Giancarlo Esposito opens up about being a single dad to his four daughters

During an appearance on the Jennifer Hudson Show, Breaking Bad actor Giancarlo Esposito touched on his relationship with his four daughters as a single dad. Per PEOPLE, the 65-year-old shares four daughters – Shayne, 27, Kale Lyn, 26, Ruby, and Syr Lucia, 23 – with his ex-wife Joy McManigal.

“I would say I’m a single dad but I’m not really, because they have a great Mama Joy,” Esposito stated. “And she has showed up for them and has really been the one, in so many ways, we’ve raised them together.”

“But I say she’s put in the time because you know what we do. And then when I finally woke up and when I want to have a sincere relationship, which I’ve always had with my daughters, I realized I was still looking at them as if they were 3, 4, 5, years old,” he added.

Esposito, however, said that perception changed after he “started to listen to who they really are and I would always tell them, ask for what you want in life.” “And then I had to realize that they’re asking me to be present for them,” he said.

He also said that though his relationship with his four daughters has always been great, it is now “deepening because I’m not afraid to show them who I really am” and “who I have been in my life.”

“Sometimes we shield our children from who we’ve been. And when my daughter said to me, ‘Papa, I didn’t know that about you. I didn’t know that.’ And I went, ‘Oops,’” the girl dad jokingly stated, per PEOPLE.

“But you know, that’s real. We change as human beings from day to day and from year to year and hopefully we grow. And if we have shame surrounding any part of who we have been and don’t want to talk about it, then that’s a little bit of a problem because you still wearing a mask and still hiding.”  

Esposito’s comment on his relationship with his daughters comes after he recently revealed that before he landed his iconic role in Breaking Bad, he was so broke to the extent that he once contemplated planning his murder so his kids could get his life insurance money.

According to Variety, that thought came into the 65-year-old’s head sometime in 2008, but his life changed for the better as he shot into the limelight the following year – thanks to the television series. Esposito became a popular face for his portrayal of the antagonist Gustavo “Gus” Fring in Breaking Bad.

Esposito during his appearance on SiriusXM’s Jim & Sam show touched on arranging his murder when he was asked about how he bounced back after almost becoming bankrupt. “My way out in my brain was: ‘Hey, do you get life insurance if someone commits suicide? Do they get the bread?’ My wife had no idea why I was asking this stuff,” he revealed. 

“I started scheming. If I got somebody to knock me off, death by misadventure, [my kids] would get the insurance. I had four kids. I wanted them to have a life. It was a hard moment in time. I literally thought of self-annihilation so they could survive. That’s how low I was.”

The actor, however, stated that he also thought about how his death would affect his children. “That was the first inkling that there was a way out, but I wouldn’t be here to be available to my kids,” he continued. 

“Then I started to think that’s not viable because the pain I would cause them would be lifelong, and there’d be lifelong trauma that would just extend the generational trauma I’m trying to move away from. The light at the end of the tunnel was ‘Breaking Bad.’”