Giancarlo Esposito recently revealed on SiriusXM’s ‘Jim & Sam’ that he was near bankruptcy before landing the Gus Fring role. He recalled his life before ‘Breaking Bad’:
“My way out in my brain was: ‘Hey, do you get life insurance if someone commits suicide? Do they get the bread?’ My wife had no idea why I was asking this stuff. I started scheming.”
The actor was ready to end his life to sustain his family in 2008:
“If I got somebody to knock me off, death by misadventure, [my kids] would get the insurance. I had four kids. I wanted them to have a life. It was a hard moment in time. I literally thought of self-annihilation so they could survive. That’s how low I was.”
Esposito later decided against the idea because he did not want to give his children ‘lifelong trauma.’ He described the ‘Breaking Bad’ role as ‘the light at the end of the tunnel.’
He Wants To Play The Role Again
Giancarlo Esposito played Gus Fring in 26 episodes of ‘Breaking Bad.’ He later reprised the part in 34 episodes of ‘Better Call Saul.’
This year, the actor told British GQ that he would love to play the drug distributor again in a prequel about his earlier life. He also came up with a backstory:
“My backstory is he was a military guy who worked his way up through the ranks and could have become president, even possibly the dictator and have 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 took off to create a new life for himself in America and become a meth dealer, a businessman.”
His story continued:
“I think you know, in his younger years, he was someone who could have been more Tony Montana. But he worked his way into becoming level enough to listen, hear and see through his emotional state. We would hope that it might be ‘The Rise of Gus.’”
Watch Esposito’s recent interview in the video below.
