Giancarlo Esposito's Theory of the Universe
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This profile contains spoilers for The Mandalorian Season Two finale. Come back and read after you've watched.
The artist formerly known as Baby Yoda sits unattended on a prop cart on the set of The Mandalorian. The ears look bigger in person. As green as you'd think. Big eyes like awwwww. He's inanimate, yes, but he's also a star. Big day of filming ahead for the little thespian, too. The scene: Baby Yoda will reunite with his arch nemesis, Moff Gideon, the Darksaber-wielding, mustached meanie of the Imperial forces. Gideon is played by, well, the actor who's starred as some of the most terrifying villains in the history of TV: Giancarlo Esposito.
For those of you following along at home—Giancarlo Esposito, in character, isn't piss your pants scary. He's shit your pants scary. Bad news for the baby. Esposito gets to set early that day. Walks straight up to Baby Yoda, who, again, is just minding his business on this prop cart, getting his bitsy self ready for the day. Esposito's human eyes—the same eyes that told Walter White that he'd kill his entire family—look right into those big, green alien eyes.
"Are you happy today?" Esposito asks, innocently enough. Just whispering sweet nothings in those big ears. "How are you feeling? Did you have any breakfast?" (The answer was no, presumably.) "Yes, because we have a long journey. I want you to get a lot of sleep. So I have prepared some very special sauce for you so that you can sleep while we travel. If there's anything you need, let me know. Do you play poker? I've got a deck of cards, too."
Esposito gleefully recited his pregame speech to Baby Yoda, word for word—right down to the special sauce, holy shit—to me over Zoom Thursday morning from a hotel room in New York City. If you had any doubt (which would be understandable, considering this man has won Emmys virtually from his glare alone), Esposito is nothing but delightful, even if it sounded the smallest bit like he tried to psych out a puppet that day. We spoke hours before the season finale of The Mandalorian on Disney+, where two full seasons of buildup for Gideon finally pay off in the form of the the character truly taking the Darksaber for a spin. But Gideon is just one member of Esposito's present trifecta of criminal forces on TV. There's his return as Breaking Bad's incinerated fast-food entrepreneur/druglord Gus Fring in its quasi-prequel TV series, Better Call Saul, now headed into its sixth season. Or his turn as Stan Edgar in Amazon's (hard) R-rated superhero series, The Boys. A lot to get through. Lucky for us, Esposito's fresh out of bed, downing his morning espresso, ready to tell you about it all, even why the universe—yes, this magical tissue that holds us all together, you might've heard it—chose him, Giancarlo Esposito, to be the biggest, baddest villain of his generation.
First of all, it bears repeating, because Esposito is so viscerally menacing on screen that the mere sight of him incites breathless panic from real, actual people. Giancarlo Esposito might as well be Gus Fring's inverted twin—gracious, talkative, not too concerned with what that the mini Giancarlo looking back at him on the Zoom call looks like. (Esposito's description of his thought process heading into the interview: I got to take a shower. I got to do my hair. Oh, fuck it. Come as you are, baby!) If any part of Esposito was flying above Earth pre-March, quarantine sent him hurtling back down to it He rediscovered his love of gardening, a passion his 13-year-old self held, growing so many tomatoes that he had to give some away. Also in abundance lately: Patience, love, introspection. Today, Esposito's thinking of his mother, an opera singer who met his father while working abroad in Italy. The family didn't have much growing up, so mom often made meatloaf, or stirred eggs into Hamburger Helper—a meal that was more than just a scrambled mess of calories, fat, and a taste he got sick of, which he didn't understand until much, much later.
"When I think about her Hamburger Helper, or meatloaf, I think, Oh, that was a gift of love, even though sometimes she was always pressed," Esposito says. "And I understand her more now. I have four daughters. Two came to visit me in the city—and every day at around four—they'll sleep late because they're just out of school—we'll have a late, late breakfast. I'm thinking, How do I feed them?"
By the city, he means New York, where he's now filming Season Two of Epix's The Godfather of Harlem, based on a true story, which sees him play the late pastor Adam Clayton Powell Jr. alongside Forest Whitaker's crime boss, Bumpy Johnson. Turns out: The experience of filming a TV series nowadays, like everything else, is a little weird! Separate zones for actors, extras, and the crew. When Esposito takes off his mask to, you know, film a scene, he feels like the plague-spreading weirdo with his mask off. But he's happy to be on set again. Feels lucky to be working. Even if it leads to late nights, like the one before we talked. Hence: Espresso, bedhead, piece of gum to chase the espresso, to hell with the shower.
Another side effect of fathering four daughters in college, staying healthy (Giancarlo Esposito: Modestly jacked!), and the Late Work Night: Esposito can't really watch TV. He just caught up on The Mandalorian, which he calls "inspirational entertainment." It makes sense when you hear him talk about the show: "What uplifts me is that dreams can come true and that we can find our way home. It's through our heart. It's through our understanding. It's through our connection. All of these are messages that are very prevalent under the surface in Mando." Actually, that morning, Esposito was just catching up on the many Star Wars spinoff announcements Disney sprung on its investors last week. It's a little Oprah Winfrey giving out Subarus at her old live shows. Ahsoka Tano gets one! Obi-Wan gets one! Lando gets one! Woah woah woah. Disney. Hey. Moff and his big-ass Darksaber are right there. C'mon.
