Yahoo News Giancarlo Esposito on Breaking Bad, Guy Ritchie and ‘timeless’ Do the Right Thing
The actor speaks with Yahoo UK for Role Recall
Giancarlo Esposito is one of the greats of the industry, with a prolific decades-long career behind him both on the stage and screen.
The actor is best known now for playing villains, becoming a household name thanks to his portrayal of Gus Fring in Breaking Bad and its spin-off prequel Better Call Saul, which he followed with roles in The Boys, The Mandalorian, and now The Gentlemen with Guy Ritchie.
Watch: Giancarlo Esposito reflect on his prolific career
While many people might think of him as the go to person to play a bad guy this is hardly the case, recently he's appeared in shows like Godfather of Harlem and Netflix's Kaleidoscope, and early on in his career Esposito would often take a wide variety of roles from his many times working with Spike Lee to films like The Usual Suspects.
There's so much for Esposito to be proud of in his career, and the actor took the time to look back at just some of the highlights with Yahoo for Role Recall.
Giancarlo Esposito describes School Daze as his "first triumph" with Spike Lee
Esposito's career on the silver screen took off in 1988, when he first began working with the prolific filmmaker Spike Lee, the pair worked together on four films back-to-back but it was their work on School Daze that first put Esposito on the map.
The actor describes it as his "first triumph" with the director, explaining that he and Lee wanted to work together for some time before the project came to fruition. In the musical, Esposito takes on the role of Julian "Dean Big Brother Almighty" Eaves, the strict head of the Gamma Phi Gamma fraternity.
"It was very enjoyable, Spike was really at the beginning of his career, so to speak, in a large way because that was his first larger move, bigger movie," Esposito says as he looks back at the film.
"He'd done Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop, we had planned to do a film called The Messenger about a bike messenger —Spike had done a little bit of that in New York and was obsessed with bike messengers— and we never were able to make that movie.
"So School Daze was our first triumph together and I loved the script that he wrote for that, because it was a musical and there's very different ideas. Spike really connected to music and really loved music, and also wanted to write it into his film, which I thought was really pretty incredible."
Do the Right Thing is still "completely timely"
The actor's next collaboration with Lee became one of the director's greatest work: Do The Right Thing. Set in a neighbourhood of Brooklyn where racial tension amongst the different communities comes to a head on one of the hottest days of the year.
With its frank examination of racism, police brutality, and gentrification it is seen as one of the greatest films of all time, even if when it was released it wasn't nominated for Best Picture or Best Director at the Oscars. For Esposito, who plays Buggin' Out, he feels the film is still "completely timely".
"We made that film [when] it was a time in New York that was very turbulent with Tawana Brawley, Al Sharpton protesting in the streets against what happened to her, was it true or not was a big question. The racial tension in New York was really palpable, you could really taste it and feel it," he explained.
"Spike took that opportunity to write a script that was very poignant about people in the neighbourhood in Brooklyn which, now, doesn't exist anymore — It's completely gentrified and completely different. So he was dealing with issues in the film of gentrification and of that kind of committed state where African Americans would have the opportunity to speak up for themselves.
"The film is completely relevant today and completely timely, amazingly enough. So I would say it's one of the American classics of film, of a film legacy by Spike Lee that just keeps building and growing."
Reflecting on their many years working together he adds: "What a brilliant man, to be able to move us forward and to know him for close to 40 years now is really quite amazing. To kind of cut my teeth with him and grow up with him.
"He gave me the opportunity to be on the big screen in film after film where I had done a couple of films and a lot of television, but never had the opportunity to see myself in the roles that he created and gave to me — and that I was able to extend through the talent, my God-given talent, it's been a wonderful journey to be with Spike."
The actor went on to work with Lee on two more occasions, in 1990 film Mo' Better Blues and again in 1992 biopic Malcolm X, where Esposito starred opposite Denzel Washington as Talmadge X Hayer, one of Malcolm X's killers.
Esposito went on to say about the filmmaker: "I love the way he directs because in the early days he directed like he was the coach of a sports team and so that kind of enthusiasm appeals to me, you know to really get out there and to do your best really appeals to me.
"What I think he's become is a more gentle collaborator in hearing ideas and receiving comments back about original scripts that he may have written, and then having the ability to really execute what he really thinks and believes.
