© 2024 AMC Network Entertainment LLC. All Rights Reserved. Credit: Alyssa Moran/AMCTV fans will forever be indebted to Giancarlo Esposito for creating one of the most unassuming, chilling villains in TV history for his role as Gus Fring on Breaking Bad and its prequel Better Call Saul, both ratings juggernauts for AMC. His latest role has been an eight-year journey in the making where he returns to AMC as another memorable character, this time as Gracian “Gray” Parish in the high-octane crime thriller Parish (Sundays beginning March 31 at Xpm ET/PT).
The six-episode series is based on the U.K. series The Driver and tells the story of an everyman who, after his son is violently murdered, encounters an old friend (Skeet Ulrich) and returns to old habits from his past criminal life.
“The original show The Driver by Danny Brocklehurst was very moving to me, but I wanted to create something a little more soulful,” Esposito tells. “I was driven and guided by a lot of my own personal reflection on my life, and I knew that I wanted to make a show about an everyman who was faced with incredible possibilities that just weren’t working out. Dream deferred, someone who was just busted and broken, and that everyman who has to somehow rise to become an extraordinary man. So, from my particular background, having a marriage that failed, four beautiful daughters and not being able to provide for them and going bankrupt was all kind of the fodder for my thoughts and feelings surrounding, infusing Parish with that kind of predicament, dilemma, and heartbreaking situation.”
You absolutely feel for Parish — the heartbreak he endures with losing a child, the frustrations of trying to keep your business afloat amid industry change and the commitment to provide for your family both emotionally and financially when nothing is going your way. Your stomach also turns, and you cringe over some of the decisions he makes. Here Esposito shares more on the riveting drama set and filmed in New Orleans.
On eight years in the making: “It got good through the struggle of it. It got good through the sweat and blood of it. It got good through me respecting that a network who I’ve worked with, who loves me and respects me, and thinks I’m the cat’s meow, have them understand that I respected their investment in this. I wanted to tell the story of an everyman walking down the street. Now this guy’s a little bit different because he had certain means that he loses, but it’s the same story of what could have been.”
I’m just the driver. 🤫 #GracianParish
Mark your calendars everyone, #Parish premieres March 31st on @AMC_TV and @AMCPlus!!! pic.twitter.com/C8wWl3Ifot
— Giancarlo Esposito (@quiethandfilms) February 26, 2024
On those choices his character makes: “I think it’s in line with what people need right now. I’m tired of being a passenger in my own life. That’s strong stuff. That means you got to stand up and change it and make it different. Now for Gracian Parish, he took the gig and then he saw behind the veil and then he went, ‘Oh, oops. What did I do? Uh-oh.’ And I love this story for those reasons. He’s got to fight his way out and it may take a long time and he’s got to do some things that might be, more than likely will be, reprehensible for him to get out.”
On believing intentions are everything: “What I like love about Gracian Parish is he makes mistakes and people do make mistakes. We’re bound to, but can we live with ourselves and those mistakes, and, more importantly, make the correction? Can we make the correction? That’s important.”
On his costar Bradley Whitford being friend or foe: “I have to say it’s tricky and intricate, and it’s something that we came upon that I thought was really important because it’s the skeleton and the ghosts of the past. It’s something that drives the wedge in between Gray and his wife [Ray Donovan’s Paula Malcomson] and child [mixed-ish’s Arica Himmel] because they had no clue.”
On his old buddy Bryan Cranston: “I adore Bryan Cranston and I’ve been recently in touch on a number of different levels with him. … I had dinner with him because he was down in New Orleans shooting Your Honor. And it turns out that my stunt coordinator, Andy, was his stunt double on Your Honor and coordinator. So not only did he share a bunch of places to eat with me, but we also shared Andy, who turned out to be just an incredible stuntman.”
And speaking of those insane driving scenes: “We have narrow corridors of streets in the French Quarter … I had to do backwards, reverse 360, I had to slide the car, stop the car, break the car on a dime with people around me in the street. … That’s all me in the Porsche Macan and the Cadillac. It takes a lot of focus and attention — you have to be really clear to do that kind of work because you’re going at a certain rate of speed that it’s important to know what you’re doing as anything can happen.”
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