Giancarlo Esposito Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters

I understand that you have a problem

with two of my employees.

It is true that they killed one of your associates.

It is possible they acted rashly.

But on the other hand, there was provocation.

The man was selling on their territory.

I didn't want Tony Soprano with the little puppy,

I wanted a guy who was shrewd, smart, non-arrogant,

but was three steps ahead of everyone else,

who could blend,

who seemed to be one person but was another.

[upbeat pop music]

The Mandalorian.

The structure you are trapped in

will be razed in short order,

and your storied lives will come to an unceremonious end.

[tense orchestral music]

What do you propose?

Reasonable negotiation.

You have something I want.

One of my favorite lines,

because you can use it in life.

You see someone you emulate,

you see someone who's really in their own skin,

I always observe older people who have nothing to prove.

They're living their life,

they're comfortable in their own skin,

and that's what I want.

Moff Gideon is a very complicated guy

and I love playing him for a number of reasons.

One, is he's smart,

and he wants to affect change

within this particular galaxy,

and he's unable to.

He thinks he can get it from outside.

Such a mythological story,

when everything you need is inside you.

But he feels like that child, Grogu, who he's after,

has some DNA that's gonna change things for him,

possibly would change things for the world as well.

So I play him in the first two seasons

as if maybe he is trying to write all the wrongs

of the universe and the galaxy,

and the world that he's in, by being in charge.

But he knows everything and no one knows how.

So he has a particularly strong network of intel,

which is great,

but what does he really want?

You don't really know, except for the child.

I think that part of my success is to play

villainous characters with a human touch,

who are very astute and very aware of themselves

and the world around them.

[darksaber melting metal]

[metal thudding]

[slow foreboding music]

The darksaber was a wonderful thing to wield.

There's only a few of us actors

who've had the opportunity

to wield such an iconic piece of equipment, sword.

So for me, there were many that I had to work with.

A wonderful stunt actor who was in the suit

doing the stunt work for Mando,

and I just...

The whole story behind my first big saber fight

was that the stunt guy came out,

and he was 20 years younger, a really small guy,

and I looked over at Jon, I said, Jon,

and he went, shrug.

And I got in the corner,

and I started to work on this fight

'cause I knew I'd have to do every single frame

for it to look believable

for a guy of my age fighting Mando.

We had a bunch of different swords.

Sometimes the hilt, sometimes the long one,

sometimes one that was lit around the end

so they could sort of CGI it in,

and sometimes it was full weight,

sometimes not full weight.

I chose the ones that had a full weight

because I felt like when you wielded it,

you had to see it, how it hits something.

It was very, very important to me,

to have it be really believable.

So, I had practiced at home,

'cause I also have a cape,

to figure out the logistics of it with a broomstick.

And eventually when I got with the darksaber,

I was just very enthusiastic

about being able to practice with it

in the moment on the set,

and to have such a great time

playing this character

with a piece of history that's so very iconic.

Breaking Bad.

That was inspired by a stage direction

that Vince Gilligan wrote

called Hiding in Plain Sight.

And when I read that stage direction

in the script that they asked me to do,

I was fascinated.

I was invited out to do a guest spot

at the end of season three of Breaking Bad

and I said yes.

I was very excited when I read that stage direction

'cause I started to think about who do I see from my window

who lives next door, or the apartment across the hall?

What do they really do?

Hey, hey Jean.

Hey Harry,

Like a cordial conversation to the elevator,

but what do they really do?

Who are they really?

And I got obsessed with that idea.

Lucy, you must remember

to have the salt and pepper shakers wiped.

Okay.

Can I help you, sir?

Diet Coke, please.

And five minutes of your time.

So I did it in one guest spot,

I got off the plane,

they were calling to say would I do another?

And I said yes,

to continue the investigation.

I did another guest spot and they offered me a contract

and I said, let's wait,

because it was the end of the season.

Let's see what you're thinking about for next season.

And they called next season and repeated their offer.

And I said I'd love to speak to the creator

because I wanted to do something different.

I felt like, okay, they've had their villain of the week

and now they want a formidable villain

to play opposite

of Walter White, Brian Cranston,

who was brilliant in that show.

But I didn't wanna sign on

unless I was gonna do something that was atypical.

