Confirmed With Chicken: Gus Fring Is Coming to ‘Better Call Saul’
The biggest non-secret in television was confirmed on Saturday afternoon at the Television Critics Association press tour as Giancarlo Esposito delivered Los Pollos Hermanos chicken to reporters ahead of the panel for AMC’s Better Call Saul.
The return of Esposito’s revenge-bent kingpin Gus Fring, which was teased in the second season finale of Better Call Saul, was teased again with the release of a Los Pollos Hermanos commercial that actually aired in late-night TV in Albuquerque earlier this week and then was teased one more time when AMC put Esposito’s image in the show’s TCA seating chart.
It turns out that the ad, which quickly made its way around the internet, was actually Esposito’s idea and was shot at the original Los Pollos Hermanos location in Albuquerque, with series co-creator Vince Gilligan joking that production on the commercial had to hide from a Breaking Bad tour group.
When the Gus return was presaged in the finale, Gilligan and co-creator Peter Gould claimed they didn’t have a deal in place with Esposito and the Breaking Bad Emmy nominee admitted on the panel that negotiations were “a process that did take some…