Giancarlo Esposito has been making a big name for himself, and is starting to pop up just about everywhere. Since his turn as Gus Fring in Breaking Bad, the actor is now appearing in everything from The Mandalorian to The Boys to Far Cry 6, and shows no signs of slowing down. In a recent interview with Esquire, however, the actor took some time to reflect back on his time in Breaking Bad, and how he might continue the franchise.
During his time on Breaking Bad, Esposito played Gus Fring. Initially introduced as the unassuming manager of a fried chicken restaurant, Fring was quickly revealed to be a major player in the drug cartels that produced and smuggled meth across the Mexican border. Throughout the course of the series Fring worked with, and then against Walter White as part of his bid to take complete control over the cartel.
As a soft-spoken, but coldly calculating villain, Esposito was easily the best antagonist in the series, putting in a legendary performance that defines his career to this day. Though he was eventually killed off by Walter White, he continued on to the prequel series Better Call Saul, where audiences got a closer look at the kingpin’s rise to power.
Esposito is still gearing up to reprise the role once more in season 6 of Better Call Saul, having been told that he will be a major player. It may be his last time in the role, but that hasn’t stopped the actor from imagining his own Breaking Bad spin-off. During the interview Esposito admitted that he’d been pondering a prequel series titled The Rise of Gus, that would explore the early life of Gus Fring, and delve into his history in the military and political worlds he grew up in.
As he continued on explaining the idea, Esposito started elaborating on how he thinks the character turned into the ruthless, decisive man audiences saw in the original show: “I feel like Gus came from the world of order. And that his order came. He was a military man. Out of the military, he gained the ability to observe. You can’t lead unless you can follow… In my brain, he was high up in a military government. He could have stayed there and ran the country. It was handed to him. But he chose a different path to be his own man and to find his own power, regardless of what he was handed. This is what he chose.”
While there’s no promise that any type of Gus Fring spin-off will ever manifest, it’s nice to know that the actor still ponders the character from time to time. It also suggests that Esposito puts a lot of thought and effort into who his characters are and why they behave the way they do, which is a valuable trait to have in an actor, and one that has certainly paid off for Esposito in particular.
Source: Esquire
