RJ Mitte obituary

The actor RJ Mitte was a natural choice to play Walter White Jr, the son of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), the high school chemistry teacher turned meth dealer, in the television series Breaking Bad (2008-13), generally regarded as one of the greatest shows of the streaming era.

Walt Jr, also known as Flynn, was modelled by the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, on the son of a friend who had cerebral palsy. Mitte had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy as an infant, and told the Guardian in 2015 that when he read the character summary he thought it “pretty much described me. ‘Dark hair, big eyebrows, cerebral palsy … ’ I was, like, ‘I have this covered.’”

He actually had to overplay the extent of his disability for the part (for example, depending on crutches that he did not need), and from the start his was a key role. Care for Flynn was part of the White family’s financial bind, but it was the boy’s changing relationship to his dad that became the audience’s window into Walt Sr’s progression into vicious gangster. Mitte grew alongside his character. “We watched him grow into a really fine actor ... that promise and potential now is a real loss,” said Cranston of his co-star.

His success as an actor helped Mitte, who has taken his own life aged 34, become a prominent activist for disabled people, working with the United Cerebral Palsy organisation and the Shriners Children’s hospital network. He did not believe cerebral palsy was a hindrance to him. “You develop a different look at how the world sees you and how you see the world,” he said. “I think it’s an asset.” And from early in his life he was determined to make it one.

I met RJ at the 2016 Paralympics Games in Rio, where I was on the commentating team for wheelchair basketball for the host broadcaster and he was working for the British TV station Channel 4. He was an amazing combination of intense focus and almost off-the-wall randomness, fuelled by incredible energy and, of course, a killer smile and laugh.

He was born, not breathing, via emergency caesarean section, in Jackson, Mississippi, and suffered brain damage during the delivery. Soon afterwards he was adopted by Dyna (nee Carriere) and RF Mitte Jr, and named Roy Frank Mitte III, later known as RJ (“Roy Junior”). Two months later, the couple split up, and Dyna raised her son alone. At three, RJ was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and his legs were put in casts for six months, a process that would continue through his therapy in order to straighten his feet.

When RJ was 11, his younger sister, Lacianne (Lacey), was born, but a few weeks afterwards his mother was paralysed in a car accident. RJ helped financially by cutting lawns, doing odd jobs and collecting bottles for refunds.

He was as much father as brother to Lacey, who, in 2006, still an infant, was spotted in a Houston park by a talent scout who offered to represent her. The family moved to Los Angeles, where her agency also arranged acting lessons for RJ. He got small parts in Everyone Hates Chris and in Hannah Montana, before being hired for Breaking Bad, which debuted in January 2008, when he was 15. It ran for five seasons and won six Emmy awards, including in 2014 the prize for best ensemble cast.

In 2013, Mitte won the Screen Actors Guild’s Harold Russell award, given in recognition of those “who advance the accurate portrayal and employment of people with disabilities”. “Hollywood has always portrayed disability as a weakness, something you have to overcome,” Mitte said. “To me it’s the complete opposite ... it’s a personal challenge to grow and explore.”

After Breaking Bad, Mitte appeared on TV in an episode of Vegas (2013) and then a full season in Switched at Birth (2014), as a wheelchair user, the love interest for the deaf girl Daphne, one of the “switched” characters of the title.

His film work was largely with independents, in a number of horror and crime films, and others where his cerebral palsy was a part of the story. Who’s Driving Doug (2016) is a road movie written by a man with muscular dystrophy. Mitte was particularly good in the Australian Standing Up for Sunny (2019), in which he played a disabled man who is dragged into an attempt to make a hesitant standup comic more confident. Critics praised the comic timing between Mitte and Philippa Northeast, as the comedienne.

In Triumph (2021), Mitte played a bullied student with cerebral palsy who takes up wrestling to prove himself in high school. On TV he played the Mind Master in 2022 in the successful part-animated series The Guardians of Justice. Perhaps his most impressive film was the poorly distributed All the Little Things We Kill (2019), in which a college professor holds a classroom hostage in order to get a ban on semi-automatic weapons passed.

Earlier this year, in the film Talking to Strangers, he played a loner with cerebral palsy who opens his tightly structured world to an exuberant woman, who later tells him that she plans to take her own life. One Eye Open was scheduled for release in the week of Mitte’s death; another film, Cassi, has been finished and awaits its release date.

In 2025, Mitte announced his engagement to his long-term girlfriend Kennedy Suarez. He is survived by his mother and sister.