Giancarlo Esposito once considered plotting his own murder so his kids could get the insurance money

But then he got "Breaking Bad" and the rest is TV history.

Before landing Breaking Bad, Giancarlo Esposito was breaking sad. The esteemed actor was near bankruptcy and at the end of his rope when he seriously considered arranging his own murder just so his kids could be taken care of.

Esposito recalled how he almost committed insurance fraud before thinking better of it on a recent episode of SiriusXM’s Jim & Sam. In 2008, the prolific character actor who at that point had appeared in everything from Do the Right Thing to Touched by an Angel — thought the only solution to his money troubles was the good, old-fashioned murder for the insurance money scheme.

“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," Esposito said. "I started scheming. 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 had been acting since he was a kid, making his Broadway debut in 1968 in the short-lived musical Maggie Flynn and he worked steadily as an adult, usually in smaller roles. But life as a workaday actor can be hard and not always financially stable. Eventually, however, Esposito thought better of insurance fraud; sure his kids would be taken care of, but he would also be robbing them of their father.

“That was the first inkling that there was a way out, but I wouldn’t be here to be available to my kids,” Esposito continued. “Then I started to think that’s not viable because the pain I would cause them would be lifelong, and there’d be lifelong trauma that would just extend the generational trauma I’m trying to move away from. The light at the end of the tunnel was Breaking Bad.”

In 2009, Esposito starred in the recurring role of drug lord Gus Fring on Breaking Bad, and later reprised Fring in the prequel series Better Call Saul, earning three Emmy nominations between the two shows for the same character. That led to many more gigs, including Dear White People, The Mandalorian (for which he garnered two more Emmy noms), The Boys, and now, finally, his very own star turn in the AMC crime drama Parish.

Still, despite his new wave of success, the actor has expressed interest in a Rise of Gus prequel series, saying, "I've always kept these [Breaking Bad] pillars in my head, as much as I've wanted so much as an actor to explore Gus's previous life — Gus' life in Chile, all these things."

It's no wonder he would want to revisit Gus Fring since the role, almost literally, saved his life.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Related content:

• Giancarlo Esposito previews ‘visceral’ new crime drama Parish
  

• Better Call Saul alum Giancarlo Esposito still wants to make a Rise of Gus prequel

• Giancarlo Esposito warns of Moff Gideon's Mandalorian return
  

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.