#Ozymandias actor series#

First, he sets a fictional scene, introducing a second character, a kind of Ancient Mariner, though one with the gift of brevity, to give his 'personal account' of the ruined sculpture. Whether a writer is drawing on personal experience or literary research, imagination is crucial, and Shelley approaches the task with great imaginative flair. As potently as the wilderness symbolised spiritual freedom for the Romantic writers, ancient ruins declared the triumph of time and nature over human tyranny.Ī competition, light-heartedly undertaken, may have been the sonnet's immediate occasion, but Shelley's passion for the politics of his theme is evident in the poem and integral to its solidity. 'The book was central to the evolution of Romanticism from a specifically English and insular aesthetic to a universal political and philosophical force,' writes the anonymous author. The various literary sources of the poem are fascinatingly explored in this essay which suggests that Volney's The Ruins of Empires (a French work appearing in English translation in 1792) was of major significance, and not only to Ozymandias. Shelley could not have seen it at the time of writing, and he had never been to Egypt, but he would have certainly seen illustrations of ruined cities and statues. This head would later be shipped to the British Museum. I promise you, no babies were harmed in the episode.”Ĭranston told The Ringer the episode arc featuring Walter kidnapping Holly put the series’ importance as a work of television into perspective and proved to him the real power of the medium.Shelley's interest in Egyptology was already established, as revealed by some of the imagery of an earlier poem, Alastor, but perhaps it had been rekindled in part by the news of the excavation of the colossal head of Rameses II. “That was one of the best performances in the whole series. “That’s one of those pure lightning strikes of luck that you probably don’t get twice in a lifetime,” Johnson added. It was more than I could ever have hoped for in the writing.” “What was extraordinary was that Bryan went with it, you know,” Walley-Beckett said. Johnson was behind the camera when he heard the baby cry out “mama,” and he reacted by looking at the crew around him and silently hoping Cranston would not break character. made this baby go, ‘Mama, Mama.’ We knew we had gold.”Ĭranston said his eyes “bugged out” when he heard the baby going off script, but the moment rang true and it allowed him to capitalize on Walter’s emotions. “And it was the first time that we said, ‘OK, let’s do this,’ and we gently took the baby. “We were setting up for a master shot of the bathroom with me and the baby,” Cranston remembered of filming the scene. “It was like somehow she understood what was going on in that scene,” executive producer Melissa Bernstein told The Ringer about the unscripted moment all these years later.

#Ozymandias actor series#

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The baby’s mother was just offscreen during filming, so the child responded “mama” while cameras were rolling.

As Walley-Beckett revealed in 2016 after the episode aired, Holly had no lines of dialogue in the script. As Walter is staring down at his infant child, baby Holly utters the words “mama, mama,” prompting Walter to snap to his senses and realize the extremity of his destruction. The devastating turn of events led “Breaking Bad” to its most powerful unscripted moment, as the cast and crew explain in The Ringer’s oral history of the landmark episode.