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Giancarlo
Esposito,
best
known
for his
roles in
movies
including
"Do the
Right
Thing"
and TV
series
such as
"Breaking
Bad,"
has been
working
in the
entertainment
industry
since
1968.
(Harry
Eelman)
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You’ve
seen
Giancarlo
Esposito
in
everything.
Now the
actor
wants
you to
see him
as
himself
Helena
Andrews-Dyer
washingtonpost.com
NEW
YORK -
“I feel
so
blessed
to have
been in
a couple
of
different
movies
on the
’100
Best’
lists,”
Esposito
said.
“They’re
pieces
that
have
moved
people’s
consciousness
from one
place to
another.”
Then, of
course,
there’s
Gustavo
Fring,
the
“Breaking
Bad”
villain
about
whom
other
bad guys
have
nightmares.
But
the role
that
changed
the
course
of the
actor’s
career —
and
allowed
him to
switch
lanes on
an
already
decades-long
road —
is one
you’ve
most
certainly
never
heard
of.
In
2002,
Esposito
was cast
as a
legal
eagle in
the
David E.
Kelley
drama
“Girls
Club.”
The show
lasted
one
season
and the
reviews
weren’t
great.
But the
series,
short-lived
and
forgettable,
represented
a
watershed
moment
for
Esposito,
who is
anything
but.
“I
started
to play
bosses,”
Esposito
said.
“And I
realized,
‘Oh,
okay,
this is
an
opportunity.’
It was
really a
great
opening
for me
to show
who I
really
was. And
it’s
kept
going
like
that.”
Since
his 1968
Broadway
debut,
the
62-year-old
actor
has
played
roles
including
an
enslaved
child, a
friendly
face on
“Sesame
Street,”
a drug
dealer,
a cop, a
cadet,
an
assassin,
a
calculating
kingpin,
an
enchanted
mirror,
a CEO
wrangling
spoiled
superheroes,
a civil
rights
icon,
and a
cape-toting
Moff in
the Star
Wars
universe.
And
that’s
just a
fraction
— a
small
fraction
— of his
credits.
“When
you’re
someone
as
talented
and with
as wide
a range
as
Giancarlo,
the good
news is
you can
play
anything,
and the
bad news
is it
takes
years
for
people
to
realize,
'Oh my
God,
I’ve
seen
that guy
in so
many
different
movies
and so
many
different
roles,”
“Breaking
Bad”
creator
Vince
Gilligan
said.
“Sometimes
it takes
a while
for
people
to catch
on.”
But
they
finally
have.
Bryan
Cranston,
left, as
Walter
White,
stares
down
Esposito's
Gus
Fring in
a 2010
episode
of
“Breaking
Bad.”
(Ursula
Coyote/AMC/Everett
Collection)
Despite
the long
and
distinguished
résumé
that
encompassed
the
first
half of
his
career,
Esposito
felt
boxed
in. To
begin to
understand
that
feeling,
you must
first
come to
the
realization
that you
are
probably
pronouncing
the
man’s
name
wrong.
He is
Giancarrrlo
(roll
that
“r”)
EsPOSito,
not
Giancarlo
EspoSITO.
Esposito’s
father,
Giovanni,
was an
Italian
stagehand
and
carpenter
from
Naples.
His
mother,
Elizabeth
“Leesa”
Foster,
was a
classically
trained
Black
opera
singer
from
Alabama.
She
alternated
the lead
role in
the
touring
production
of
George
Gershwin’s
“Porgy
and
Bess;”
the duo
met at a
small
opera
house in
Milan as
the tour
was
wrapping
up.
“There
was
always
music in
the
house.
There
were
always
arias
being
sung,”
said
Esposito,
who was
born in
Copenhagen.
The
family
moved to
New York
City
when he
was 6,
and he
was on
Broadway
a few
years
later in
“Maggie
Flynn.”
“When I
first
started,
I was
playing
an
African
American,
a Black
slave
child,”
Esposito
said. “I
knew
that I
wanted
to play
characters
who were
more
expansive,”
but in
the
late-’60s,
roles
for
Black
actors
were few
and far
between.
