RJ Mitte

Actor, Advocate & Walter Jr.

RJ Mitte was amazing. It's funny, but I didn't know how much until I found out he was gone.  That it had really happened.  That it was real.  Then I thought about a lot of stuff. Things I hadn't thought about for a long time.  I guess I kind of took him for granted or something.  I mean, Breaking Bad is just always there.  You expect to be able to put it on any night and see Walt Jr. at the breakfast table, giving his dad a hard time, eating his bacon, driving everybody crazy about the car.  And you expect the actor behind him to always be around too, showing up in some new movie, or on a stage somewhere talking about cerebral palsy, or being a good sport about the breakfast jokes one more time.  I don't feel that way now.  Everything's different since Monday.  Since I found out he isn't going to be around to do any of that anymore.

Now I feel lucky every time I put on an episode and he's in it.  I even like the scenes where Walt Jr. is just mad at everybody. It means he's still there.  Still Walter Junior.

RJ was born in 1992 and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when he was three years old.  As a kid he spent years in leg braces and casts and in therapy, learning to walk the way he did.  He never really talked about it like it was a big deal.  He got into acting almost by accident after his family moved to Los Angeles, and in 2008, while he was still a teenager, he got the part of Walter White Jr. on Breaking Bad.  The funny thing is that his own cerebral palsy was milder than his character's, so he had to learn how to walk on crutches and slow down his speech to play Walt Jr. He worked hard to get it right, because for a lot of people that character was going to be the first person with C.P. they ever saw on TV.  He played him for all five seasons.  Most people online know the character as Flynn, or as "the breakfast kid," and he was always a good sport about that.

The thing about RJ is that the acting was only half of it.  The whole time he was famous he used it to talk about disability.  He was a celebrity ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy.  He was the spokesperson for I AM PWD, the actors' union campaign for performers with disabilities, and he sat on the SAG-AFTRA Performers with Disabilities Committee, which gave him its Harold Russell Award in 2013.  He worked with Shriners Hospitals for Children on their #CutTheBull anti-bullying campaign, because he got bullied himself growing up and he didn't want other kids with differences going through that alone.  He gave talks at schools and conferences all over the world about it.  I think he really didn't understand how many people he reached.  He was just really into making sure the next kid had it easier than he did.  That's what makes him brave to me.  He expected everybody, including Hollywood, to do better, and when they didn't try he didn't cut them any slack.

After Breaking Bad ended in 2013 he kept working.  He was Campbell on Switched at Birth.  He hosted Outrageous Acts of Science.  He made movies like Who's Driving Doug, Dixieland, Time Share and Triumph, where he played a kid with cerebral palsy who wants to join the wrestling team, and he produced that one himself.  He modeled for Gap and walked the runway for Vivienne Westwood in Milan, which is a pretty big deal for a guy who spent his childhood in leg braces.  He did all of it with cerebral palsy and he never let anybody turn it into the only thing about him.  Later he moved to Brownsville, Texas, and that is where he died on Monday, October 12, 2026. He was 34.

One thing I don't understand is how someone that good gets 34 years and that's it.  I don't think that's right.  I don't know everything about what happened and honestly it's not my business.  What I know is that for a lot of people my age he was the first person with a disability we ever saw on TV who wasn't a joke or a lesson.  He was just Walt Jr., who was mad at his dad and loved his breakfast and wanted a car.  That was a big deal even if we didn't realize it at the time.  That's the thing about RJ - he gave a lot of people a way to see themselves.  I don't want the next kid who gets diagnosed with C.P. to grow up not knowing who he was.  I want them to know him for themselves.  That's why I'm doing this.  On the show, his character made a website to save his dad.  I can't save RJ. But I can make sure people remember him.

He was 34 years old.
That is way too soon.

To honor him, please send a contribution
to a cause he fought for
and keep his family in your prayers!

Or give to Shriners Children's, where he was a patient as a kid.