One of the few pleasures of the new series “Revolution” is seeing Giancarlo Esposito back in action after his unforgettable Gus Fring on “Breaking Bad.” As militia leader Tom Neville in “Revolution” he wastes no time in flashing the same chilling evil smile.
“It’s delicious to play this bad guy,” Esposito says. “With every role, I try to create someone new, and I feel like there’s never any black and white.
“What I love about creating a bad guy is to make him somehow good, doing something bad for a good reason. So I am when I was early in my career doing guest spots, I always got a chance to toy and play with the bad guy. This guy is somewhat different in that he is the one step that is keeping everyone safe. Without him there would be total anarchy.”
As part of the militia of the Monroe Administration, he notes that owning a gun is a hanging offense.
“Can you imagine not having the right to bear arms, not having the right to protect your family or yourself?” he says. “He is trying to restore some kind of order. Is there a reason behind it? Well, wait and see. Is he as bad as you think he is? Wait and see. I hope that we can make him completely fun and a guy who also has some compassion and has some caring, but he does something for a group of people that he needs to help.”
As time goes on, we’ll also know why the electricity has gone off and cars don’t even work and haven’t for 15 years.
“It’s about electricity, so it’s about anything that throws a spark, anything any circuit that carries an electrical charge,” says producer Eric Kripke. “It’s that alone and that is the that is the simple, clean rule and everything expands from that. So that means batteries and spark plugs, which means engines, and everything that comes from electricity.”
It’s possible, Kripke says.
“We brought a physicist into the ‘Revolution’ offices and we pitched him what we wanted to have happen and we gave him the big secret as to why it all happened because we have that secret and we just and we really vetted it to make sure that it was accurate from the scientific point of view. And his face just lit up. I mean, he was like, ‘That is absolutely possible.’ He’s like, ‘And I never even considered it, but that’s amazing.’ And so we did our homework and we came up with something that actually is quite plausible.”