So,
he began
to play
with his
own
identity
— or at
least
with how
the
folks in
casting
saw him.
“When I
was very
young, I
realized
my hair
would do
anything.
I could
sweep it
back,
slick it
down and
I could
look
Spanish,”
he said.
Using
his ear
for
music
and
languages,
Esposito
learned
a
Spanish
accent
and how
to speak
a bit of
the
language.
“It was
really
survival.
But what
I
realized
in doing
that is
that I
was
expanding
myself
to be
able to
have
more of
a
repertoire.”
In
early
credits,
he
played
characters
with
names
such as
Julio,
Esteban
and
Ramos.
But as
actors
with
actual
Spanish
backgrounds
came
along,
Esposito
stepped
back
because
he felt
they had
“more of
a
firsthand
experience
and
should
have the
ability
to take
their
place.”
Then
while
performing
with the
Negro
Ensemble
Company
in 1980,
Esposito
met a
hot
young
writer-director
named
Spike
Lee. Lee
asked
Esposito
to read
the
script
to a
musical
he was
working
on
called
“School
Daze,”
which
would
become
their
first
film
together
in 1988.
The pair
went on
to make
several
other
movies,
including
“Mo’
Better
Blues,”
“Malcolm
X” and,
of
course,
Lee’s
seminal
work,
“Do the
Right
Thing.”
“I
started
to be
discovered
by
African
American
people,”
Esposito
said.
“I’d
been
around a
long
time
before
that.
They
would
claim
me,
which
felt
like
love. It
felt
like a
wonderful
thing to
me. But
I’ve
always
been
Black.
I’ve
always
been
Italian
and
Black.”
The
experience
of
playing
Buggin’
Out in
“Do the
Right
Thing”
was
close to
transcendent
for
Esposito.
His
character,
a Black
Bed-Stuy
native,
fans
long-held
flames
of
tension
when he
asks the
local
Italian
pizzeria
owner,
“Hey,
Sal, how
come
there
ain’t no
brothas
on the
wall?”
“My
father,
Giovanni,
saw the
movie,
and his
reaction
was,
‘Too
much
cursing,
Giancarlo.’
And I
said,
‘Okay,
what
else did
you
see?’ I
realized
he
didn’t
understand
what it
was like
to be in
my
skin.”
The
ensuing
father-son
talk
“revolutionized”
their
relationship.
That,
Esposito
said, is
the
power of
film,
the
power of
capturing
the
human
experience.
Esposito's
role as
Buggin'
Out in
1989's
“Do the
Right
Thing”
was a
transcendental
experience
for the
actor.
(Universal
Pictures/Everett
Collection)
In
the
following
years,
work was
steady,
but
again
Esposito
felt
boxed
in,
playing
“someone
else’s
vision”
of what
an
African
American
man was
as
opposed
to his
own. He
was
still
getting
cast as
“street
toughs
and drug
dealers.”
“I
just
didn’t
want to
do that
anymore.
I
thought
there
are
other
parts of
me as an
African
American
man, as
a
mixed-race
human
being,
that I’d
like
people
to know
and
understand.
But
those
opportunities
weren’t
there,”
Esposito
said.
But
first,
he had a
come-to-Giancarlo
moment.
“I had
to ask
myself,
‘Is this
me
trying
to
escape
my
Blackness?
Is it
just me
trying
to fit
in and
be White
because
the
White
boys are
working?’
I had to
get very
clear
with
myself:
No, this
is me
creating
a
space.”
He
recalls
going to
auditions
and
seeing
the
confused
look on
casting
directors’
faces.
The same
back-and-forth
played
out many
times.
Giancarlo?
Yes.
Esposito?
Yes. Oh,
we’re
sorry.
What’s
the
problem?
“That
was
crushing
to me.
That’s
when I
made the
decision:
I wanted
to play
human
beings.
I didn’t
want to
play a
color. I
didn’t
want to
play a
race. I
wanted
to play
a
person.
And I’m
not
saying
that
there’s
Black,
there’s
White
and then
there’s
Giancarlo
Esposito.
