The Resource January 2014 Volume 1 Issue 001 | Page 8

By Emertainment Monthly
James Canellos ’17 /
Emertainment Monthly Staff

J

eremiah Bitsui is all about change.

The actor who’s known best to
audiences as Victor, the quiet
employee
of
Gus
Fring
(Giancarlo Esposito), recaps his
experiences on Breaking Bad, his
new film Drunktown’s Finest and his
goal to humanize the characters who
are often stereotyped in the industry.
Despite playing the often
frightening meth babysitter to Walter
White (Bryan Cranston), Bitsui has an
extremely calm and talkative
demeanor about himself as he talks
about his involvement in the show.
Saying that his career really took off in
Albuquerque, New Mexico and
he kept getting work there after
living in Los Angeles. He worked
on the short film A Thousand Roads,
which gave him the chance to work
with director Chris Eyre (Smoke
Signals) and Academy Award
winning cinematographer Claudio
Miranda (Life of Pi). From there his
success continued in New Mexico,
when he got an audition for the show.
“One day I got called in for the
part of ‘non-discrete customer’
which later ended up being Victor.”
He’s not shy at addressing why he
thinks his character was killed off
so randomly on the show, either.

8

January 2014 issue 001

“There was nothing else moti- father enlisting in the military as he
vating Jesse and Walt at that time. I interacts with other Native Americans
think it was kind of the last straw to trying to escape from their reservation.
get them movThe film got
ing, but the crit“One day I got called additional funding
ical part was my
through Kickstartin for the part of
character wasn’t
er and is getting
doing what he ‘non-discrete customer’ booked in internawas supposed to
tional
locations.
which later ended
be doing, just not
Bitsui initially took
following orders.”
the
redemptive
up being Victor.”
This sense of
a
p
understanding what Gus was trying proach
when
tackling
the
to convey on that fatal episode of character of SickBoy. He underBreaking Bad is what attracted Bit- stands the struggle of having friends
sui to his latest role in Drunktown’s who were addicted to drugs and has
Finest. He plays Luther SickBoy witnessed them through their highs
Maryboy, the troubled soon to be and lows. He doesn’t want to just

Giancarlo Esposito and Jeremiah Bitsui in the Breaking Bad episode “Box Cutter.”
Photo Credit: Ursula Coyote/AMC.

play a troubled character; he wants it
to feel more personal to the audience.
“[He’s] looking for a redeeming quality,” describes Bitsui. “I
think the redeeming quality in SickBoy is that he actually has a sincere want to provide for his family,
but he’s still conflicted by his past
and many of his coping mechanisms.”
Universal characters that have an
inner conflict is what Bitsui has been
aiming for in most recent works,
to play characters that as he says
“are at a cross point in their life.”
In fact, a few years ago Bitsui
overheard a conversation about a man
who had a lot of gang members in his
neighborhood.
The
man’s
solution to the gang problem was, as
Bitsui says, “get all the young guys
who think they’re so tough, all
these guys who aren’t worth a damn
and take them out to the desert and
burn them or blow them all up.”
The man’s words really annoyed
Bitsui. This randommoment is what
helped inspire the character of SickBoy.
“That kind of motivated me,” said
Bitsui. “I want to one day play a character that was a bad character, ‘bad’ from
the exterior but had all these internal
conflicts that you could relate to. That
was the opportunity with SickBoy.”
Drunktown’s Finest went through
a long journey financially before it was made this past summer. The amount of dedication the
continued on page 9