Giancarlo Esposito’s Secret to Playing Villains: Why Being the Nicest Bad Guy Could Break Hollywood’s Mold
Added on October 30, 2025 inMovie News Cards
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Ever wonder if being a Hollywood villain is just a cosmic case of mistaken identity? Well, today’s celestial vibes—a daring alignment sparking depth and duality—seem to perfectly encapsulate Giancarlo Esposito’s claim: playing the baddie is just an artful act of human complexity. Known for chillingly brilliant roles like Gustavo Fring in Breaking Bad and a slew of other notorious characters, Esposito reveals there’s a whole spectrum of emotions behind that menacing stare. It’s like Mercury dancing in Scorpio—deep, mysterious, and intensely human beneath the surface drama. So, are villains really that bad, or just spectacularly misunderstood players swimming through their own zodiac of feelings? Dive into the layers of villainy and vulnerability as Hollywood’s favorite “bad guy” flips the script, showing us that even the darkest stars shine with shades of kindness and complicated humanity. LEARN MORE
Giancarlo Esposito may be a go-to bad guy in Hollywood, but he wants everyone to know it’s just an act.
“I’m playing a human being, who has all kinds of emotions from A to Z,” Esposito told a panel on “Villains We Love to Hate” at the Tribeca Festival Lisboa on Thursday. He broke out as the villainous drug kingpin Gustavo Fring on AMC’s Breaking Bad and its spinoff Better Call Saul.
Then came playing a wealthy drug lord in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen, a war criminal in The Mandalorian and menacing Stan Edgar in The Boys. More recently he played the memorably corrupt Mayor Cicero in Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis.
After all those roles, Hollywood’s in-demand baddie insists villains get a bad rap. “For me, when I’m playing what someone may call a villain, I try to work on the opposite – I try to be as kind as possible, to be as accommodating as possible,” Esposito insisted.
Queen of the South villainess Veronica Falcon agreed bad guys in film and TV deserve better press, even if a villain is by definition evil, as opposed to better-natured Hollywood anti-heroes. “I try to play the characters as humans, as humanly possible,” Falcon explained.
Arguing playing villains is often counter-intuitive, Falcon said bad people in real life don’t go through every day thinking they’re bad people. They may just see themselves doing a job. “So when I’m performing, I try to perform them similarly,” Falcon explained.
Of course, at the same time actors do exhaustive research and preparation to play a villain the way they intend when the cameras roll, with a look of death or inner turmoil, they also have to respect the script they are working off of, and the director running a set.
“The good actors, the good directors, are good collaborators. They collaborate,” Falcon, a veteran stage actor, argued. But much depends on trust.
Esposito recalled working with director Baz Luhrmann on the TV series The Get Down, and having at one point to negotiate on set where his character was to stand. He recounting telling Luhrmann: “I don’t mind being moved around because it’s your vision. But first I need to express my instinct, and we can change it. If I don’t follow my instinct, I won’t have it anymore.”
Portuguese actor Joaquim de Almeida, whose signature raspy voice has had him playing many villains, also insisted he aims to play a human being, even if at times with an emotional intensity. On the third season of 24, he recalled one scene where, as the main villain that season, de Almeida had to murder his brother and beforehand had to establish in his own mind why.
“Why am I killing my brother? It looks like a novella. But no, I’m killing my brother because he’s stealing my business, my way of life. And I killed him and I cried,” de Almeida recalled.
Esposito also discussed how to leave behind a decidedly bad character, whether at the end of the day on set, or at an airport when fans often call him by his villain’s name rather than his own.
He recounted hosting one of his daughters, then 14 years of age, on the set of Breaking Bad. During her visit, she saw her father filming a scene as Gus Fring did an especially dastardly act in front of the cameras. “That’s Gus. This is papa,” Esposito told his daughter between takes to resolve any conflict in her own mind.
But when the scene ended and the crew and cast got set for the next one, Esposito’s daughter turned in her seat to her father and remarked without a beat: “Good kill, papa.”
Tribeca Festival Lisboa continues through to Nov. 1.
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