to be on the brink of death. Because he is so thin and frail, it might make you wonder if actor Bryan Cranston lost weight to embody the change in Michael. Here’s what you should know about it.
Bryan Cranston Lost Weight to Play Michael Desiato
When we meet Michael in the second season, he is grappling with the loss of his son, who died at the end of the first season. Adam was all he had, and his death leads Michael to lose his will to live. In the prison, he tries many ways to kill himself, one of which is starving himself to death. Because around a year has passed since he was imprisoned, the change starts to show in him. Things have gone so bad that we can actually see his ribcage at one point.
Committed to his role, Bryan Cranston decided to lose weight in reflecting not only Michael’s physical state but also his mental health to the audience. In a conversation with Metacritic about his return as the law-breaking judge in the second season of ‘Your Honor’ Cranston talked about the fall of Michael from being a respected member of society to a criminal responsible for the loss of many lives. He has lost all meaning and doesn’t care what happens to him anymore, which needed to clearly appear to the audience, which, Cranston said, means “the hair grows, my posture changes, [there’s] weight loss.”
Michael’s appearance at the beginning of the second season is also pivotal in establishing just how low he is at this point in his life. The actor explained how the character is supposed to rise from the rock bottom that he has hit. “There can be a reconstruction of a human being if that person follows certain human protocols to get back in touch with their humanity. And that’s what happens here… Season 2 has a very slow spiral upward, for lack of a better description, and it actually made me feel better about human beings and the complexity that we hold,” Cranston said.
The Academy Award-nominated actor is well-versed in the art of losing and gaining weight to reflect the situation of his character. For the role of Walter White in ‘Breaking Bad’, he went through another such transformation to show just how worse of a situation Walter was in. Similarly, for playing a homeless character in ‘Wakefield’, Cranston lost around sixteen pounds. All of it, understandably, he did with the help of professionals who curated his diet to meet the requirements of his body while also allowing him the necessary change in appearance to serve the character.
Read More: How Did Adam Die? Did Hunter Doohan Leave Your Honor?