And so I had to figure out what that was.

So I say now to many people when I lecture colleges,

universities, and I'll tell my children,

ask for what you want.

And so that was a perfect example

of me asking myself what I wanted.

And so, I asked to speak to Vince Gilligan,

we had a long conversation, and we were on the same page.

And things took off after that.

You have failed.

Now it's left to me to deal with him.

You can't.

If you try to interfere,

this becomes a much simpler matter.

I will kill your wife.

I will kill your son.

I will kill your infant daughter.

I enjoyed learning from the process of masters at work.

Vince is a wonderful director,

but I was there, I think,

when he first started directing on Breaking Bad.

He had done a show prior to that

where I believe he directed.

But to be able to direct your own vision

is to take matters in your own hand

and really feel and see the whole story.

So I was with him at a time

where he directed a television show

and at a time where he extended that direction

of shot to shot television

to filmic visionary movie every week.

And so I felt honored to be there.

One episode that really stands out for me,

well there are a number of them,

but one in particular is Box Cutter.

I come from the theater and so to me, you know,

Harold Pinter,

there was a thing called a Pinter Pause

where

you leave

space.

Sometimes that space is an interminable-able

amount of time,

but it allows you to refocus

and it gets your attention.

And so I thought of this when creating Gus.

So for me, my contribution was,

I realized, you can't mess with the words, they were good.

How do I slow the timing down?

How do I slow my timing down,

so I can hear more,

so I can be contemplative,

so I can allow space to affect me?

And so when someone would say something to me

I wouldn't answer right away.

I would really hear them, study them.

And it unnerves people.

[Giancarlo laughing]

I mean, I realize

if I don't answer, I just look at you,

what's going on in your head may be,

Did I say something wrong? Am I stupid?

Oh my God, is he gonna kill me?

What happening with him right now?

Does he have a pulse?

And so, I used that

in combination with my breathing practice of yoga,

to allow me

[Giancarlo breathing slowly]

to just drop down.

And it was a wonderful experience for me

'cause it helped me to realize

that the best actors don't do anything.

You don't have to do anything.

You gotta think it.

But in thinking it, you want people to see it.

So you have to think it and project it and it'll be there.

A wonderful experience in my career, and changed my life.

The Boys!

The Boys, Stan Edgar is a company man.

And what makes a good villain

is he's working for somebody else.

[Giancarlo laughing]

You know?

I mean, we think what makes a good villain

is he wants to take over the world.

And I have some of those in my, you know,

Star Wars Moff Gideon life.

But when you have a guy who is a company man, it's scary.

And so Stan Edgar frightened me a little bit

because he has no fear.

He has no fear of Homelander.

You're in a world where you have superheroes

with human emotions

who could kill you in a heartbeat.

And he's like the head of the company

who has created this Compound V.

So he has business venture.

I don't think I see the point, Stan.

The point is

that you are under a misconception

that we are a superhero company.

We are not.

What we are really is a pharmaceutical company.

And you are not our most valuable asset.

That would be our confidential formula for Compound V

which you, man child that you are, released into the wild.

[Homelander scoffing]

Bam!

You get the idea of big business, big politics,

big government,

how it affects the world.

I love this show.

The way it happened was

completely, in a way, an accident.

I ran into Eric Kripke,

who also was the writer of another show I did years ago

with John Favreau.

And so I ran into him at the studio in Canada

when I was doing another show

and he looked at me and took that step back and went,

scratched his head and went,

looked me up and down.

Afterwards, Hi, how are you?

What are you doing? What are you doing?

And I said, Eric, I know what you're thinking.

And he said to me,

Well if you know what I'm thinking, would you?

And I said, Of course I would. I love working with you.

I said, you're not gonna be able to make a deal,

when that day comes, text me,

'cause they're gonna be talking to my people

and I'm not giving up.

I said, text me.

And that day came, they tried to make a deal,

couldn't make a deal, Eric texted me.

I said, Eric, you know, come on,

you did exactly what I told you to, and I was in.

Eventually, probably soon,

the world will recognize you

for the pitiful disappointment you are.

You are not worthy of my respect.

You are not a God.

You are simply bad product.

You know, they say that daughters

need the validation of their fathers

and that sons need to be mothered.

And so what did we miss in our lives?