"Because I pay a lot of attention to the writers work and honouring what they've written and then I love being directed, and sometimes as you become more experienced that director is less apt to direct you but more wanting to be in conversation with you, to get the best from you to render the script the best it can be and I love that."
Giancarlo Esposito's training in theatre was essential to his portrayal Gus Fring
Esposito's acting career has a huge resurgence thanks to his role as Gus Fring in Breaking Bad, the head of a drug empire moonlighting as the owner of the Los Pollos Hermanos fast food joint.
The character was originally envisioned as a guest role in season 2 but Esposito was soon offered a permanent contract with the show, giving him the opportunity to make Gus more than a villain of the week. The key to making Gus an iconic villain for the actor came down to one thing: his experience in theatre.
"I think the moment or scene that I achieved being more than just the villain of the week is [the first episode of season 4], Box Cutter. What a powerful scene that is," Esposito says.
"I love theatre and I love the Pinter pause, which is really important to me to be able to leave space, which is what I kind of modelled Gus's practise as — leaving space to really be attentive to his employee who he's teaching how to clean the flyer down to the way you treat customers.
"He leaves space to allow for someone to learn, and that was important to me. So the moment in Box Cutter is really the first moment you ever saw Gus do something reprehensible with his own hands, and I thought that was really strong for me because it's the scene with very few lines.
"Nothing is said in that scene until the very end of that almost 10 minutes, where he says simply 'get back to work' after he cuts Victor's throat, changes back into his clothes and walks out of that lab. Thus sending a dual message to both Walter and Jesse, you know, 'do what I'm telling you to do'."
The actor portrayed the character from season 2 of Breaking Bad up until season 4, where his character's run ended in an iconic way we would be remiss to spoil. But that wasn't all as he went on to reprise the role in the show's prequel spin-off Better Call Saul.
Giancarlo Esposito always wanted to work with Guy Ritchie
The actor can now be seen as a very different villain, Stanley Johnston in Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen. Also the head of a drug empire, the character crosses paths with protagonist Eddie Horniman (Theo James) on several occasions, but namely to try and buy him out of the land he has inherited — which just so happens to be the base for a large weed farm.
Esposito has been keen to work with Ritchie for some time, so the moment he was approached for the TV series he knew he had to be a part of it: "I welcomed this experience of working with Guy Ritchie. I know that I invited it into my life, having just rewatched or actually I was sitting there thinking about Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels when I called my manager and said, 'you know, I really want to work with Guy Ritchie' not having any idea he was planning anything.
"And two days later we got a call saying Guy Ritchie is going to make a series of The Gentlemen and he wants to talk to you about it, he'd love you to be in it. I was honoured. I love what he does as a filmmaker visually, I love what he does musically with the score. I love what he does sartorially with all the clothing and the dress.
"I was in right away, because I love The Gentleman as a movie and and I think that the television show renders the movie in a way it extends it, and is as good if not better, and completely different. You don't have to watch the movie to get to know the TV series because they're two different stories, but they're similar in their concourse."
Esposito heaps praise on Ritchie's approach to directing in a similar way to how he commends Lee, saying of the filmmaker: "Guy, to me, is another one of those very rich and directors and full of depth that is collaborative but wanting to say something about society and how we live.
"Not only today, but how we did yesterday and where we come from, because my character, Stanley Johnston represents the historical knowledge of the piece in many ways. In other words, he's an American and the only American in the piece who really knows about British history, and the aristocracy and talks about the criminality that they laid down for everyone to follow, like they basically stole everything.
"And I love that he, in a way, sort of uncovers what would be a myth but it's not if you really look at history, it is kind of how it played out, and so he tells this in a very authentic modern day way that I think is really quite genius, and it's fun."
The actor adds: "It's funny yet it's edgy, and it's frightening, yet it's vulnerable and it's the story of family all in one, and loyalty and brotherly love and all of those things. So, I feel like it contains such a rich backdrop of what we live through in our daily lives that it's applicable.
"Now not all of us have the courage to go and be criminals but that idea is that if we did, of course our lives to be very different, but it would also bring out all the complexity and all the problems that you draw to yourself when you live and and move through that world."
The Gentlemen is out now on Netflix
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