Giancarlo Esposito says that he was so broke at one point in his career that he considered committing insurance fraud to make sure his kids were taken care of financially.
The 65-year-old actor has been working in Hollywood for years, but he didn’t land his most recognizable role until 2008 when he began playing Gus Fring in Breaking Bad. Right before being cast in the hit series, Giancarlo was getting close to bankruptcy.
Giancarlo discussed this difficult time in an episode of the SiriusXM podcast Jim & Sam.
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“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. 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. I literally thought of self-annihilation so they could survive. That’s how low I was,” Giancarlo said.
“That was the first inkling that there was a way out, but I wouldn’t be here to be available to my kids,” Esposito added (via Variety). “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 light at the end of the tunnel was Breaking Bad.”
Watch the trailer for Giancarlo‘s new movie!