What did we miss growing up from that relationship

that we needed to be validated by?

So, Stan Edgar realizes that Homelander's just a big kid

and that he never got the validation that he needed

from his father.

And so it becomes very, very tricky, he understands that.

So he needs to be validated by another man

who says, yeah, you're powerful and good and all that.

In return for that,

Stan also feels like he's holding onto his power.

He's able to control this loose cannon

where no one else can.

You

are not a God.

You

are simply

bad product.

Pow.

Strong.

I say that to myself all the time.

My ego gets outta line.

I'm just bad product.

Better Call Saul.

[man struggling to breathe]

Look at me.

From now on,

you

are

mine.

Big decision for me to make.

I felt like I was going through the same dance

and I hope didn't stress anyone out

at Buena Vista Productions or Vince.

But I felt like

I didn't wanna go back, in my brain.

I was like, I can't mess with that guy.

That guy is done, man, he's history.

You know what I mean?

He's iconic.

I don't wanna mess with him anymore.

[Giancarlo chuckling]

Then I'm sitting there with Vince

I went, okay, what's the name of this show?

And he says, Better Call Saul.

Who's starring in it?

Bob Odenkirk.

Boom!

Bob's genius.

But I went, that's your place,

you are part of an ensemble

and you're here to do, if you choose to do,

very much what you did in Breaking Bad.

But then I went, no, don't choose that.

Choose to surpass that.

So what are your obstacles?

I mean, all this was in my decision process.

What can you do differently?

How can you create a different Gus?

It is before the time period of Breaking Bad.

Okay, so he's more volatile, he's less controlled.

All these things went into the basket and I said, yes.

Adding more product will threaten the reliability

of the entire operation.

May I ask,

did Don Eladio approve this?

I approved this.

And so my work had to be even more subtle

than in Breaking Bad,

and so that became a challenge

to figure out how to grow to be the edge

in Better Call Saul,

and to figure out how to lend

to these two shows being bookends.

I contest that if you watch Breaking Bad first

and then Better Call Saul, that's great.

But if you're able to watch them backwards,

Better Call Saul first, and then Breaking Bad,

you'll be illuminated in a different way.

I felt season six of Breaking Bad,

I had a chance, as subtle as it is,

to reverse all of what I thought I would be locked into.

You got a chance to see a different Gus

because I realized, end of season five into season six,

you had a Gus who was more vulnerable

because there was a threat there.

Lalo Salamanca.

And I didn't want him to be a threat

because Gus is formidable

and because of the events at the end of Breaking Bad,

in a way I'm going into Saul thinking I'm Machiavelli.

So how do I allow myself the vulnerability

to have a chink in my armor?

So, one scene in Breaking Bad that you saw,

I don't know if it's episode nine or 10,

where I'm on the elevator, Johann directed it.

And he noticed,

I'm standing on the elevator, I'm totally still,

and my hands are by my side

and all you see, just tapped my finger.

He caught it.

I did this to see if anyone would catch it.

Standing there.

Completely calm, stoic, right?

But that one little tell.

And he said, My God, do you know you're doing that?

I said, Of course I do.

He said, I have to get that.

I have to get the camera down there.

I have to get it, that's brilliant.

Right, that one little thing.

The work is sometimes in a way silent

and very, very methodical.

And also it's very keen.

And so everything came together in those moments.

And in season six, Gus's turn in six,

which, you know, if you haven't seen it,

I don't wanna have any spoilers,

but you really sort of see him come out of his shell

after the threat is disposed of.

So you get a chance to see an arc

that I think is well worth it

and well deserved to watch this season six

of Better Call Saul.

Do The Right Thing.

You gonna pay now or you gonna pay on layaway?

How much?

You been coming in here at least three times a day,

what are you, a [beep]?

It's a dollar 50.

Yo Sal, put some cheese in that motherfucker, man.

Extra cheese is two dollars.

Two dollars?

Yeah, two dollars.

Hey, you can forget that shit.

[Buggin Out slamming change on the counter]

Buggin Out was a journey

and I so enjoyed working with Spike Lee

in Do the Right Thing

because it was the first time that he really

had an opportunity to explore on a very deep level

the differences between us, culturally,

in a neighborhood setting.

