Giancarlo Esposito Admits He Considered Arranging His Own Murder For Life Insurance: ‘I Started Scheming’
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and according to actor Giancarlo Esposito, those measures included staging his own death to stay afloat.
Per Variety, before the 'Breaking Bad' actor landed the role of Gus Fring, he considered arranging his own murder so that his children could have financial protection via his life insurance money.
Esposito appeared on an episode of Sirius XM's 'Jim & Sam' where he detailed how he thought of the extreme measure prior to his iconic role in 2008, explaining that he "started scheming."
"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," Esposito, 65, began.
giancarlo esposito says that before he was cast as gus fring, he was severely broke and contemplated arranging his own murder to ensure his children would receive life insurance money.
— 🌕 (@alilmoonn) April 19, 2024
“the light at the end of the tunnel was ‘breaking bad’”
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"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," the actor revealed. "I literally thought of self-annihilation so they could survive. That's how low I was."
The actor's concerns came just about a year before the award-winning TV drama series 'Breaking Bad' would undeniably change his life for the better, walking him into additional roles including 'The Mandalorian' (2019) and 'The Gentleman' (2019).
"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 Denmark native told Variety. "The light at the end of the tunnel was 'Breaking Bad.' "
Today, Esposito, who made his acting debut on Broadway at the ripe age of eight in the play 'Maggie Flynn,' has won NAACP Image Awards, Critics Choice Awards, and Drama Desk Awards, in addition to 53 combined award nominations.