But
maybe I
am
saying
that. So
I
started
to seek
out
roles
that
would
allow me
the
ability
to do
that,”
he said.
He
didn’t
work for
a while.
“I
kind of
figured
out how
to
create
my own
style,
my own
place.
It took
time for
people
to see
me as
me. And
that was
my
opportunity
to show
myself
as a
complete
human
being,
but also
to feel
that
way,”
said
Esposito,
who
pointed
to
Sidney
Poitier
as his
inspiration.
So
up next
came
(and
went)
the
aforementioned
“Girls
Club,”
his
personal
career
mile-marker
that few
people
remember.
But what
about
“Breaking
Bad,”
“Better
Call
Saul,”
“The
Boys”
and “The
Mandalorian?”
And
don’t
forget
“Last
Holiday,”
“Once
Upon a
Time,”
“Dear
White
People”
and
“Godfather
of
Harlem.”
These
days, if
it’s
buzzy,
culturally
relevant
and
being
dissected
by
everyone
on your
Twitter
timeline,
chances
are
Esposito
is in
it.
In
the last
few
years,
he’s
explored
the full
bite of
his
chops,
playing
the
parts he
dreamed
about
since
his
Broadway
debut at
8 years
old.
He’s
brought
his
signature
yet
intangible
mix of
“grace
and
fire” to
the
Southern
charms
of Adam
Clayton
Powell
in
“Godfather
of
Harlem,”
the
stony
reserve
of Moff
Gideon
in “The
Mandalorian”
and the
corporate
callousness
of Stan
Edgar in
“The
Boys.”
Esposito's
Moff
Gideon
in
Season 2
of "The
Mandalorian."
(Lucas
Film
Ltd.)
Eric
Kripke,
who
created
“The
Boys,”
described
Esposito
as
“literally
the
nicest,
most
enthusiastic,
effervescent
person
on the
planet,”
despite
the fact
that his
character
is a
clear
“sociopath.”
“I
love how
he
captures
Edgar’s
upper-class
breeding,
his
polite
brutality,
in a way
that
makes
the
character
utterly
terrifying
and
absolutely
charming
in the
same
moment,”
Kripke
said.
Which,
of
course,
brings
us to
Esposito’s
most
beloved
(and
Emmy-nominated)
villain:
Chilean
drug
lord Gus
Fring,
who
first
appeared
on
“Breaking
Bad” and
is now
part of
the
prequel
series
“Better
Call
Saul.”
But
Esposito,
whose
near-impenetrable
Fring
consistently
tops
lists of
the best
villains
of all
time,
almost
didn’t
get the
part.
Gilligan
said he
didn’t
immediately
think of
Esposito
for the
role at
first —
largely
because
Gilligan
doubted
they
could
get him.
“Watching
a tape
of
Giancarlo
[as]
Gustavo
Fring …
I just
about
jumped
out of
my seat.
I
remember
saying,
‘Oh my
God, I
didn’t
even
know we
had a
chance
of
getting
this
guy.’
The
minute
we
started
watching
we
thought,
‘This is
the
guy.’
The way
he plays
this
character
it just
burns
itself
into
your
brain.”
Despite
being
one of
the
industry’s
most
charming
chameleons,
Esposito
has
proved
unforgettable.
It isn’t
much of
a
stretch
to say
he has
done it
all.
Though
he’s
still
holding
out hope
for
Danny
Glover’s
long-incubating
project
about
Haitian
revolution
leader
Toussaint
L’Ouverture,
or
perhaps
even
playing
Russian
poet
Alexander
Pushkin,
he also
really
just
wants to
play an
“everyman.”
It
all goes
back,
Esposito
explained,
to
wanting
to play
past any
and all
stereotypes
or
preconceived
notions
of who
or what
someone
is. Who
is a
Black
man? A
corrupt
corporate
exec? A
villain?
“It’s
not
about me
anymore,”
Esposito
said of
his
career
and the
roles he
can now
choose.
That
career
metamorphosis,
he said,
“has
deepened
me.
Because
now I
play
roles in
a
different
way. I
look at
their
impact
on our
society.”
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