Giancarlo Esposito is a face and name known well for the plethora of roles he’s played on both the big and small screens from the 1980’s to the present day. But the actor’s heritage is something many viewers have been long mistaken over.
The long-time Spike Lee collaborator stopped by SiriusXM’s The Clay Cane Show today, where he discussed his life, career, and all things Parish, his new AMC crime drama.
While reminiscing on working (and flirting) with legendary songstresses who forayed into the acting world like Madonna and Whitney Houston, host Clay Cane’s recent realization that Esposito is in fact mixed-race, not Afro Latino as many seem to believe, came up. In a number of his early roles, such as Fresh and even some of his more recent work like Maze Runner: The Death Cure, Esposito played Latino characters.
“There’s a reason for that,” Esposito explained. “When I made a shift from playing, you know, all the crooks, killers, robbers, and ‘desperate’ characters that I played that were labeled African-American, I needed somewhere to go. And the only transition for me was to start to play Latino characters because you saw more of them.”
Seeking to escape the rampant typecasting for stereotypical Black characters, Esposito leaned into the advantages his phenotype provided him to play characters not written to be African American.
“I was…
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