RJ Mitte, Breaking Bad Actor Who Later DJed, Dies at 34

RJ Mitte, who played Walter White’s son on Breaking Bad and later began performing as a DJ, has died at 34. TMZ reported the death was by suicide, on Monday, October 12.

Representatives confirmed it in a statement, describing Mitte as an actor, philanthropist and disability rights advocate. Born in 1992, he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at three and drew on that experience in playing Walt Jr., a role that carried much of the series’ domestic weight. As part of the ensemble, he was nominated for three consecutive Screen Actors Guild awards, winning in 2014, and received the SAG-AFTRA Harold Russell Award in 2013.

Work after the show ran across television and independent film, including Vegas, Switched at Birth, This Close and Who’s Driving Doug, plus a return to Walt Jr. on Robot Chicken. He served as an ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy and Shriners Children’s.

Mitte began performing as a DJ in 2015 and described that work in unusually direct terms. “You can play a chord or a note and it immediately affects an emotional response in the brain,” he told the BBC in 2016. The observation sits close to the argument he made elsewhere: that access and inclusion are not favours granted to disabled people but baseline conditions for a public life.

One career made him recognisable. The other gave him a room to work a crowd on his own terms.