"I sat there and went, 'Hey, what about me?!' Esposito jokes. "People keep asking me, 'Why aren't you in Season Two more?" I said, 'Because we're teasing you. I'm the heavy, and it'll take a little time to get to what Moff really wants.'"
To be clear: Is Giancarlo down for more Moff in one of those spinoffs?
"The answer is, yes, I would be interested in that if there was enough material and storyline to indulge that," he says. "But first I want to be true to this project."
This project. Holy hell. Friday's season finale of The Mandalorian carried a Death Star's worth of payoff for Star Wars fans. Luke Skywalker rampaging through a hoard of superpowered Stormtrooper robots. Mando taking off his helmet for a Baby Yoda sendoff that'll have you crying, and maybe even sobbing. A post-credits tease for the Boba Fett spinoff. And the most we've seen Gideon in the entire series, Esposito finally getting the chance to show off the chops that made series creator Jon Favreau go straight to him for the role. See: The actor's call to treat Baby Yoda like a real, human infant, baby-talking and playing off the puppet, something he learned from the late Caroll Spinney—the original Big Bird puppeteer. A 14-year-old Giancarlo Esposito had an early-career spot on Sesame Street as Mickey the camp counselor, picking up way, way more than geography lessons from Spinney underneath all those yellow feathers. "He was so compassionate and so loving," Esposito remembers. "The lessons that I learned from him about life and intention— intention is everything... Big Bird was really helping Mickey understand more than I ever knew I could understand about life and human interaction."
In The Mandalorian's finale, Esposito nails a Star Wars rite of passage, too: Convincingly thrashing his fancy-looking weapon, the Darksaber, around—with not one, but two hands, mind you. Though, at the time of the interview, Esposito could only tease the season's final episode, lest Jon Favreau and the Disney Imagineers/possibly Illuminati bust down his door for spoiling the whole thing. Now, what he said makes a little more sense. "Without saying anything that would be a spoiler," he says. "It's going to connect us up with a history that we're familiar with. There will be that, Oh, OK." Yeah. Would definitely throw the sudden appearance of Luke Skywalker in the echelon of Oh, OK.
"In some ways, history repeats itself," Esposito adds, following with what could be a tease for what we'll learn about Gideon in Season Three of The Mandalorian. "I think Moff Gideon is very elusive and has had a piece in every part of the Empire. I think you'll start to see that and it'll be a real clue when you see the finale."
It's at this point when I deliver the news to Giancarlo that Barack Obama said that The Boys, The Good Place, and Better Call Saul were the shows that got him through the writing of A Promised Land.
Esposito leans back. Pauses. "C'mon!"
(Don't think he actually believes me.)
"Wow. The Boys? I'm on two out of three!"
Turns out Barack loves his superheroes. Esposito has a pretty good Obama story, too. He was with Robert F. Kennedy and his family at one of the Democratic conventions back in 2007. Obama spoke there. After everything wrapped, Esposito was waiting for Kennedy's car to pick him up when he heard someone shouting at him.
Yo, yo!
"I'm like, Who's yo-ing at me?" Esposito says. "I turned around, these two Black guys, two brothers, are walking up on me. I look. My eyes widen and it's Barack Obama."
Before Obama was a fan of Esposito in The Boys and Better Call Saul, he was a fan of Esposito as Buggin' Out in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, which truly launched his career in film. Turns out Do the Right Thing was Obama's first date with Michelle. When Obama let the actor know that, just a fan admitting he was a fan, Esposito told him he'd be the President of the United States someday.
Anyway. Back to one of Obama's favorite shows, apparently: The Boys. Like Moff Gideon's there-but-not-there villainy in The Mandalorian, we haven't seen too much of Esposito's raging capitalist CEO, Stan Edgar, in the superhero/supervillain/whatever-lies-between those-two series. But Esposito will say this: There's no doubt in the world that he wasn't supposed to be on that show. About five years ago, he was on a bus in Australia when a fan started talking him up. (This happens to him. A lot. Giancarlo Esposito is the kind of celebrity fans get tattoos of.) Guy started chatting him up. Said he was a writer. Detailed this fully-realized, intricate, comic book-sounding story. Esposito realized that what this guy dreamt up was actually really damn good. Told him to run with it, genuinely. Years later, Esposito saw this writer on the red carpet for an event for The Boys. Turns out its Darick Robertson, who created the comic The Boys is based on.
"How does life work?" Esposito asks, still disbelieving. Right place, right time. It's obvious that Esposito really is a fan of the story, teasing the next season of The Boys before I even ask about it: "You're going to start to find out on a lot of levels where Stan lies in all that in our next season," he says. "[The show is] an example in many ways of how not to live. How to contain your egocentricity, how to contain and know who you are and how far you'd go to make change in the world."
