Giancarlo Esposito on Playing a Different ‘Gus’ in ‘Better Call Saul’ [Interview]

There are a few characters we’ve seen play important roles in both Breaking Bad and its spinoff prequel series, Better Call Saul. One of those is the unforgettable Gus Fring, played by Giancarlo Esposito.

We caught up with Esposito on the red carpet ahead of the Better Call Saul panel at PaleyFest to discuss the final season of the series and what it was like playing that character on both shows. (You can watch the full video below.)

“I love this particular character, and coming into Better Call Saul from Breaking Bad was always a wonder for me. It was a hesitant moment because I didn’t want to repeat anything I had done before, and I wondered if there was anything new I had to give,” Esposito explained.

“After talking to Vince [Gilligan] and Peter [Gould] and really understanding that the mystery of Gus is a lot about what you don’t know about him, I started to think — well, how could I do my interior work given the fact that he’s the same guy, but we’re in a different time period?”

Watch the full interview with Giancarlo Esposito:

Esposito said that doing that meant thinking about the space “in between the lines.”

“I can be intense as Gus is without being that caricature. But I could also be more vulnerable and a little bit more hotheaded, and a little looser because he’s growing to be what we finally know him to become in Breaking Bad. So in that way, it gave me a little more levity and a little more leeway to find new nuance to and old Gus.”

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*Additional reporting by Kat Pettibone

Featured image credit: Stewart Cook for the Paley Center

Better Call Saul returns for its sixth and final season on Monday, April 18th at 9/8c with two back-to-back episodes.

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