Lacianne Carriere wept openly as she delivered a eulogy for her brother RJ Mitte at his memorial service on Friday.
The service drew mourners to the Mitte Cultural District in Brownsville, Texas, the hometown the “Breaking Bad” actor, 34, never stopped championing. Carriere, his younger sister, stood before the crowd and described a bond that ran far deeper than sibling ties.
“RJ Mitte was my older brother but I not only just lost a brother, I lost my father,” she said during the service, per footage shared to YouTube. Carriere explained that their mother, Dyna Mitte, had been paralyzed from the waist down in an accident during Carriere’s infancy, leaving RJ to step into a parental role almost immediately.
“RJ immediately took on the father role,” she told those gathered.
Carriere struggled to find words for the breadth of her loss. “I don’t have many words that I can put together but all I can say is that every part of me is RJ,” she continued. “Every type of music I listen to, everything I watch, every game I play, our mannerisms, and I just really miss my brother.”
She also spoke of her brother’s devotion to the community that had come to honor him. “This was his community,” she said. “He loved it here and he loved all of you and he loved this city.”
Carriere closed her remarks with a direct appeal to anyone facing their own darkness. “Try to accept the help, try,” she pleaded. “Try your hardest. And just reach out to someone.” She urged those who “is struggling” to not “feel like you’re alone.”
Reports said on Monday that Mitte, best known for playing Walter White Jr. On the AMC series, had died at 34. A rep said in a statement, “It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of beloved actor, philanthropist and passionate disability rights advocate RJ Mitte.” The rep noted that for his role in “Breaking Bad,” RJ “drew from his own experience living with cerebral palsy” and “brought authenticity to the role and built a platform on disability awareness and inclusion.” A rep later confirmed that RJ’s cause of death was suicide; his manner of death remains pending while family members await autopsy results.
Dyna Mitte spoke in an interview published Thursday, recounting the morning she found her son. “I called him at 11 [a.m.],” she told the outlet, noting he typically slept until midday. “He didn’t answer, so I picked up lunch and went to take it to him, and that’s when I discovered him.”
Dyna also revealed that a friend had told the actor something “that he was very hurt over.” She expressed regret that she had not forced him into therapy amid apparent mental health struggles. “If I had known anything and could have done anything different, I truly would have,” she said. “I would have given my life for his life,” She added, “We all go through heartbreak in our life and we all deal with it differently,” confessing she wished she’d dragged him “screaming and yelling” to therapy.
Following RJ’s death, several “Breaking Bad” co-stars paid tribute, including onscreen mother Anna Gunn, onscreen father Bryan Cranston, and Aaron Paul.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text Crisis Text Line at 741741.
The Brownsville memorial came five days after the outlet first reported Mitte’s death, giving family and community members their first formal chance to gather and remember an actor who turned his own experience with disability into a platform for millions.
