Giancarlo Esposito appeared on a recent episode of SiriusXM’s “Jim & Sam” while promoting the new AMC drama series “Parish” and revealed that he was so unemployed before landing his iconic role as Gus Fring on “Breaking Bad” that he once considered arranging his own assassination so that his children would have some financial protection thanks to his life insurance money.
“I started to draw”
The actor considered the possibility around 2008, a year before ‘Breaking Bad’ changed his career forever and opened the door to roles in ‘The Mandalorian’, ‘The Boys’ and more.
“My backstory is that he was a military man who rose through the ranks and could have been president, even possibly a dictator and taken over.”
Asked how he got out of near-bankruptcy around 2008, Esposito said, “The way out in my head was, ‘Hey, do you get life insurance if somebody kills themselves?’, ‘Do you get money from that?’
“My wife had no idea why I was asking these things. I started to draw. If I had someone kill me, accidental death, [τα παιδιά μου] they would get the insurance. I had four children. I wanted them to have a good life. It was a difficult time. I literally contemplated self-destruction so they could survive. That’s how low I was.”
“I think, in his younger years, he could have been someone like Tony Montana”
“That was the first indication that there was a way out, but I wouldn’t be here [στον κόσμο] so I can be around my kids,” Esposito added. “Then I started to think that this is not sustainable because the pain I would cause them would be lifelong and there would be trauma forever which would just extend the generational trauma I’m trying to move away from. The light at the end of the tunnel was ‘Breaking Bad’.
“Yes, I would love that”
Esposito appeared as Gus Fring in 26 episodes of “Breaking Bad” and then reprized his role in the earlier series “Better Call Saul” for 34 episodes. He told British GQ earlier this year that he was very interested in playing Gus for a third time in a prequel series about the villain.
“Yes, I would love that,” he declared. “My backstory is that he was a military man who rose through the ranks and could have been president, even possibly a dictator and taken over. But he wanted to do something that could not be controlled by others and he wanted to control his own destiny. And so he left to make a new life for himself in America and become a meth dealer, a businessman.”
“I think, in his younger years, he could have been someone like Tony Montana,” Esposito continued. “But he worked to become balanced enough to hear, perceive and see through his emotional state. We would hope it could be ‘The Rise of Gus’.
*With information from Variety