Giancarlo Esposito Answers The Web's Most Searched Questions

Hi, I am Giancarlo Esposito,

and this is the WIRED Autocomplete Interview.

I was in an anime, what was it?

Go to Google baby, Google.

[upbeat music]

What caves is Giancarlo Esposito in?

I am in Far Cry, which is a great game.

I play Anton Castillo,

the head of a small Latin American country, a dictator,

a very interesting man.

I'm also in, I play the dentist in, oh my gosh,

my brain is going Payday Two.

Yes, I got it.

What is Giancarlo Esposito, most famous for?

What is Giancarlo Esposito, most famous for?

He's most famous for playing Gustavo friend,

Kingpin of the meth world in Breaking Bad, you are done.

I got into an airplane, I wanted to go to the bathroom,

and a woman was standing there.

She turned around and she just froze

and she was totally in shock, and she hit the wall

and she's up against the wall

and she, You, you, you, you can go, Gus.

And I was stunned.

I said, No, no, please, ladies first you go,

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, you go.

And so I went inside the bathroom, did what I had to do,

came back out and she's up against the wall,

still peeled, pinned to it.

And I said, thank you very much.

And I walked away.

Okay, what languages does Giancarlo Esposito speak?

English baby.

My first language was a bit of German as my mother

and father were working in Hamburg.

My mother was singing at the Hamburg State Opera

and then Italian.

My father is from Naples, Italy.

And so my father and mother spoke Italian in the home.

Then when we got to Germany, some German,

and then my third language is gibberish

because my head was so full of languages

that I really couldn't process them all

and English was throwing me.

And so the third language was gibberish.

And then the fourth language, through the roles I play,

I said, I'm part Italian and part African American,

but I couldn't get those African American roles.

So I learned how to speak a little Spanish.

Okay.

Oh wait, am I in the right place?

Well, yes I am.

What is John Giancarlo Esposito's accent?

Well, when I say my name,

Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito.

My accent is Italian.

For many years I pronounced my name Esposito,

and I grew up with the Esposito brothers

who were hockey players.

So I understood that to be the pronunciation.

Went back to Italy and I could literally be riding a bicycle

in the mountains in Milan, outside of Milan and Lake Como.

And someone would roll down the window, Giancarlo Esposito,

Giancarlo Esposito.

And I'm like, okay.

And then I had a buddy in Italy

who said, why do you pronounce your name Esposito?

It's so American like, it's just not you.

And everyone says, that sounds

Spanish because there is an Espino.

So I said, no, I'm very Italian.

Look at me, very Italian, Giancarlo Esposito.

Next, wow, you're so good at this.

Where is Giancarlo Esposito from?

My mother was performing with Josephine Baker

in Copenhagen in a supper club.

And so I was born there.

However, I grew up in Rome, Italy,

because my father was from Naples.

He was working in the Opera house.

And my mother and father traveled around with each other

as he became sort of her manager.

And she sang in different supper clubs

and opera houses, eventually winding up

at Ala Scala in Milano.

They met in San Carlo Opera in Napoli.

So I'm very proud of where I'm from

and I'm very proud to be raised in America.

But I'm completely proud of my Italian heritage

and my African American heritage.

When did Giancarlo Esposito start acting?

I started acting at eight years old.

We were living in a basement apartment in Yonkers, New York,

and we were really poor

because my mother and father were getting divorced

after 11 years of marriage.

I was watching a TV show called Giganto with my brother,

and there was a commercial that came on,

and it was the first time I ever saw

a brown-skinned person on a commercial.

And it was a kid like 15, 16 years old.

My mother came home and said, I can do this.

We can do this.

We're eating Frank and Beans.

We're eating grits with ketchup, we can do this.

And she took us to an agent, Ernestine McClendon.

And I auditioned within two weeks

for my first Broadway show called Maggie Flynn

with Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones.

That was 58 years ago.

When Wednesday Dances.

Oh yeah, that's it, right?

When Wednesday Dances,

this is a special one for me because I got a call

and I love Jenna Ortega

and I got a call to do this Netflix promo,

and I love Netflix.

I've had a number of shows on Netflix, you can look 'em up,

many of them are on now.

But I have to tell you, to be loosey goosey and have fun,

this was one of my most favorite things I ever did.

So getting there, I'm like doing my research,

checking out Wednesday, checking out her moves

and figuring out how to just be that Castilian.

Oh, very big and very wonderful.

And I had a blast, a real blast doing this.

And I wanna do more.

What fun that was.

Wow, I'm getting this a little bit now.

Okay, so does Giancarlo Esposito

like playing villains?

You know, I am a dramatic actor

and I have always resisted this question.

So when you ask me this question, I want to say to you,

I will kill you.

But I was thinking about this in the last 24 hours.

I thought to myself, you know what?

You love playing villains.

This is my favorite thing in life.

I saw a picture with James Cagney.

Many of you will not know who James Cagney is,

many years ago, Public Enemy.

And at the end, he is on top

of a scaffold with a machine gun.

He's like top of the world, ma, top of the world.

And I saw that movie and I went,

this dude is having so much fun.

I went, the villain is complicated.

The villain is interesting.

The villain is someone that we don't know.

We wonder why he's so villainous.

And if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound.

If you're gonna do it, you gotta do it right?

The villain is the antithesis of a hero.

And some of them have good intentions, many of them not,

but they're interesting and they drive the story

and they're electric and they're exciting

and you can't take your eyes off of them.

So yes, I have just outed myself to say

I love to scare the other people.

Next, does John Cato like anime?

I love anime, I have no favorite anime,

but I think anime is extremely interesting.

