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Bryan Cranston Played Some Hilariously Mean Pranks on Aaron Paul During Breaking Bad

Ten years ago, Breaking Bad gave us the gift of one Jesse Pinkman, meth cook, Roomba dad, and lover of the word "bitch." But the character we now know and love five seasons later almost never made it very far. As Aaron Paul explained during the show's 10th-anniversary panel at San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday, the writers originally wanted to kill off his character in Season One—a fact that Bryan Cranston decided to take advantage of with some evil and hilarious pranks.

“He came up to me the first time he did it and just gives me a really long, exaggerated hug," Paul recounted, according to Time. He’s just not letting me go [and I’m like], ‘What’s going on?' He’s like, ‘Hey, man, it’s been a fun ride.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ He’s like, ‘I thought you read the script, right?’ [I was like,] ‘No.’ He’s like, ‘Oh,’ and then he just walks away. And I run into the production office, and I’m like, ‘Where’s the script?!’ And they’re like, ‘It’s not available yet,’ and I’m like, ‘Please, god, tell me.’ And then I read it and I was alive still.”

But, being the man who won four Emmys for his deep excavation of Heisenberg's interiority, Cranston didn't just let it end there. According to Time, Paul said his co-star also roped in the Breaking Bad props department. “There was another time where they did a fitting [and said], ‘We need to measure you for the coffin,'" he said, according to Time. "[I’m like,] ‘A coffin?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, you don’t know about it?’"

Of course, the show kept Jesse around until the very end. As Vince Gilligan told Variety in January, "the kid was too good to kill."

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