And to me it was the perfect balance of who I am,

Italian and Black.

And so, to create Buggin Out,

I really had an idea that Buggin Out meant well,

but he was that man

who wanted to be, in a way,

a revolutionary, but he had no tools.

He didn't have the education

to carry things out the right way.

So, in his little way,

he wanted to create some kind of change.

So Afrocentric, you know, completely,

and energetic,

and ready to call you on your faults

if you're Sal in the pizzeria.

So, I had this idea that he was a loose cannon

because he didn't have the poise or the charisma

or the expertise to really think it all the way through.

And that allowed me to have someone

who could be, in a way, slightly a pest,

but still someone who was pressing for equality

on his own street level way.

Mookie!

[Mookie] What?

How come you ain't got not brothas up on the wall?

Man, ask Sal, all right?

Hey, hey Sal,

how come you got no brothers up on the wall here?

You want brothers on the wall?

Get your own place, you can do what you wanna do.

You can put your brothers and uncles and nieces and nephews,

your stepfather, stepmother, whoever you want, you see.

But this is my pizzeria.

American Italians on the wall only.

Well, I think that I love the scene in the pizzeria,

you know, where Buggin Out just, you know,

he wants to get his pizza and he wants some extra cheese.

Put some extra cheese on that, mmhmm.

And Sal is like, you know, resistant.

And the attitude that Sal had with Buggin Out

was because he was a pest.

But then when he looks up,

and he sees Sinatra and Perry Como

and all these people white,

he's wondering why he's not represented there

and what does that mean to him,

and it triggers something inside of him.

Those are very volatile scenes in many ways

because of what happened at the end of the movie

between myself and God bless him

and rest his soul Danny Aiello.

The Jordan's scene was an observation

of what Spike was seeing in his neighborhood,

and what he was afraid of.

Yo!

There's a song called Who Stole the Soul?

He was afraid, I think, maybe,

I contest that he was seeing

the soulfulness of his neighborhood

go away because of gentrification.

So that scene to me was great fun with Martin Lawrence

and all the wonderful actors in that scene.

John Savage, to be able to say, you don't belong here.

What are you doing on my block, in my neighborhood,

on my side of the street?

I mean, it's just such great dialogue.

Spike is a genius in terms of how he wrote that.

But he also is a genius in how he translated

what he was seeing.

And he was ahead of his time,

because you go out there now,

and it's completely gentrified

and very very different than what it was

when we shot the movie.

[Interviewer] You are Italian, you are Black, right?

Did you have to navigate any feelings of allegiance?

What was conversation with your father like

after he saw the film?

In this particular case,

I remember the conversation clearly

'cause he was disappointed in the movie.

And we knew we had done something

that was gonna make a difference

or at least open people's eyes to the issues

that were presented,

but also have them be entertained.

But he didn't take to the movie

'cause he thought there was,

Giancarlo, Giancarlo, there's too much cursing.

I said, Excuse me?

It's mother this, motherfucking that, do-ba-dee.

It's too much cursing.

I said, well no, no, what's the point of the movie?

So I think he missed a part of the point of the movie,

which had me realize I wanted to talk to him

about living in this color skin,

because we had the same blood.

And I don't know if I ever really impressed upon him enough

that my life was so different

because I carried this skin.

My Papa thought the movie was visual

but didn't understand the issues at hand.

And I was surprised

because they related to his life as well as mine.

Godfather of Harlem.

To me, it's a wonderful honor to play someone

who has lived.

And it's also a huge responsibility.

Adam Clayton Powell Jr who I portray

in Godfather of Harlem

really lived and really made incredible strides

for African Americans during the sixties and beyond.

He wrote the Powell Amendment,

which was essentially the Civil Rights Act.

And so he, through his relationship

with Linda Banes Johnson and JFK before him,

was able to implement and resist.

As LBJ said to him,

Take out the Powell Amendment

and I have this thing passed.

But he wouldn't do it,

because the Powell Amendment

was the majority of the Civil Rights Act that we have today.

So to me, I would be haunted in my dreams

if I didn't get that right.

Who's the first?

The first what?

The first Italian numbers banker

you're gonna enter into the congressional record.

Well, how the hell do I know?

You promised the congregation one Italian a week.