I do go to Comic Cons and I do see people dress up.

I was in an anime called Cyberpunk,

and it was a really interesting thing.

It was a really great project for me to do.

Playing Faraday to make that guy live

and breathe in our American culture,

but have the influence of that Japanese anime.

How long did Giancarlo Esposito, live in Denmark?

Okay, the answer is, I can't remember.

No, just kidding.

The answer is, one year again, my mother was performing

with Josephine Baker, who years ago,

I eventually met in Toronto when I was nine years old,

doing my first out of town tour for Maggie Flynn.

But I lived in Denmark for one year and I loved it.

How did Giancarlo Esposito get famous?

You know, wow, what a question that is.

How does anyone get famous?

How did I get famous?

If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.

So I commit, I commit myself to the reality of what I do.

I realize that they're up and downs in everyone's careers.

I never try to be a celebrity or a star.

I just try to be me and to understand

what my connection is to the work I'm doing.

And that's probably how I got famous.

How did Giancarlo Esposito, start acting?

Well, I told a part of this story.

It was through needing to have a better life.

You know, economically,

after my mother and my father's divorce,

it was realizing that I loved performing.

There were other things I loved too,

but it was asking myself a question after many years of up

and downs, if this was supposed to be what I was meant

to do, like we're meant to do a lot of things.

I asked myself, is this what you were meant to do?

And I was meant to be a storyteller.

That's what I do.

I think my true calling was to tell a story

and to move people from one place

to another in their consciousness.

Because after 15, 20 years of acting in the theater,

I decided I wanted to move to film and television.

But I also knew that that took work,

that took a different acting style,

that took becoming smaller, more compressed.

Having a thought in my head,

when you're me, that you can't read.

And you're wondering what is he thinking right now

that is committing to doing something that you love,

but also going to class, figuring yourself out.

And I think we're all on that journey.

I know I am.

How do you pronounce Giancarlo Esposito?

Well, my name once again

is Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito.

Next, I'm getting into this now.

Come on, bring in some more cards, mama.

Okay, is Giancarlo Esposito Italian?

Yes, completely Italian.

Is Giancarlo Esposito a nice guy?

Oh my gosh.

I know these are not your questions, WIRED.

I know these are the fan questions.

I am a nice guy.

You know the one,

I have a lot of integrity for who I am today,

but I may not be that tomorrow, and that's okay.

But underneath it all,

I believe people are intrinsically good.

That's certainly my life.

So yeah, I've come to realize

I'm not all the characters I play,

but I really love life and I love people.

I've done one comedy, nothing to lose.

No one asked that, but I'm gonna tell you.

But I also wanna do a romantic comedy.

And it would be nice to figure out

how do you do a romantic comedy

with someone who is maybe a little more mature

than our young romantic comedies?

And so we're gonna figure that out.

But yeah, I'm a nice guy most of the time.

Is Giancarlo Esposito a director?

Wow, yeah, I am a director.

That changed my life too.

You know, you make these turns in your life.

I've directed two feature films.

I love directing

because I feel like you can tell more personal stories

that are relatable to an audience

that sometimes doesn't get targeted with movies

that they can really understand about everyday people.

And so, yes, I'll direct more and look out for that.

You have to go see it.

You gotta go to the theaters, people.

Does Giancarlo Esposito have children?

I have four daughters

who I absolutely adore and they've changed my life.

Shayne, Kale, Syr And Ruby.

And they're all in their 20s

and they've changed the way I think about the habits

that I've taken on from my father.

So my girls have grown me in the world of,

you know what I say?

My girls have really helped me be a real man.

Giancarlo Esposito, Do The Right Thing.

I love Ozzie Davis' line in that,

he tells Spike Lee,

Young Man, always do the right thing.

I love this movie, I love Spike Lee.

It was really fun to do, creating the character

of bugging out that guy

who is questioning how it all works

and why don't you have any why,

why you got no brothers on the wall

is a very, very special experience for me.

The movie lives on, I saw it in the Netherlands

about five years ago, and it really still holds up.

And it's been great to have this friendship

and love for Spike Lee and all that he stands for.

Giancarlo Esposito, laughing meme.

Oh my gosh.

I get these laughing memes five times a day

from people that I know, we are not the same.

It's a whole nother world to get famous in.

And I'm really happy that it came out

of a really organic place that people know me.

Giancarlo Esposito, The Residence,

a show I really love a show that's on Netflix right now.

It is Knives Out in the White House.

I play AB Winter.

I start out on the floor, you see my feet.

AB Winter, Chief White House usher responsible

of all the workings, comings,

and goings to have a smoothly working White House.

And this role of Cordelia Cup by Uzo Aduba

is absolutely spectacular.

It is a fantastic show,

the White House is recreated within inches

of exactly what it is.

You get a tour of this place,

but you get a chance to see the show

through all the suspect's eyes to figure out who done it.

You know, I didn't, 'cause I'm dead on the floor,

but who done it?

You are going to love it.

And I'm very proud to have been in it.

Giancarlo Esposito, voice acting.

Part of what I do requires a lot of imagination.

And if I can encourage you guys to have anything

and to cultivate anything, it would be your imagination.

And so when I'm in the room, in the booth,

voice acting, I really love it.

I'm cultivating my imagination.

Sometimes I close my eyes

and I take the journey of the carriage.

'Cause many times, whether you know it

or not, I'm not looking at a screen matching something.

I'm creating the voice so they can match to me.

I use my voice well from my Broadway acting days

and I love voice acting.

And I'll continue to do that till the day I die, I love it.

See you next time.

Those are all the searches.

I want to thank you for having me today.

It's been so much fun.

[upbeat music]