RJ Mitte's death was confirmed on Monday in a statement released through the talent management agency that represented him. "It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of beloved actor, philanthropist, and passionate disability rights advocate RJ Mitte," said Sean Reilly, one of his representatives. Cameron County Justice of the Peace Cyndi Hinojosa told the Associated Press that she declared Mitte dead at about 1:30 p.m. at what she believed was his home in Brownsville.
Authorities did not immediately release an official cause of death, and Hinojosa said an autopsy would be performed. TheWrap reported on Monday evening that Mitte's representatives confirmed he had died by suicide. Other outlets, including the Associated Press and Reuters, reported only that no official cause had been announced.
Mitte was born Roy Frank Mitte III on August 21, 1992, in Jackson, Mississippi, and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a condition affecting movement and coordination, when he was three years old. He moved to Los Angeles in 2006 to pursue acting, working small parts before winning the role that would define his career.
He was cast as Walter "Flynn" White Jr., the teenage son of Bryan Cranston's Walter White and Anna Gunn's Skyler White, appearing in 56 episodes across the AMC series' five seasons from 2008 to 2013. His character — a young man who used crutches and went by the nickname Flynn — grew from an admiring son into a figure forced to confront his family's unraveling as the truth about his father's secret life came into view.
The show became one of the most decorated dramas in television history, collecting 16 Emmy Awards including two for outstanding drama series, and it was recently named the best television show of the 21st century in a New York Times poll. In 2014, Mitte and his castmates received a Screen Actors Guild Award for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series for the show's final season.
After "Breaking Bad" ended, Mitte kept working across film and television. He held a recurring role on ABC Family's "Switched at Birth," starred in Netflix's "The Guardians of Justice," and added film credits including "Who's Driving Doug," "Time Share," "Standing Up for Sunny," "The Oak Room" and "Triumph" — a 2021 coming-of-age drama in which he played a high school wrestler with cerebral palsy and which he also executive produced.
Alongside his screen work, Mitte became one of Hollywood's most prominent advocates for performers with disabilities. He served as a Screen Actors Guild spokesman for actors with disabilities, a celebrity ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy and Shriners Children's, and president of The Mitte Foundation, the nonprofit he founded. In 2013 he received the SAG-AFTRA Harold Russell Award, given to industry professionals with disabilities who have advanced public understanding of the disability experience through the media.
Tributes began arriving on Monday evening. Dean Norris, who played Hank Schrader on "Breaking Bad," wrote on social media that although Mitte had not played his on-screen son, he had always looked out for him as a young actor on set. "He was a sweetheart of a young man and will be greatly missed," Norris wrote. "This is so heartbreaking, I can't believe it."
Mitte was among the few openly disabled actors to hold a central role in a prestige American drama, and he often credited his own experience as the reason his performance rang true. His career ran two full decades — from a teenager starting out in Los Angeles to a philanthropist leading his own foundation — and it made him a quiet reference point for advocates pushing for wider representation of disabled performers.