“Breaking Bad was the light at the end of the tunnel”: Before participating in the series, Giancarlo Esposito almost made a terrible decision.

Today, he is one of the essential faces of television. Actor Giancarlo Esposito returned to the spotlight in 2009 as the charismatic and manipulative Gus Fring, the unforgettable antagonist of the Breaking Bad series, in a new series titled Paris.

A role he was later able to play in the excellent prequel series Better Call Saul, and which gave him access to other great projects such as The Boys, The Mandalorian (where he played the excellent Moff Gideon) and more recently The Gentlemen.

difficult period

But before experiencing this sensational resurgence in popularity, Giancarlo Esposito experienced a journey through the desert that could have ended very badly, as he recently confided. on The Jim & Sam Show, SiriusXM.

The actor actually stated that before he was cast as Gus Fring, he was going through a lot of financial problems, which even made him irredeemable.

“The solution in my brain was, ‘Do we get life insurance if we kill ourselves?’ Are they getting paid?” My wife had no idea why she was asking me all these things.”– said the actor.

“I started to plan if someone shot me, it would be manslaughter. Insurance will be affected. I had four children. I wanted them to have life. It was a difficult moment. I literally contemplated self-destruction so they could survive. I came here.”

“The light at the end of the tunnel was Breaking Bad.”

Giancarlo Esposito then explained that he eventually abandoned this dark plan, realizing that it would cause even more suffering for his family if he carried it out:

“I started telling myself it wasn’t sustainable because the pain I was causing them would last a lifetime. Then there would be a lifetime of trauma that would only prolong the generational trauma I was trying to get rid of. The light at the end of the tunnel was Breaking Bad.”

In 2009, he was hired to play the mysterious manager of Los Pollos Hermanos in two episodes of the second season, Giancarlo Esposito became an important character in the AMC series. An adventure that earned him an Emmy Award nomination in 2012 and again in 2020 for Better Call Saul.

(Re)discover the trailer for this latest series…