Giancarlo Esposito Teases His Upcoming Role in the MCU

The news that whoever this mystery character is will appear in a series doesn’t give fans much to go in terms of deciphering who Esposito will be playing; however, it does indicate that whoever the character is won’t be a one-off and could be fairly important to one of the studio’s developing storylines.

Esposito’s dalliance with Marvel Studios has been ongoing and has been interesting to follow. After years of being fan-cast as Charles Xavier, Giancarlo Esposito reached out to set up a meeting with Marvel Studios in 2022. And while the studio wasn’t “quite ready to get into that conversation” at the time, according to the actor, they must have come around to the notion of Espositio joining the MCU.

I love how all this happens…[t]he fans come to me when I’m in line, a lot of comic cons, and it started with Dr. Doom maybe over a year ago. And then fans came and said [that I should do Freeze]…then it was Magneto. And these are fans suggesting to me what might be appropriate for me to do. And then, right, so the last year…people are coming and saying it’s [Professor] X. And they asked me, would you like to do that? I said I’d love to be in the Marvel Universe. And so all that got translated when the fan casting started to blow up that they’d like to see me play Professor X. It got so huge, I finally had to have my people call Marvel and explain that, you know, that this is a fan want and we would love to work with you. And [Marvel Studios isn’t] quite ready to get into that conversation. But when they are, I am here.

-Giancarlo Esposito in 2022

Esposito once revealed he was turned down for a role in the D+ streaming series Loki. “The truth of the story is this,” said the actor in a 2022 interview, “about four years ago I met with Louis D’Esposito who [is] in the television unit of Marvel. And they had come to me to play possibly play Loki on the television side. And so I did not do [that part], and there were reasons for it. I think I wasn’t the one who was chosen [would] be the honest truth. But I would have maybe liked to do it.” Esposito continued, “And then I thought when I wasn’t selected for that, that it would be great if I could be in a Marvel movie, not just a television show because I like films a lot. I love television, obviously, I had a great run in the television world, doing last year was four shows at one time and the year before five shows.” Now it seems as though the star will get a chance at both.

Source: Empire