Watch Bryan Cranston as the President He Compared to Walter White in the Trailer for 'All the Way'

He didn't ask for the job, but someone's gotta do it.

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Complex Original

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Bryan Cranston proved he's got the dramatic chops to do anything when he joined some celebs in reading "Hotline Bling". And of course, before that there was his infamous role as Breaking Bad's Walter White—a role he says has followed him even in his turn at playing President Lyndon B. Johnson in All the Way which has released a trailer.

"I think if you drew a Venn diagram, there would be a lot more in common than outside the circle. Very ambitious, very exceptional in what they do," Cranston toldEntertainment Weekly talking about White and LBJ while discussing All the Way. "[They] can be selfish, can be self-righteous, very talented. There's a tremendous amount that they have in common. It’s really just serendipitous to me that I was in the right place at the right time.”

HBO's All the Way is the Steven Spielberg executive produced film adaptation of the Broadway play of the same name in which Cranston played LBJ. He even won a Tony award for it.

The film, as the trailer makes clear from its opening, follows the events after President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination. Vice President Johnson becomes President (or "accidental President" as he says people will call him, though Johnson would go on to be elected for a full term afterwards).

Those aforementioned events also include the fate of President Kennedy's Civil Rights Act (making racial discrimination and racial segregation illegal among other things) as seen in the trailer when LBJ's on the senate floor asking for it to be passed into law. LBJ's later seen facing off with a senator intent on blocking the Civil Rights Act warning him, "If you get in my way, I'll crush ya." The trailer also sees LBJ meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., portrayed by Avengers star Anthony Mackie.

Watch Cranston as LBJ try to commandeer a nation in racial turmoil facing a looming threat of violence on both sides.

All the Way premieres on HBO May 21.

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