Breaking Bad: Giancarlo Esposito Reveals Pitch for Gus Fring Prequel

Breaking Bad‘s most mysterious character, even all these years later, remains Giancarlo Esposito’s Gus Fring. Despite one of the few characters to appear in both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, only hints of his past life (and present life) are teased throughout the series. For Giancarlo Esposito however there’s still more to the story, speaking in a new vide for British GQ, “Giancarlo Esposito Answers Your Questions,” the fan-favorite actor responded to a question about hopes for a third TV series set in the world of Breaking Bad, specifically one about the origins of Gus Fring. “I would love that too,” Esposito said.

He continued, “My backstory is he was a military guy who worked his way up through the ranks and could have become president, el jefe, el presidente, even possibly the dictator, and have taken over. But he wanted to do something that could not be controlled by others, and he wanted to control his own destiny. And so he took off to create a new life for himself in America, and become a meth dealer, a businessman. But I think, you know, in his younger years, he was someone who could have been more Tony Montana. But he worked his way into becoming level enough to listen, hear, and see through his emotional state. We would hope that it might be The Rise of Gus.”

A season 4 episode of Breaking Bad revealed the earliest piece of Gus Fring’s life with a flashback to 1989 and the reveal of his business partner Max Arciniega, whose death triggered a decades long plot to get revenge on the Salamanca cartel. Pieces of his past are teased but no concrete details of his earliest years have ever been confirmed. It’s believed by many that he hailed originally from Chile, since he’s often called The Chilean by members of the cartel, but no official details about his life prior to appearing in Mexico in the 1980s have been even hinted at. 

Fans holding out hope for even more in the world of Breaking Bad would do their best to not hold their breath, as series creator Vince Gilligan has previously shot down the idea of another story in the world. After five seasons of Breaking Bad, six seasons of Better Call Saul, and the feature film El Camino, the creatives behind it all are ready to walk away from the table.

“You can’t keep putting all your money on red 21. I feel like we probably pushed it doing a spinoff to Breaking Bad [but] I could not be more happy with the results,” Gilligan said during AMC’s virtual TCA panel back in 2022. “Then I did [Breaking Bad movie] El Camino and I’m very proud of that too. But I think I’m starting to sense you’ve got to know when to leave the party, you don’t want to be the guy with a lampshade on your head.”

Gilligan added: “I don’t have any plans right now to do anything more in this universe. I know I probably gave the same answer at the end of Breaking Bad. I gotta prove to myself that I got something else in me. I’m not a one-trick pony, that’s what I’m hoping.”