He was planning to break bad.
Giancarlo Esposito admitted he was once in such dire financial straits that he actually considered killing himself so his family could get insurance money.
“That’s how low I was,” the 65-year-old actor, who eventually went on to star in “Breaking Bad” and many other shows, said during a recent episode of SiriusXM’s “Jim and Sam Show.”
“My way out in my brain was: ‘Hey, do you get life insurance if someone commits suicide? Do they get the bread?’” Giancarlo explained. “My wife had no idea why I was asking this stuff. I started scheming.”
He thought if he could get someone to kill him, “death through misadventure,” as he called it, his wife and four children would get the insurance.
“I wanted them to have a life. It was a hard time in life. I literally thought of self-annihilation so that they could survive,” he said.
“That was the first inkling to me that there was a way out, but I wouldn’t be here to be available to it, or be there for my kids,” he added.
Ultimately, he decided that he couldn’t go through with any plan like that because it would leave his family traumatized.
“I started to think that’s not viable because of the pain I would cause them, and it would be lifelong — and lifelong trauma that would just extend the generational trauma which I’m trying to move away from,” Esposito said.
Esposito, who shares daughters who shares daughters Shayne, Ruby, Kale and Syrlucia with ex-wife Joy McManigal, went on to receive three Emmy award nominations for his role as Gus Fring on “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.”
After the show wrapped in 2013, he went on to complete other notable roles in shows like “Godfather of Harlem,” “The Boys,” and “Parish.”
The “Mandalorian” actor called the Bryan Cranston-led series “the light at the end of the tunnel.”
