Breaking Bad actor Giancarlo Esposito has revealed he was thinking about organizing his own murder during serious financial troubles.
The 65-year-old actor, who portrayed Gus Fring in 26 episodes of the famous drama between 2009 and 2011, was almost bankrupt in 2008, and he tried to think of any way to help his children.
Giancarlo, who has four daughters with ex-wife Joy McManigal, remembered: ‘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. 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.’
While the star saw ‘a way out’, he didn’t want to cause the ‘lifelong trauma’ that would fall on his children.
He told SiriusXM’s Jim & Sam show: ‘That was the first inkling that there was a way out, but I wouldn’t be here to be available to my kids.
‘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.’
He joined the show the following year, and the role drastically altered the course of his career as he later landed roles in the likes of The Mandalorian, The Boys, The Gentlemen and Parish.
Giancarlo also went on to reprise the role of Gus in 34 episodes of Breaking Bad prequel series Better Call Saul, and he would ‘love’ to bring back the villainous character for his own spin-off.
In his own mind, the character’s backstory began with him as a ‘military guy’ rising through the ranks before leaving ‘to create a new life for himself’ in the US.
‘I think, in his younger years, he was someone who could have been more Tony Montana,’ he pondered. ‘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.’
