Giancarlo Esposito and John Turturro Hated Each Other on ‘Do the Right Thing.’ Now They Break Character to Cry Mid-Scene

By the end of 2026, he’ll have a staggering ten projects available for public consumption. From the final season of The Boys and the second season of The Gentlemen to By Any Means and Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, he’s also found time to film a handful of other projects along the way. But perhaps the most meaningful title on his slate is his current film, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, which reunites him with his Do the Right Thing co-star John Turturro. Written and directed by Noah Segan, the crime drama marks Turturro’s first lead role on the big screen in more than 20 years.

If working together again weren’t enough of an accomplishment, Esposito and Turturro also got to watch firsthand as their beloved New York Knicks won the NBA championship earlier this year — the franchise’s first Larry O’Brien trophy in 53 years. Ahead of the decisive Game 5 of the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs, a photographer captured the visibly amped-up pair alongside their Do the Right Thing director Spike Lee. Looking at the snapshot, you might think Esposito and Turturro had been brothers-in-arms since they first met on the set of Lee’s seminal film. But that wasn’t exactly the case.

“I hated him on Do the Right Thing, to be honest with you, and he probably hated me to a certain extent,” Esposito tells The Hollywood Reporter, mid-laugh.

The two New Yorkers’ relationship would certainly evolve over the years. Although they appeared in a few other projects together, including Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues (1990) and Jungle Fever (1991), they wouldn’t get the chance to do substantial scene work together until Segan’s Pickpocket. Fittingly, Esposito plays Detective Warren, a former adversary turned friend of Turturro’s master pickpocket, Harry Lehman. The two now bond over how their respective professions are being phased out by time and technology.

A scene in Warren’s office would ultimately prompt Turturro to break character and reflect on just how far his relationship with Esposito had come.

“In the middle of a take, he took a deep breath. I knew he hadn’t forgotten his lines. He’s a consummate professional, as I am, but he just had to stop,” Esposito recalls. “He stared into my eyes and said, ‘You’re my uncle. You’re my father. You’re my family.’ And it brought tears to my eyes because I felt the same way.”

Below, during a conversation with THR, Esposito also discusses how he’s taking the necessary steps to generate his own long-overdue lead role on the big screen. Then he explains how his Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul character Gus Fring has opened his mind to his personal duality.

Between the New York Knicks’ first title since 1973 and The Only Living Pickpocket in New York’s rave reviews, your New York circle is having a pretty good year. Do you feel charmed right now?

I feel very charmed. The Knicks were the icing on the cake after so many years of being a dyed-in-the-wool Knicks fan. It took me back to all my old apartments, when I used to be closer to Madison Square Garden, to when I was further away. It gave me a sense of the New York attitude, and New York fans are very different from anywhere else. This movie also conjures up all those feelings, and I brought them with me to San Antonio, where I happened to be by accident during Game Five of the NBA Finals.

The Pickpocket scene we shot near McManus’ bar, I used to go there after performing at the Atlantic Theater Company on 20th Street. That whole neighborhood is very familiar to me, and shooting in New York is like nowhere else. People greet you on the street and recognize you, but they keep walking. They don’t stop you or try to shake you down for an autograph or even a selfie. They just go, “Hey, love what you do and keep going.”

There’s something about New York that changes the game for me, which is why I always come back here and keep a place here. The energy is real, and I like that real energy. I like feeling it. It’s a city of immigrants — people who come from many different places in the world and adopt that New York energy. Even if they still have their Sikh or Indian Punjabi accent, they feel like they belong in New York, and there’s something welcoming about that to me.

You met John Turturro on Do the Right Thing. Did you hit it off right away?

I hated him on Do the Right Thing, to be honest with you, and he probably hated me to a certain extent. (Laughs.) But I loved him all in the same emotional feeling because I recognized him.

We were on the set of Pickpocket in Detective Warren’s office, and in the middle of a take, he took a deep breath. I knew he hadn’t forgotten his lines. He’s a consummate professional, as I am, but he just had to stop. And in the middle of a take, he stared into my eyes and said, “You’re my uncle. You’re my father. You’re my family.” And it brought tears to my eyes because I felt the same way. We’re both Italian, and we’re linked somehow in our genetic structure, in who we are and where we come from. So he had to acknowledge that for a minute because he had this déjà vu of being in a room with all of his family.

There’s something about working with someone who’s very present as an actor that I always welcome and wish to have. But I realize that I can only see you if I’m very present and willing to show you who I am. And if you can see me, then you can see yourself as well. So there’s a mirror reflection going on, and that makes for a good partnership on screen.

With one being a cop and the other a thief, Warren and Harry (Turturro) have a history on both ends of the spectrum. They now pine for the good old days of their respective professions. Similarly, are there elements from bygone eras of show business that make you nostalgic?

Absolutely. I’m nostalgic for old-time directing without a monitor — where the director stands next to you, whispers in your ear and stays right by the camera. They’re not looking at what it looks like on the monitor. They’re looking to elicit a certain emotional feeling from the actors who are actually doing it within the scene. It feels more personal, and I pine for that. I pine for a less structured, technical, manipulated frame.

I have to say, in our Pickpocket scenes on the street, I kind of felt that with [director] Noah Segan. I felt that working with Sidney Lumet years ago on 100 Centre Street. He came from the television world, and he used to [snap his fingers during scenes] even when he directed movies. I never understood why until I learned that, back in the old days, that was his timing to cut to another camera.

