At Raleigh GalaxyCon, actor known for villain roles notes, ‘The bad guy is exciting’
For much of the past decade, Giancarlo Esposito has shown the world a villainous face, glaring from the set as Gus Fring — angry-eyed, yellow-shirted meth kingpin masquerading as a chicken chef in “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.”
But as he greeted hundreds of Raleigh fans at GalaxyCon Thursday, the star, also now seen in “The Mandalorian” and “The Boys,” looked anything but sinister — even revealing his youthful crush.
“I was in love with Princess Leia,” he said in an interview, flanked by followers in Jawa hoods and stormtrooper helmets. “If you’d have told me there was a ‘Con’ and she’d be there — Carrie Fisher would be there — I’d have been there in a heartbeat.”
Esposito drew the loudest applause as the four-day sci-fi/fantasy festival kicked off Thursday at the Raleigh Convention Center — more spirited even than the clapping for Barry Bostwick, star of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” who promised fans, “I’m selling my underwear.”
A fan favorite bad guy
As the crowd scattered with its light sabers and fairy wings, Esposito reflected on what makes his bad-guy characters so enduring — how a throat-slitting, cartel-poisoning backstabber became a TV-land favorite.
“We’re in an age of bullies,” he said. “Bullies and liars, and I understand that because I’ve been both. The bad guy is exciting. It’s an exciting character to play because I walk in a room, I control the chaos. First I’ve got to control the chaos that exists in me. The bad guy makes decisions. He’s clear. He takes control of the situation.
“There’s something about that that’s exciting,” he added. “It empowers people through action. People want to be able to to that, but they’re either shy, or they don’t know how to put words together, or they don’t know how to be a leader, they’re afraid they’re going to hurt someone’s feelings. All those things get in the way.”
All through the convention center hallways, fans with VIP passes descended escalators in green-sequined shoes, lifting the tails of their furry costumes to keep them from getting stuck in the cracks. One fan attached a rubber “Alien” creature to a remote-controlled car, along with a sign that read, “Free Hugs.” Another played the “Star Wars” theme on the violin.
For Esposito, who has graced Raleigh cons before, the festivities offer a chance at self-realization, giving people a much-needed chance to shed their own skins.
“What cons do and what comics do for me is it expands my imagination,” he said. “It allows either the villainous side or the heroic side for human beings to be more powerful than they seem to be, and that to me is somehow important. So I just try to distill that message into how do we harness that power without hurting anyone? How do we take that idea and empower people to be all that they can be?”
‘I always wanted to fly’
At 64, he appreciates a long history with North Carolina, having filmed “Maximum Overdrive” outside Wilmington and “Gospel Hill” outside Charlotte in Rock Hill, S.C. Just last year, he graced Raleigh with a GalaxyCon appearance, citing the need for superheros as the pandemic ramped up for a second time.
And even with an antihero resume, Esposito confessed his youthful admiration for more wholesome role models, and even better, those whose characters are large enough to be simultaneously upright and malevolent.
“I’m old school,” he said, “so I always wanted to fly. When I was really, really young, I loved Mary Poppins because she could fly. Put her umbrella up and go up. And I loved Superman because he was just a bad (expletive) kryptonite kind of dude and he could not only fly, he could beat (expletives) up.”
He let out a huge laugh.
“For a good reason,” Esposito said. “For a cause.”
If you go
GalaxyCon Raleigh will be held at the Raleigh Convention Center on Salisbury Street downtown until Sunday. For tickets and information go to galaxycon.com/pages/raleigh.
This story was originally published July 28, 2022 at 5:30 PM.