The long-running AMC series Better Call Saul might technically serve as a prequel to Breaking Bad, but has carved out a storytelling niche all its own in the realm of drama television thanks to unexpected twists and phenomenal performances. The show chronicles the journey of Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), a former conman who aspires to become a decent lawyer, through his seemingly-inevitable descent into the role of crooked criminal defense attorney Saul Goodman. Throughout the prior five seasons, Jimmy's backstory has played almost in tandem with flash-forward scenes from his post-Breaking Bad life, as we learn more about the people who played such a formative role in shaping his burgeoning professional career in law (like his now-wife Kim Wexler, played by Rhea Seehorn, or his now-late older brother Charles McGill, played by Michael McKean). We also learn how Jimmy's path first crossed with that of former police officer and security expert Mike Ehrmentraut (Jonathan Banks), and how he ultimately became a "friend of the cartel" rather unwittingly, thanks to tangling with members of the deadly Salamanca crime family, spearheaded by the unpredictable Lalo (Tony Dalton), who frequently clashes with rival drug lord Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito).
Ahead of Better Call Saul's Season 6 premiere, Collider had the opportunity to speak with Esposito about reprising the role of Gus for the show's final season, and what it's been like to perform a character when their fate has already been revealed. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, the actor also spoke about how he had to face his own discomfort in playing a different version of Gus from the one we know in Breaking Bad, which episode of the original series was a pivotal moment for him performance-wise, what excited him the most about Gus's Season 6 storyline, where Gus's relationship with Mike currently stands, and more.
Collider: Thank you for taking the time to sit and talk with me about the final season. It's hard to believe that we're finally here kind of at the threshold.
GIANCARLO ESPOSITO: It comes up quickly when you have a great show like this particular show. We waited a long time to get into this final season. We knew it was coming. We're anxious to know what happens. We know that we pick up right where we left off, which is a great place to pick this up. Deeply in drama and very violent action that comes from that final episode in Season 5. So it's exciting to figure out and try to unravel what does happen to Nacho Varga, and how is Gus complicit? You see in Gus's world the friction between him and Mike, and the idea that someone did everything right by us, [so] we should give that person some quarter and allow him a way out, but Gus is always... We go back to Breaking Bad, and we're steeped in the world of Gus in Better Call Saul. He's always playing the long game. He's thinking ahead of people, and he's a little bit frustrated that Lalo Salamanca is, at the present, a forward thinker as well.
This is a character where we sort of already know where he's going to end up, to a certain extent. We've seen the ending of Gus's story on Breaking Bad. What has it been like to develop this character when you've already performed his fate in the past?
ESPOSITO: Well, it was always a question of whether or not I would want to return to reprise a character who's doing the same thing, as you've seen before. The answer for me as a performer, a creative artist, is no. So the question is: what will I do, if I accept, to make that character have new nuanced feelings and be in a different position than before? To be in a different position than before requires me to talk to Vince Gilligan, the writer, and to find out what he has in mind. What you know about Gus, [what] we know, is strong. But what we don't know sometimes is even stronger, creates mystery, and allows us to be teased and to be expecting something that we may not know could happen. All those are good.
I'm an actor who likes tangible ideas and things to work with, and I go back to what I did in Breaking Bad. I create a world for myself that started way beyond Better Call Saul, and I create and make that world full so that when you see me on-screen saying little, my eyes and my facial expressions are saying a whole lot more because of the history that's in my brain, and because of the game I know I'm trying to play. So, that has filled me up. I got excited when I realized, "Okay, you have to create a world that you work in that's not only within the world of what's written but also within the world of what is not."
That, to me, is a great challenge as a performer and an actor, given the moments where I came into this process and had to feel feelings that I didn't want to feel. I've always been controlling the chaos in many ways, and in moments in this particular season, the chaos got out of control, and Gus could not control it but had to look like, feel like he could. So there's an irritation, an impatience, frustration, anxiety that I had to be comfortable with. And I wasn't, I'm not! I've been playing a guy who's got it together for so long, and all of a sudden, I'm a guy who doesn't have it so together. How much of that do I show? I was in ADR with our wonderful ADR master Kathryn [Madsen], watching a scene between me and Mike that's going to play out down the road, and I felt like I was too big. I went, "Wait a minute. That's not the Gus I know." And then Kathryn went, "But remember this, remember that." And I went, "Oh, I'm just uncomfortable with this guy," which means I did alright, because if I'm standing there uncomfortable with my own performance, given the circumstance of what happened in that moment, then that's a different Gus. And that's what I wanted, you know?
So it's been a fascinating journey for me in that regard, fighting against my own preconception of who I'm supposed to be. Because I want the audience to really understand and see the Gus that they know and love who is a Gus that they're also very fearful of. I scare people, and I do it in a way that's kind of ... It's disarming and frightening, because you never know when it's coming and because we know that he can do his own dirty work. Episode 4x01 in Breaking Bad was a pivotal moment for me. Finally, I got to do something that showed you this guy's visceral and vicious nature. I feel sometimes like a little boy in that I am in wonder and enchanted by the world, but when you take my toy away, and I don't get what I want, I'm vicious. That, to me, is a great analogy for who Gus really is under me.
What specifically does Season 6 hold for Gus? Was there anything that just made you really excited to get to do differently, to kind of peel back the onion a little more?
ESPOSITO: Yes. [The] relationship with Mike is Gus making a decision that he doesn't share certain things and takes an action. As an actor, when you take an action that's solo, that is seeing down the road, not just instructing people to get more information. [He's] doing something on his own that eventually will come back to either kill him or save him. It's a thought and an idea, and you watch him figure it out. It was very, very exciting, not knowing whether it was going to work and leading to a moment where he is so completely compromised that, as an audience, will have you on the edge of your seat going, "Oh, my God."
Someone asked me a question last night which was similar. And I said, "In this world of Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan, of Better Call Saul, in a beautiful story that's about Saul Goodman and Kim Wexler, what are their morals? What are they going to do?" You could be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised if the character could die twice. How about that? Everyone thinks they know Gus died, right? But when you're on the edge, and you have that information, and you know this guy's going to die. We've seen it before, and we've seen Gus find his way out. So those moments — you see, I get excited — are exciting to me. His relationship with Mike, these guys might... They could. Are they going to kill each other? Mike is certainly a capable formidable opponent for Gus as well. That's why he's on Gus's side. For them to disagree creates a world where you don't know what's going to happen.
So, against all odds, we try to figure out who we are as human beings, and that part of this show truly got my blood boiling in a way that was so exciting and so interesting. I say this: If you can stay present, then you can allow those circumstances to move you, then the audience will see that you really don't know what's going to happen. You're playing the presence of the moment. And that's the wonderful thing about Better Call Saul.
Season 6 of Better Call Saul premieres April 18 on AMC.