Before 'Breaking Bad,' Giancarlo Esposito considered arranging his own murder for insurance money
Giancarlo Esposito revealed he was so broke prior to his role as Gus Fring on “Breaking Bad” that he considered arranging his own murder so his kids could get life insurance money.
Giancarlo Esposito appeared on a recent episode of SiriusXM’s “Jim & Sam” show while promoting his new AMC drama series “Parish” and revealed that he was so broke prior to landing his iconic role of Gus Fring on “Breaking Bad” that he once considered arranging his own murder so that his children could have some financial protection courtesy of his life insurance money.
The actor considered this around 2008, a year before “Breaking Bad” inextricably changed his career and opened the door for roles in “The Mandalorian,” “The Boys” and more.
Asked how he got out of near bankruptcy around 2008, Esposito said, “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.”
“That was the first inkling that there was a way out, but I wouldn’t be here to be available to my kids,” Esposito added. “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.’”
Esposito appeared as Gus Fring on 26 episodes of “Breaking Bad,” then reprised the role on the prequel series “Better Call Saul” for 34 episodes. He told British GQ earlier this year that he is highly interested in playing Gus for a third time in a prequel series about the villain.
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