Giancarlo Esposito Talks Turturro Reunion and His Gus Fring Prequel Idea

Giancarlo Esposito is reflecting on his screen history with John Turturro as the actors reunite in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he also discusses a different potential return: revisiting Gus Fring through a prequel concept he calls The Rise of Gus.

The publication frames the reunion around a contrast between the actors’ experience on Do the Right Thing and their emotional connection during the new film. Its headline describes them breaking character to cry mid-scene, placing their relationship at the center of an interview that spans both their current work and Esposito’s best-known television role.

Written and directed by Noah Segan, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York stars Turturro as Harry Lehman, an aging thief struggling to support himself in a changing city. According to distributor Sony Pictures Classics, his increasingly unreliable livelihood is further complicated by his responsibility for caring for his disabled wife, Rosie.

The film’s central predicament turns on the changing contents of the pockets Harry targets. Cash-filled wallets have given way to credit cards that can quickly be canceled, leaving his practiced skills less profitable and making technological change a practical threat to the life he knows.

That struggle becomes more dangerous when Harry steals and sells a valuable USB stick. Sony’s synopsis describes a race to recover the stolen property before a vengeful crime family retaliates, turning a routine theft into a problem that his familiar methods may not easily resolve.

Esposito plays a police detective, while Steve Buscemi appears as a pawnshop owner, according to Associated Press coverage of the film. Those roles bring the longtime performers together within a story about an older criminal navigating a city that increasingly operates on unfamiliar terms, giving the reunion a narrative purpose beyond recognition alone.

The interview’s other major subject concerns a character whose earlier life Esposito still wants to explore. The Rise of Gus is presented in the supplied Hollywood Reporter description as a Breaking Bad prequel he has conceived himself, an important distinction from a commissioned series or a production announcement.

The idea also has a public history beyond this interview. In a 2017 Vanity Fair report about his return as Gus in Better Call Saul, Esposito discussed wanting a separate prequel with that same title, showing that his interest in a more extensive account of the character’s past has persisted across multiple projects.

For now, the concrete next step belongs to the film rather than the proposed television story. Sony Pictures Classics lists The Only Living Pickpocket in New York as playing in New York and Los Angeles, with a nationwide release on October 30; the material available for the interview identifies no comparable production timetable for The Rise of Gus.