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" As Breaking Bad drug kingpin and Los Pollos Hermanos proprietor Gus Fring, Giancarlo Esposito created one of the most memorable villains in television history. But to hear Esposito tell it, Gus was one of the good guys. Semantics aside, Esposito&amp;#039;s performance earned him a nomination in this weekend&amp;#039;s Emmys, and the smart man won&amp;#039;t be betting against him. We talked to the actor about Fring and his new show, Revolution, premiering tonight on NBC at 10 p.m., in which he plays a militia leader who rises to power after earth loses, uh, power. ESQUIRE.COM: Revolution seems like clever way to make a period piece set in the present. GIANCARLO ESPOSITO: I would agree. I&amp;#039;m a big fan of period pieces, and I&amp;#039;m a big fan of the old-time westerns. I grew up watching The Wild Wild West and Shane the movie and Sergio Leone films. I really did gravitate to this because I saw the opportunity to get a sense of the old and to have it blend very seamlessly in with what may happen in the future. It really is a &amp;quot;what-if&amp;quot; story. I was sitting in a steam room with a guy, and I gotta be really honest \u2014 the guy was talking to somebody else. And he asked \u2014 because it was all about the storming of the embassy and a wonderful man dying in Libya, just such an absolute shame \u2014 and he said, &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re coming to the end of times.&amp;quot; I looked over, and I sort of said, &amp;quot;Hello,&amp;quot; and he looked at me, and he said, &amp;quot;What if you were driving down the highway and your car just stopped working?&amp;quot; ESQ: No way. GE: I said, &amp;quot;Well, I&amp;#039;m doing a show, right now, right here, that deals with everything you just asked me.&amp;quot; Because he asked me this direct question: &amp;quot;Would you survive?&amp;quot; ESQ: And would you? GE: Oh, man, I would survive. Absolutely. I always wanted to be a boy scout but was too poor. Couldn&amp;#039;t do it. I had to work from a young age. I&amp;#039;m an outdoors guy, so I have a good sense about hypothermia. I ski. I ride fast motorcycles, not that we would have that. But I hike, I run. I can fish from a stick and a string. ESQ: It seemed to me like your character, Tom Neville, might be enjoying some power that he didn&amp;#039;t have in his previous life with electricity. GE: Oh, aren&amp;#039;t you a savvy, intelligent gal? I love to create a character, and one thing I try to focus on is how to make someone black-and-white. And so you hit the nail sort of on the head. But we&amp;#039;ll have an opportunity to see what makes Tom Neville who he is today by seeing who he was yesterday. Admittedly, I always want to be the hero. I want to be the guy who was at the top of the company, the insurance adjuster who sold the most policies, who probably had a run-in with the boss &amp;#039;cause he could run the business better than the boss. But when I started to really think about it, I thought, well that&amp;#039;s kind of the same ambitious Neville that we have now. ESQ: So who is he now? GE: I&amp;#039;m the last bastion. I&amp;#039;m the last step between order and anarchy. We&amp;#039;re in a new world. You don&amp;#039;t have the right to bear arms. Follow the rules. In a way, he&amp;#039;s on the right side of the law. And forget even being a policeman. He&amp;#039;s someone who says, Look, if everyone has a gun, you guys are gonna kill each other. It gives me not only righteousness, but a certain caring for humanity. Come with us. The militia really is good. ESQ: I feel like I&amp;#039;m being recruited for a cult. GE: Come. It&amp;#039;s gonna be a better world. Even better than the one you knew. See, oftentimes, when our liberty gets taken away, we have great concern. ESQ: Are you saying you don&amp;#039;t approve of Bloomberg&amp;#039;s big-soda ban? GE: I have some problems. ESQ: You were stopped and frisked in New York, so I guess you do have some problems. GE: Absolutely. I think what we have in Revolution is also survival of the fittest. I believe in the natural order. Tom Neville is pretty up front. He&amp;#039;s a loose cannon. And I&amp;#039;ve been working on creating a guy who, underneath it all, likes what he does a little too much. He could be a little psychotic. Which means I can laugh a little