Bryan Cranston talks Power Rangers role as Zordon

Bryan Cranston is set to take on the role of Zordon in the upcoming Power Rangers cinematic reboot — but it won’t be his first foray into the franchise.

In the most recent episode of The Jess Cagle Interview, the 60-year-old Breaking Bad star recalled voicing a villain named Snizzard in the ’90s children’s television series after PEOPLE and Entertainment Weekly editorial director Jess Cagle surprised him by playing a clip from an episode.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that, and please God, I don’t ever want to hear that again,” Cranston joked.

The role was not without its benefits, however. “It was a great training program,” Cranston told Cagle. “Here you are in front of a microphone, you’re trying to convey a character that you have to give all the emotion, because it’s a costumed thing. You have to be able to tell the story that way.”

The acting vet was initially skeptical about joining the Power Rangers reboot as sage Rangers advisor Zordon — or “the floating head,” as Cranston remembers. “I talked to the producer, and he said, ‘Do you know how the Batman television series then transformed into being the Batman movie series — could not be more different from each other. That’s what this is going to be,'” Cranston recalled. “I said, ‘Now you’ve got me intrigued.'”

Once he saw teaser footage, chatted with director Dean Israelite, and read the screenplay, Cranston was in. “I read the script, and the script is really good,” he said. “So I thought, ‘Why am I not doing this? Let’s do this.'”

Hear more about Cranston’s Power Rangers experience in the clip above, and listen to the full interview this weekend on EW Radio (SiriusXM Ch. 105) or see it below.