Giancarlo Esposito Joins Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen Sequel Series
Giancarlo will be starring in the Netflix adaptation series of the Guy Ritchie film The Gentlemen.
Giancarlo Esposito is moving from New Mexico meth to UK marijuana as he is set to join the cast of the Netflix adaptation series of Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen. Deadline reports that at least six actors have signed on to appear in the series, including Vinnie Jones and Joely Richardson. The series is a spin-off of the 2019 movie.
In the movie, Matthew McConaughey plays Mickey Pearson, Rhodes scholar turned weed tycoon, as he attempts to cash out of the business. This brings a host of dealers, thieves, and swindlers to his doorstep as various underworld figures vie for control of Pearson’s empire. The crime comedy has a 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and saw its home video release pushed up by two weeks because of Covid lockdowns, ensuring that it has been widely viewed.
The Netflix sequel series is about Eddie Halstead, who will be played by Theo James and is the unwitting overseer of Pearson’s drug business. In the movie, Mickey Pearson sets up farms to grow marijuana underneath the posh estates of British gentry that need the extra income to maintain their ancestral homes. Eddie inherits one such estate from his father, dragging him into Britain’s criminal underworld.
The confirmed cast includes Joely Richardson as Eddie’s mother Lady Sabrina, Daniel Ings as Eddie’s dangerously in-debt brother, and Kaya Scodalerio as Susie Glass, Eddie’s romantic partner. Vinnie Jones, a long-time Guy Ritchie collaborator, will be playing Geoff Seacombe, the groundskeeper of the Halstead estate. Giancarlo Esposito is also joined by Peter Serafinowicz in The Gentlemen series, but there is no announcement of what their roles will be.
Giancarlo Esposito is best known for his role as meticulous drug kingpin Gus Fring in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and Moff Gideon in the Disney+ Star Wars series The Mandalorian. His career had an unexpected beginning as a singer on The Electric Company throughout the 1970s, as well as a few years on Sesame Street from 1982-1984. Alongside numerous small television roles came appearances in Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive and Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.
The actor is constantly working on multiple projects at a time, with almost 200 acting credits to his name. In addition to The Mandalorian, he can also currently be seen or his voice heard in Harley Quinn, Netflix’s Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and Amazon Prime’s The Boys. Giancarlo Esposito’s most popular roles seem to be as cold, calculating but quirky crime bosses, so it will be interesting to see what his role in The Gentlemen will be.
Production on the eight-part series will begin in London on November 7, with Guy Ritchie running the show and directing the first two episodes. Matthew Read will co-write the script alongside Ritchie and the two are also among the producers. Also producing are Miramax Television and Moonage Pictures.
While the series does not include any of the characters from the movie, it will bring audiences back into Mickey Pearson’s world. The new cast will bring us new characters with the wit and scripting only Guy Ritchie can produce. The addition of Giancarlo Esposito to The Gentlemen series is another early indicator that the show will be able to recreate the ambiance that made the movie so enjoyable.
