On Tuesday, March 4, notable and prestigious actor Giancarlo Esposito arrived at Kean University to encourage students to do everything they desire with intention.

The Actor is most known around campus for his role as Gus Fring in AMC’s Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul but his roles in highly influential films like Do The Right Thing (1989), School Daze (1988), and Malcolm X (1992), did not go unnoticed.

Being Kean's fourth speaker for the President's Distinguished Lecture Series, Esposito shows that he is more than just skilled and talented, and his dedication and passion for storytelling left an influential impact on Kean campus.

“Well, people ask, what’s your superpower, and I say mine is the ability to learn how to stay focused,” Esposito shared before speaking on his journey to becoming who he is today.

Esposito was born to an African American mother who was an opera singer and an Italian father who worked in theater as a stagehand. Because of this, he found his first love, Theater.

Although debuting at just 8 years old and attentively studying the craft of acting, Esposito didn’t just stop at the world of theater. As he matured, the actor developed the goal of one day being on the big screen, leading him to study radio and television communication in a two-year program at college, where he acquired a deeper understanding of video production and how to further enhance his acting skills to suit various mediums.

“I’ve always felt like I’ve been in growth, with every new project, even with every new medium I take on, I grow. That’s how I became a director was because I was interested and engaged and excited and in wonder, enchantment, and joy, how do you do that?” he said. “When I started to learn about the fifty, the cowboy, the thirty, and seeing the whole world… that allowed me to adjust my acting style.”

He emphasized the act of studying and researching and how being curious is an important tool in life because without it passion and excitement for something can become unattainable.

“Being inquisitive for all you young people is truly, truly important, to do something for the right reason, to find the truth of your connection to it is one of the most important things you can ever discover in your life because that means you will never ever call it work,” he expressed. “We have a couple for letter words; we have work, we have play… we have love, if you love to play, work goes away.”

After giving a brief nod to famous theater educator, Viola Spolin, with his play on words, Esposito goes on to discuss the impact acting has had on his life.

“I had a professor once say to me, ‘acting is a way of healing the personality,’ and I never forgot it… I love being an actor because I started to heal my personality by looking at me outside of the roles I’m playing.”

He talked about acting and theater in a therapeutic sense and how, by embodying a character he was able to study himself, his trauma, and how he placed the blame on others creating the idea of “they” and the expectations he felt needed to live up to.

“I said one day there are no “they’s” you are the devil… once I realized, man, I’m my biggest enemy, I’m the devil of myself because my think is messed up,” Esposito said. “So with wellness, it’s hard to check in with yourself because we’re not supposed to talk about it.”

Esposito’s story planted seeds of confidence and success in the audience, especially Kean’s Theater students whom the actor held a meet and greet with beforehand, exposing them to the truth of the life of an actor and encouraging them to allow themselves to commit to the passion of their craft.

“What I do is I try to bring people from one state of consciousness to another, that’s nuance behavior… now when I was young I’d go through the script and [say] ‘how many lines do I have,’… as I grew, I wanted to know what the whole piece was, I wanted to know what the whole book said, so I could become an integrated part of the whole story,” he explained. 

But to Esposito, acting is about more than just lines he affirms.

“The theater is a lot like life,” a statement proven by his growth.

In life, there are people you learn from, and not all of them are people who claim role-model status, Esposito deems they all have a level of importance in becoming successful.

“Learning, that’s why it’s great you’re here, learning from someone who knows, learning from other people who don’t know,” he laughs.

Later on, Esposito will name many people who have inspired him other than, his parents, children, and various friendships he’s made along the way.

“I was inspired by many African American acting legends, Sidney Portier, Harry Belafonte, Paul Roberson, a great singer, and the writings of Nikki Giovanni, [and] Maya Angelou,” he lists. “So much of my inspiration comes from books and from film and seeing views of ourselves that are positive, and I take that to heart, those things changed the course of my life.”

Esposito is a testament that storytelling encourages people to prevail and succeed and that without it, what does that make of us? He asserts that storytelling is boundless and is worthy of care and gentleness. 

“The art of storytelling magic,” he said. “A story is universal and connects in a universal way, if it is shared with truth and honesty, we recognize it.” 

But this is not all Esposito leaves his Kean audience with. He encourages students and attendees with one universal piece of advice.

“You can take all I’m saying now and apply it to anything you want to do; there are no small parts, they’re only small actors,” he concludes. “It’s when we empower ourselves to know that we have the power to affect others no matter what we do our integrity gets uplifted… because we have something to contribute, and all of you, I would imagine, have something very deep to contribute.