SAG Awards 2017: Bryan Cranston imagines what LBJ would say to Donald Trump

Once again, Bryan Cranston has been elected a SAG winner.

On Sunday night at the 23rd Annual SAG Awards, Cranston won the award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series for his turn as President Lyndon B. Johnson in HBO’s All the Way.

After thanking those involved with the project, his wife, and his daughter, Cranston noted that he’s often asked how LBJ would react to President Donald Trump. “I honestly feel that 36 would put his arm around 45 and earnestly wish him success,” he said. “And he also would whisper in his ear something he said often as a form of encouragement and a cautionary tale: ‘Just don’t piss in the soup that all of us gotta eat.'”

Backstage, Cranston defended actors celebrating in the current political climate. “I don’t think it’s the wrong thing to celebrate good work that has nothing to do with other things,” he said. “It’s important to mark occasions.”

“We’re human beings and citizens before we ever became actors and activists or artists of any kind,” he continued. “If something is important to you, if something appears before you in a way that feels [oppressive], it’s up to the citizenry to speak out. Not everybody agrees, but that’s part of democracy, and we’re allowed to do that. So many countries around the world, you’re not even allowed to voice objections or dissent. That’s what the country was founded on. So we shouldn’t be afraid of it. We should embrace everything so that the voices are all heard and then people make up their own minds as to how they want to continue.”

Having won two SAG Awards for portraying Walter White on Breaking Bad (plus a third with the drama’s ensemble), Cranston previously told EW about the surprising similarities between the president and the science-teacher-turned-drug-lord.

“I think if you drew a Venn diagram, there would be a lot more in common than outside the circle,” he shared. “Very ambitious, very exceptional in what they do. [They] can be selfish, can be self-righteous, very talented. There’s a tremendous amount that they have in common. It’s really just serendipitous to me that I was in the right place at the right time.”

Facing stiff competition for the award, Cranston won over The Night Of stars Riz Ahmed and John Turturro, and The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story‘s Sterling K. Brown and Courtney B. Vance.

Click here for the complete list of winners.