![]() There is a sour note in that fandom though. “We first met on Revolution with Eric Kripke and Jon directed the pilot episode.” Kripke went on to adapt The Boys, with Favreau later creating The Mandalorian. “It’s the same thing for my relationship with Jon Favreau, who I adore,” he says. Years later, he found out the person had been Darick Robertson, the co-creator of the comic book of which Amazon Prime’s adult superhero series The Boys is an adaptation. He told the stranger he liked the concept and to run with it. Just as Spike Lee happened to be in the audience at Zooman and the Sign, six years ago Esposito had been on a bus in Australia when someone approached him with an idea for a comic book. The word serendipitous is raised – and it’s hard to argue with him. His spirituality applies not only to his work but also how he views that work. “Now, those are a lot of questions to answer on this call!” Esposito does this often, leveraging a serious moment with a self-aware chuckle. For him, it throws up some crucial questions: “Why am I really here? What is this acting thing I’m playing at? How do I link up the play that is acting to the real play of consciousness that is life? And how can I narrow and close the gap of that separation so that I can live my life fully with the mission that I’ve been given?” He must notice my furrowed brow because he laughs mercifully and rakes his hand through his hair in theatrical exhaustion. Instead, he thinks we have a harmful tendency to separate the two factions. While many people despair at the way our lives are increasingly engulfed by the demands of our work, Esposito sees it differently. But the actor concedes that “Do the Right Thing allowed me to connect with the African American part of my soul that is mourning the fact equality isn’t with us”. “And I’ve always said who is ‘them’? Who is ‘they’?” Esposito didn’t want to choose a side he was both “us” and “them”. In that movie there was this feeling of ‘it’s us against them’,” he recalls. “Spike is absolutely brilliant, but he took a side. In “joining Spike Lee’s camp”, Esposito learnt of opinions on race relations beyond his own. “I don’t think my father really understood how that was for me being half Black and half Italian,” he adds. The film was released “at a time in New York when things were very tense racially”, recalls Esposito, who credits it with helping his father begin to understand what it was like being mixed-race. In a similar way to Godfather of Harlem, the movie’s Black and Italian friction hit a nerve. Career-wise, obviously, but personally too. Nine years later, Lee cast him in his third feature Do the Right Thing as the fast-talking Bed Stuy-native known as Buggin’ Out. (Last year, he was meant to appear alongside Denzel Washington in Lee’s war drama Da 5 Bloods before scheduling conflicts necessitated a cast shake-up.) Lee first saw Esposito perform in a production of Charles Zuller’s Zooman and the Sign with Negro Ensemble Company, New York City in 1980 when Esposito was 22. Over the next two decades, Esposito’s acting found a home in collaborations with Spike Lee, starring in four of the Oscar-winning director’s films. The character’s menacing glare™ has also been commandeered by a warm grin. The yellow button-up, polyester tie and khaki pants famously worn by his Breaking Bad antagonist are nowhere in sight. “I’m really quite blessed and amazed,” the 63-year-old actor says over Zoom from his home in New York, about the upward trajectory his career has taken as of late. And before then, the actor made his name in celebrated films like Do the Right Thing, The Usual Suspects and Malcolm X.Įsposito’s most recent IMDb entries have little in common besides a Rotten Tomatoes rating above 90 per cent. ![]() But there’s also The Mandalorian, The Boys and The Godfather of Harlem. There was the 16-time Emmy-winning Breaking Bad, in which he played the notorious Gustavo Fring, a role he reprised for the show’s equally successful spin-off Better Call Saul (39 Emmy nods and counting). ![]() It’s apparently good luck and “the universe” that has landed him critically acclaimed series after critically acclaimed series. ![]() In the Venn diagram of prestige television, Giancarlo Esposito is firmly in the middle. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |