In 2022, X-Men fans began circulating photoshopped images of Giancarlo Esposito as Professor Charles Xavier. They imagined the actor best known for villainous roles in Breaking Bad, The Mandalorian and The Gentlemen instead using his gravitas to lead the X-Men. Esposito expressed some enthusiasm for the idea at the time, but now he tells Polygon he’s not disappointed that the role in the 2028 X-Men movie instead went to Catch-22 star Christopher Abbott.
“Professor X, just to be clear, was a fan casting idea that got spread very quickly, and it was an idea that appealed to me because of who Professor X is,” Esposito said ahead of the premiere of The Gentlemen season 2. “I like Magneto. I like that world. That world has its own rhythm to it that is fantastical in some ways. Freeze is another one that I would like to be.”
While he wasn’t cast as Charles Xavier, Esposito joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2025 as the Serpent leader Sidewinder in Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World. The actor said he was disappointed the script wasn’t closer to the comics version of the character, where Seth Voelker was an economics professor who became a supervillain while working for the nefarious corporation Roxxon.
“I like Sidewinder, and I love the fact that I could be that mercenary, but I was even more interested in playing Seth Voelker, the scientist, the educated man who then flipped. There’s a story there which I didn’t have the ability to tell in what I had to do in Captain America 4.”
Esposito is interested in playing more comic book villains, but he’d also like to portray some historical figures.
“[Alexander] Pushkin, the poet, artist and musician, came from another culture and really came into his own by understanding what his strengths were,” Esposito says. “There’s Toussaint Louverture, the liberator of Haiti and the leader of the uprising. There are historical characters that Napoleon and other greats learned from.”
Esposito says he has a great reverence for different cultures and societies and enjoys getting to bring that to his work on The Gentlemen, where he plays the billionaire history buff Stanley Johnston. An American living in London, Johnston has embraced English culture and explains its symbolism and origins to Duke Eddie Horniman (Theo James) as a way to encourage Eddie’s criminal and political ambitions.
“He’s fascinated with power and royalty and rightful heirs,” Esposito says. “Are you going to preserve that legacy, that inheritance, or are you going to squander it? It’s an interesting puzzle for Stanley. It’s like watching a possible train wreck or watching a missile go to the moon. Stanley is interested in the outcome of how humans think and act. The behavior that they take that either contributes to their elevation or their downfall is interesting not only to me, but to Stanley as well.”
Johnston and audiences will get to see the results of Eddie’s decisions when The Gentlemen returns for season 3. In the meantime, we’re hopeful someone will cast Esposito in one of his dream roles as a revolutionary with or without superpowers.