With Bryan Cranston recently returning to the feature format with Jerry & Marge Go Large at Paramount+, Collider's own Steve Weintraub got the chance to sit down with the star to discuss his warm, fuzzy new comedy with Annette Bening. The film is based on a Huffington Post article of the same name following Jerry and Marge Selbee, a married couple out of Evart, Michigan who live a normal, down-home, folksy life until they hit it big. After Jerry finds a loophole in Michigan's WinFall lottery, they start raking in the dough, using the money not just for themselves, but the entirety of Evart. While much of the focus of the interview was on the film, the talk inevitably strayed to director Wes Anderson.

Cranston has worked with the legendary director on two occasions. His first, however, didn't give him the full Anderson experience as he was merely lending his voice to the director's unique 2018 animated feature Isle of Dogs. Although he got to star as Chief alongside Koyu Rankin, it didn't quite compare to getting matched with Anderson again on his upcoming film Asteroid City. Featuring a legendary cast that has Cranston opposite Margot Robbie, Tom Hanks, Scarlet Johansson, Maya Hawke, and Steve Carell, the film's finer details are being kept under lock and key at the moment with the only major plot detail out there being that it's set in a fictional American desert town as students and their families gather for a junior stargazing convention.

When asked if he ever thought his voiceover work would one day lead to a call to work with Anderson in live-action, Cranston spoke to earning his trust and how different it was to be on the set with the director. He described both the daunting task of fitting his meticulously planned vision and the familial atmosphere that came with being a part of his film:

When you work for an author like that, it is a big trust exercise. We did this movie coming up, Asteroid City, in Spain, and it wasn't easy work. Working for Wes is not easy. It's very detailed and very specific and so you really have to really concentrate hard. What offsets that is the congeniality and the togetherness of the experience. We're all at this five-star hotel in Spain and every single night is a banquet. Every single night you are exchanging thoughts and laughter and someone brings a guitar, and you're singing, and you're talking. It's just so familial. It's like fulfilling an actor dream camp. It was a really, really great experience albeit, again, the work was very specific and very difficult.

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Image via 20th Century Fox

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Anderson has a signature style to his work, fitting the saying "every frame is a painting." It's part of why the director has received such widespread acclaim, receiving seven Oscar nominations for his work. Despite the difficulty, Cranston compared him to Hanks as someone who everyone wants to work with. Moreover, he describes the insane amount of work Anderson would put in to convey to his actors what he wants, adding:

When someone like that calls, it's the same thing, I did the same thing with Tom Hanks. When he calls for something, it's like, yes and what am I doing? I say to Wes Anderson, yes, what is it you want me to do? That's the way it is for all the actors. We kind of show up and say, what is it you want us, how do you want to do this? Wes makes an animatic and voices all the characters in the animatic, what he calls the cartoon. So we watch it on a laptop. We watch the entire movie that he voices on a laptop and it's like, oh, got it. I see where you're going. I see what you're doing and let me see if I can hit that target, the character you've already created. Let me see if I can point my arrow toward it and hit it bullseye.

What's the Deal With Asteroid City?

Asteroid City will see Anderson reteam with his The French Dispatch and Isle of Dogs collaborator Roman Coppola to pen the story. There's no word on when the film could release, but it's certain to be a big event when it eventually hits theaters. For now, you can see Cranston in Jerry & Marge Go Large on Paramount+. Check out the trailer below and look for more from our interview with Cranston soon.