bit. I can be fun. I can be menacing and fun. I don&amp;#039;t know if Gus Fring was as fun as I&amp;#039;m going to have with this guy. ESQ: He sounds a little more like Walt that Gus. GE: Maybe so. I don&amp;#039;t watch a lot of my previous work. I&amp;#039;m trying to find something new and be original. When I&amp;#039;m working on the show, I don&amp;#039;t go to the movies. I&amp;#039;m afraid I&amp;#039;m going to see an actor do something really phenomenal, and I&amp;#039;m going to want to steal it. ESQ: Were there any non-actor influences? GE: You want a leader who is good with people, so you have to take a guy who&amp;#039;s real charismatic. Take a Bill Clinton and put a sword in his hand. And put some viciousness behind all that lovely... When you&amp;#039;re in a room with Bill Clinton, you&amp;#039;re the only person he&amp;#039;s talking to. And it&amp;#039;s sexy. How does a guy do that? It&amp;#039;s loveable. It&amp;#039;s caring. It&amp;#039;s all of those things. That&amp;#039;s who I want Neville to be. ESQ: I&amp;#039;m guessing you&amp;#039;ve met President Clinton?  GE: I have. Very seductive. What I loved about his speech [at the DNC] was that he reacted to the group approval or disapproval of what he was saying. And it&amp;#039;s like he was talking to one person. ESQ: Does having this new job take pressure off the Emmy nomination? GE: I have to say, it does. It helps me not to think about it. And all of a sudden, it&amp;#039;s eight days away, so of course my attention has turned back to it. What am I gonna do, what am I gonna say, what am I gonna wear, who am I taking... My eldest daughter is coming with me. She&amp;#039;s sixteen, and she&amp;#039;s a Breaking Bad fan. And I&amp;#039;m going to remind myself that I&amp;#039;m just me. ESQ: There was a lingering Gus question that I had during the finale that I wanted to ask you about. Did you watch this season? GE: Yes. But I haven&amp;#039;t seen the finale yet. ESQ: I don&amp;#039;t want to spoil it for you. GE: Ah, screw it. Ask me.  ESQ: Skylar brings Walt to a storage unit where she&amp;#039;s storing the money he&amp;#039;s made and says something like, &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s more money here than we can spend in ten lifetimes. When will it be enough?&amp;quot; But Gus must have had much more money. Why did he stay in the game? Was it just to avenge Max? GE: Gus was moved by not only the family he created \u2014 it didn&amp;#039;t matter what the business was \u2014 but he also had a deep pain over a very, very dear friend that he had lost. And I think, to answer that really truthfully, I believe part of his strongest motivation was to even up that score. I don&amp;#039;t think it was about money for Gus. I think it was about camaraderie and helping people be their best selves. Don&amp;#039;t forget, Gus took guys who really had a knowledge of chemistry. And part of Gus&amp;#039;s enjoyment was to see them get an education, even though they served an illicit business. He took Max off the street in El Salvador as a kid. Gave him an education. He didn&amp;#039;t want to abuse him. He didn&amp;#039;t want to take advantage of him. All that talk about maybe they were sexually involved \u2014 all that&amp;#039;s poppycock. This guy really cared about human beings. And he cared to show them how to live better, and live right. It just so happened that the business he was doing was illicit. So, of course, in the end, the reprehensible thing that was done to him \u2014 he had to avenge that. Did he need to be in the game? No. No. But he was good at it. He tells Walt, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re not like me at all,&amp;quot; when Walt says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m like you.&amp;quot; The one thing that gnawed away at him was that this horrible thing was done, and that people were reckless in the way in which they did it. Don Eladio was reckless and not careful. Walter is reckless and not careful. Which means you don&amp;#039;t really care about people. Which means you really are only in it now for yourself. Which means you haven&amp;#039;t thought it through. Gus was a true gentleman. Truly. PLUS: Stephen Marche on Revolution and Our Anti-Technology Fantasy &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/interviews/a15834/giancarlo-esposito-interview-12790241/>