If you’re currently watching the best and most popular TV series on streamers for the last few years, then FOR SURE you’ve seen Mr. Giancarlo Esposito’s face before. This actor has been around for many years, including through his collaboration with influential filmmakers like Spike Lee, but we are currently in his prime. The actor is working constantly, and mostly in very hyped projects. Let’s see: Breaking Bad (2008-2013), The Mandalorian (2019-2023), The Boys (2019 – ), Far Cry 6 (2021), Better Call Saul (2017-2022), The Gentlemen (2024 -) and soon a key role in Captain America: Brave New World (2025). He’s also currently on the big screen with a secondary role in MaXXXine by Ti West (the sequel to X and Pearl). Do I have your attention now?

No joke, I didn’t know what to expect in this Q&A with fellow fans, but I can confirm that Giancarlo Esposito has been perhaps one of the best, if not THE best, speaker I have heard at the Montreal Comiccon since I’ve started participating…and this is not my first rodeo! Charming, eloquent, full of energy and always answering the questions as best as he could, this actor from Connecticut was happy to be there and he had interesting teachings for us.

Esposito started the discussion by talking about his approach to looking at a script. Like a painter with his brush, he’ll try to take all his inspiration from the work and not from the outside work of other actors or directors. Starting with one of his most recent projects, the Netflix show The Gentlemen, produced and partly directed by Guy Ritchie, based on his motion picture by the same name. He always wanted to work with Ritchie, so he simply asked his agent to get him in a room with him and make it happen. Then the next day, Ritchie’s agent got in touch with Esposito’s agent before anything was initiated on their end, causing Eposito’s agent to ask how the actor willed that meeting into existence. Turns out, Ritchie was one step ahead and already had Espisto in mind for a role. After rewatching Snatch (2000), he was definitely a fan of his style of filmmaking (yours truly is as well, so great taste!) and a good family story is always appealing to him, something that was featured heavily in The Gentlemen. Exploring the chess moves in an intimate setting with these characters is very reminiscent of The Godfather or shows like Succession. Funny enough; Guy Ritchie did offer Esposito a role as a guest star in the show at first, but he was so good and convincing in the role that he couldn’t get enough of him…so he decided to make his antagonist character, Mr. Stanley Johnston, a regular and will seemingly return in the second season.

Although mostly cast as a villain in his work, Esposito revealed that he chooses his roles specifically and carefully. They’re all meaningful to him and he does not wish to compare them. He tries to bring a lot of feelings to his work, with springles of his own life on top to create the characters. A key question that became a theme during the Q&A was this: beneath all of us, as normal everyday people, who are we, really? What are we really thinking? What are we hiding? Most of all, how would we behave in unnatural situations? For example, his iconic role in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul as Gustavo Fring taught him to be a good listener and to leave space for the other characters in the scene. The posture of this big baddie is that he is the professional and organized manager of a fast-food restaurant (a front, of course). The real Gustavo is actually a very cruel meth distributor, manifesting his intentions with his straight posture, and that’s how we knew he was seriously menacing. However, both sides of him show integrity; being sure that everything is to the satisfaction of the consumer.

As his performance in Breaking Bad and its prequel Better Call Saul was so mesmerizing, he was called to join certain projects to recreate this character in other settings, like the motion-captured performance in the Far Cry 6 video game in 2021, and his accepting the challenge to honour his fascination for modern dictators. When he joined the Amazon Prime hit TV show The Boys, he also wanted to look presidential in this depiction of a pharmaceutical tycoon who wasn’t afraid of God-like superheroes who could kill him in an instant. This show is an interesting comment on modern American politics, especially today in 2024, where “big money” and corporations reaffirm their power over us. However, how we can show our own power over them becomes a more dangerous route…

Like an elephant in the room, we were all waiting for questions about his role in The Mandalorian as Moff Gideon, arguably the biggest antagonist of the series. It finally came, and he started by answering a question about his favourite scene in the show, pointing out to his scenes in season 1’s finale, where he appeared at the top of his TIE Fighter. He felt like a God, 40 feet in the air, holding the Dark Saber. This character made him feel quite powerful, and that’s saying much considering his impressive gallery of villains. He has a small kid inside him, like all of us, so of course he had fun playing Moff Gideon and being on a Star Wars set every day! He also took the opportunity to bring The Mandalorian on a pedestal; this story, like Star Wars, is all about the mythology of good versus evil. How we behave dictates who we are and to which camp we belong in. As for Moff Gideon, the actor believes that his character had good intentions: to bring order and peace to the Galaxy. Since no one listened to him, he became angry, and his actions made him a villain. Quite interesting!

We all know that Star Wars sets on the Disney lot are huge sets, but it was not intimidating for him to join the Star Wars universe back in 2019. Jon Favreau actually wrote Moff Gideon with Esposito in mind, so it was quite easy and natural for Esposito to portray him, despite the pressure of living up to those expectations. In a quick moment of comedy, Esposito also confirmed, like all of us, that he has a soft spot for Grogu – he’s too cute to resist!

As for his work cadence, he feels incredibly lucky to be working ‘back-to-back’ these last few years. He worked hard for a long time and he started with small roles to get his career going. In his early years, he was really inspired by African-American actor Sydney Poitier in a time when actors were more type-cast according to the colour of their skin. Despite being born in Italy and having an Italian last name, he learned to master a Spanish accent early on as he was offered many Mexican and Latino roles due to the pigment of his skin and how Latino his surname sounds. He was instructed to learn how to speak like he came from the ‘hood’, as he puts it, and that was quite useful for his work with Spike Lee in Do the Right Thing (1989) – which was a big break for him.

Hard to ignore, he likes to play antiheroes under pressure in the horror genre, but his ambition is also to play bigger action roles in movies (as long as he’s physically active and in shape). The latest teaser trailer for the next big MCU opus, Captain America: Brave New World, confirms that Esposito is having his wish fulfilled; he seems to be a villain machine-gunning his way in the streets. As for his future projects, he created a ‘hit list’ of actors, writers and directors to work with, so we can expect a lot more from him very soon.

Interestingly, Giancarlo is a big reader and he often gets inspired by novels and is at a part in his career where he’s seeking to finance and produce film adaptations of those books if the stories and characters appeal to him. He tries as much as he can to not watch too many movies and shows during his work, for the simple reason that he wants his roles to remain as original as possible. Usually, he pushes himself to take inspiration only from the script he has in his hands. He is currently working on his memoir where he’ll discuss his journey and work ethic for us to learn. Stay tuned for that!

To close this piece on a more educative note, Giancarlo Esposito was very inspiring not just as an actor, but as a human being to all of us present in the room. Like a mentor figure in an internship program, he invited us to appreciate sitting in rooms with smarter people, and to learn to listen to them. Our journey of learning always needs to be for a higher purpose and for the benefit of the collective good, not just our own. However, as for us individually in our own paths, three words needed to remain in our minds:
1. WORK = You’ve got to manifest your talents through concrete actions
2. PLAY = Don’t forget to enjoy yourself and have fun in what you do
3. LOVE = You absolutely need to love what you do

Thank you, Mr. Esposito! Come back to Montreal soon.