Our world is now connected in the disconnected origins of quicker, faster media, from the cell phone to the mini-movie. So I pine for the long form that tells a story visually, one that you can understand, and Picketpocket exemplifies that. It’s a slow burn until it’s not. It seems propulsive, then it slows down to get involved in someone’s life. And isn’t that somewhat like our real lives? Then you’re interested to know what moved someone to say that, do that or make that decision that leaves you sitting in your seat going, Oh, that’s the terrible decision he just made.

I love the fact that this film deals with the past, the present and the future, yet it’s very personal, especially for Harry. There’s his relationship with his wife and his role as her caregiver. There’s his relationship with the family he left behind and didn’t associate with for too long. Then there’s his relationship with a world that’s passed him by.

The film also has a deep relationship with time, with timepieces, with how time is moving and whether we’re moving with it or falling behind. Are we wanting a time that is no longer here? It’s a very interesting quality of the film that plays out as a ticking clock in Harry’s adventure.

Pickpocket is John’s first starring role on the big screen in over 20 years, and it was long overdue. The same can also be said about you, so have you imagined what your own lead showcase might look like?

I certainly have. I started producing many years ago, and I’ve directed a few movies myself. And so, yes, I’ve always imagined a role that would allow people to see more of me, not just the singular villain or the singular manipulator of the Supes, Stan Edgar, from The Boys, or the intellectual Anglophile of Stanley Johnston, with a T, on The Gentleman. I’d like to be able to show all of me.

John had that opportunity in this film. He’s always been a leading man; we just didn’t see it until we see it. Everything in his character-driven performances, exemplified by the depth of his talent, had the ability to come out in this movie. So that will happen for me. I’m developing a few things that I have up my sleeve — very personal, deep, reflective and moving stories. They explore two different subject areas we’ve never seen together in one movie, but I have to do it.

I really believe in the Field of Dreams line: “If you build it, they will come.” That’s what’s happening in my life now. I look for properties that I can option from a book, or I’ll get with a writer who has a Black List script. I have one now from Australia. It’s a Black List script that won many awards. I’ve taken it and put it in Scandinavia. We’re going to make it. I’m just doing the legwork now. So I want to be seen a little bit more, especially for what I haven’t been seen for before.

During season five of Better Call Saul, you were very receptive to my favorite theory about Gus Fring. In season three of Breaking Bad, Gus invites Walter White over for paila marina, and Walt clocks kids’ toys on the ground. Gus also mentions that “the kids” won’t eat the dish. But when Jesse comes over for paila marina in season four, there’s no sign of kids or their belongings. So I theorized back then that Gus never had kids. He staged his home to relate to Walt as a family man and Jesse as a bachelor, tailoring his surroundings to get what he wanted out of them. Fast-forward to the final season of Better Call Saul, set years before Breaking Bad, and we actually see Gus staging his home with a decoy while he stays in the safe house next door. That establishes the lengths he’s willing to go to in staging his own home, not just his workplace. Do you now consider that confirmation that Gus never had kids?

Your point is well taken. As a character, Gus thinks ahead. He thinks ahead of everyone, including all the different ways things could work out and happen. And certainly in that final season of Saul, he was threatened. He knew he had to figure out how to survive and how to throw someone off his trail in many ways.

It’s so funny because, in the third season of Breaking Bad, when we see Gus’ house for the first time, they asked for shots of my family and my children. So pictures of my kids were on the wall down the hallway, but they were out of focus to where you never really saw them. It still planted a seed for me to want to see what he’s like when you don’t see him as Gustavo [the fast food restaurateur and secret meth kingpin]. It really ignited my imagination. But in my conversations with Vince [Gilligan], it was really clear that by not telling you everything, what we didn’t know about him, and yearned to know, would be most interesting.

Do you still wish you could’ve gone there?

I would’ve loved to have examined that part of Gustavo’s life. If there were a [spinoff] show — which I, in my brain, have already created — you’d see that there’s the other side of Gus, just like there’s the other side of Giancarlo Esposito that you don’t know. That’s a dream. It would be The Rise of Gus. You would see where he came from in Chile and how he was a made man there, but he was made in politics. He could have become the president running the country, but he decided to give all that up to become self-made in America.

In season six of Saul, when you see that he is a singular Gus, it’s partly how I feel in my life now. I have four daughters. I kind of manage them and care for them, but I have this whole other singular life as this guy, “Giancarlo Esposito,” who they’re affected by. Then there’s my alter ego, my other Giancarlo, that you don’t really know yet. There’s a whole world you will eventually start to see in the next few years because I want you to see it.

What changed?

Outside of being an actor who loves what he does, I realized I have a dynamism inside of me. I speak on the lecture circuit, and I just did two major colleges last week, back to back. I’m willing to share that part of me now. I haven’t shared all of who I am because I haven’t wanted you to see it for whatever reasons. As a human being, I’m becoming more mature, and it’s going to blow some people away when I’m able to share who I really am.

When I was playing Gustavo for years, I was just so stern and quiet inside of myself. But that character allowed me to find out who I am by saying less and letting the silence live without worrying that it will threaten the image I have of myself. So I have more to give, and I can’t wait for you to see it. I’m stripping off the mask of Giancarlo because I don’t need it anymore.

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The Only Living Pickpocket in New York expands nationwide on October 30.