Why is Jack Kennedy playing possum

with my addendum to the Civil Rights legislation?

Adam, you're evading.

Now, as much as I hate to admit it,

you hit a nerve with that sermon

and some people put names in the suggestion box.

You gon' have to name names.

Well, who'd they put in the suggestion box?

That's the problem.

No one named any Italians.

And so I read a lot of his record,

I listened to him and the cadence of his speech.

When I first saw him, I thought,

this guy is white from Georgia.

He kind of talked like that, really, you know.

He was from New York.

Lived upstate and came to Manhattan,

preacher at Abyssinian Baptist Church.

You may know some of his history.

But for me, the wonderful thing about him

was not only that he was a genius lawyer,

but that he was also someone who enjoyed life.

And this took some of the pressure off me

to always be as serious as I would wanna be

in my life and in my work.

I learned through the legacy of Adam Clayton Powell Jr

that he was able to have fun.

He married Hazel Scott eventually,

loved jazz music, he smoked, he drank,

yet in Sunday morning he was in the pulpit

giving the sermon of his life.

He was also a great orator and statesman.

And when you think about an orator or a statesman,

you wonder how they get their point across

and people really are listening and really hear them,

because it's a God-given gift to move people

from one place in their consciousness to another.

And Adam Clayton Powell did that.

So, for me to play him was my honor.

Every season is a different year

in the history of our movement.

And it really is a show

that's about Bumpy Ellsworth Johnson,

so brilliantly played by Forest Whitaker,

about his journey in affecting African Americans in Harlem.

So, Powell knew Johnson,

didn't agree with his politics,

but knew that he was a helpful figure in Harlem.

The show is about Bumpy, it's about morality, again,

about a guy who's selling heroin to his own people,

is also a slum lord in some ways,

but someone who cares about his people

and will do all he can to protect them.

Bumpy Johnson was not your typical gangster.

He was someone who tried to, and succeeded,

in struggling against the Italians

for their hold over Harlem.

And so, the black market, no pun intended,

is something that's really actively still going today.

And so, that is a help to the people

in certain neighborhoods

because there's certain things

they can't get or afford otherwise.

And so that intricate market is explored

not only in the world of drugs

but also in the world of politics.

Kaleidoscope.

I'm very proud to be a part of this show.

I stepped into this show after having done

the final season of Better Call Saul,

and I had to move quickly to jump in

and feel as if I had enough time to apprise myself

of all that was going on in this particular heist story.

It's based on a heist that took place during Hurricane Sandy

that really happened during a hurricane.

70 billion dollars in unsecured bearer bonds

were stolen in this city.

The moment we come in,

the temperature will start to rise

and once it gets above 73 degrees-

We're fucked.

Game over. Life in prison, got it.

Yeah, we can get by everything else, but not that.

Unless, you've put in a back door.

Did you tell them you put in a back door?

I put in a back door.

They sent me blue to read for the first time,

and I read it and I got yellow, and I read that.

And then I started to realize

that the structure with which they had planned to release it

was not going to be the same,

i.e. when I read scripts, it's 101, 102,

they're all numbered up to eight.

This was orange, green, blue, pink, yellow, white.

And it was all connected.

So for me, I was hooked

because it gave me a chance to show

many different sides of myself that you haven't seen.

And to me, that's an actor's dream.

I love this piece because, again,

you can choose the order with which you watch it.

So you asked me, how did I feel about that structure?

I was hesitant.

Hadn't been done.

How are people gonna know where they're at?

They're all colors, and people still, even today,

after the show has been released, they talk about,

did you watch it in order?

Well there is no order.

Did you watch it in chronological order?

There's that word again.

There's no chronological order,

which gives you the opportunity

to have your imagination run wild

and your visual match up with that

by trying to figure out the story.

It's a heist drama.

There's something left for you to do.

It's to figure it out.

And as you're watching,

you can't but help, as being a human being,

is to wanna figure it out.

Like wait, did you see that?

What just happened there?

That won't get reflected until episode yellow,

or blue won't link up to white, which you should watch last.

I think the whole idea and structure is brilliant

and the ability for them to pull it off

by all of the connections that are there.

When you watch it a second time

and you see the connections you missed the first time,

no matter what order you watched it in,

you

will

be

intrigued.