Speaking of how not to live! How about the guy whose face burnt off in a hospital explosion because his big ol' ego made him overlook a pipe bomb strapped to a wheelchair. It's arguably Giancarlo Esposito's most iconic role, the one that definitively let the world know about that shit-inducing glare: Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul's meth kingpin (moonlighting as the head of the joint with the best chicken in town, Los Pollos Hermanos, lest you forget), Gus Fring. Esposito returned to the role that made him feared in Season Three of Better Call Saul, showing us a Gus that was a little younger, a little more vulnerable. The actor says that he's "being told I have a lot to do" in Season Six of the series, which he adds could start filming as early as March. And hey—who knows if it'll ever get made—but Esposito has an idea for a Breaking Bad pre-prequel called The Rise of Gus, where we'd learn that Fring came up in the military and political worlds.
"I have this whole storyline in the back of my head that he came from political royalty," he says. "I feel like Gus came from the world of order. And that his order came. He was a military man. Out of the military, he gained the ability to observe. You can't lead unless you can follow... In my brain, he was high up in a military government. He could have stayed there and ran the country. It was handed to him. But he chose a different path to be his own man and to find his own power, regardless of what he was handed. This is what he chose."
If it's true that caffeine takes about 30 minutes to an hour to kick in, Giancarlo's gotta be flying at this point, as we're nearing the end of the call. So, at this point, it might make sense to share with you that TV's greatest perpetrator of evil is not only a sweetheart, but a relatively spiritual guy. If you're looking for Esposito to talk about a throughline in his career, that route, the spiritual one, is the best way to go. Especially if you want to understand why the actor ended up with nearly 200 acting credits, too many trophies to list here, and roles so impactful that they get a former president through his 768-page memoir.
"The shows I'm doing now came to me very easily," he says. (Remember: Bus ride in Australia.) "It was divine, universal guidance. I speak this way a lot, but I don't want to belabor it. Because we as human beings, we want to think it's circumstance and we want to think it's: I won it. I was the best. I got that role. They hired me. They just called me. Sometimes won't allow us to realize that this was a gift, that this was for you."
Of course, there's the hard work, the grinding, not getting complacent even when you, like Esposito, are talented as all hell. He was a catcher in Little League baseball, the position that embodies all of those dirty-work virtues, which should tell you something. But before he even stepped foot in front of a camera, Esposito spent most of the '70s swinging and belting his teenaged heart out in musicals. Even then, you still need a cosmic bump to go from stage to screen. Turns out, Spike Lee saw Esposito's performance in the 1979 play Zooman and the Sign, leading to roles in Lee's School Daze and Do the Right Thing. In the latter film, Buggin' Out not only gets his brand-new white Jordans stepped on, he also becomes tangled in a conflict that Esposito, who is of both Black and Italian descent, called a breakthrough to him at the time: Watching a race-fueled battle between the Black and Italian communities. Today, though—after a summer of protests following the death of George Floyd—Esposito's been thinking about Do the Right Thing a little bit more lately.
"This movie really holds up because also recently I was watching a newsfeed from Minnesota and the police station in the morning was set camera," he says. "They were up on the roof with sandbags and getting their position together. At night, it was the exact same shot with the police station burning hours later. People running across the screen. No justice, no peace, and bottles and same exact camera angle. It stopped my heart. I went, 'This is Do the Right Thing. This is exactly what happens at the end of Do the Right Thing.'"
With all this talk of divine guidance, you have to wonder: What if Spike never saw a young Giancarlo in Zooman and the Sign? There's something that put Lee in that theater seat that day. You might call it luck, happenstance, an inevitability, whatever. Esposito's last story of the Zoom call ("I just got to plug this in") might give you a hint at what he'd call it.
Giancarlo Esposito met a Canadian who looked like Jesus. Vancouver, two years ago, a walk with one of his daughters. The guy was a beggar, singing and screaming to himself, about 35 years old. Comes up to Giancarlo and his daughter.
"Can you spare a hundred?" asks Canadian Jesus.
Esposito stops in his tracks. Looks at his daughter and says, "Finally, someone asked me for some real money. Finally." Gives him the hundred right out of his pocket. Finally, someone thought their value was enough to ask for more than a dime or a dollar. Take it from Esposito: Ask for what you want.
"The universe feels us, our energy," Esposito tells me. "It feels our desire, our wants. It feels our regrets. It feels all of those things that make us human. So it was a really important moment for me in my life, because I realized, not only was I supposed to be there at that moment, I was supposed to fulfill the ask of this person who I looked at like a bum, who also looked like Jesus, dirty and everything else. Who had the foresight to say, 'Hey, you got a hundred?' I was like, 'Well, in fact, I do.'"
You know what he ended up telling Canadian Jesus, right?
"Next time, why don't you ask me for a million?"
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