C‘It is always a moment that determines a person’s destiny. Alessio Boni, 57 years old, has experienced a couple of significant moments in his acting career.
When it was chosen by Giorgio Strehler, in ’96, for Molière’s The Miser and Marco Tullio Giordana, in 2003, he wanted him in the role of Matteo Carati in The best youth.
If thanks to the success of the film – which triumphed in the “Un Certain Regard” section at the Cannes Film Festival – confesses that he has practically no longer had to undergo stressful auditions (“Telling everything in a minute and a half is exasperating”), with Strehler even risked never setting foot in the theater again.
Alessio Boni: «Dino Grandi, a character to study»
«We were at the Lirico, in Milan. He had asked me to show a toy on stage with a backwards, diagonal and therefore unnatural gesture.At a certain point I blurted out, “Teacher, I can’t do it.”
Instantly everyone disappeared, silence fell, I was left on stage alone with him who shouted “Five minute break!”.
Then he picked me up and took me to the gallery to abruptly explain why I had to move like this: he had planned lights that would highlight that jewel.I never dared to say anything again. He was the Theatre.”
Alessio Boni is on tour now with The Iliad – The Game of the Gods, the show created with his historic group the Quadrivio (closing from 13 to 24 March at the Ambra Jovinelli in Rome).
And, above all, on 29, 30 and 31 January it will be on RaiUno with The long night – The fall of the Duce directed by Giacomo Campiotti.
Alessio Boni: «Dino Grandi had been a friend of Churchill»
It is the story of the last three weeks of the fascist regime before the historic night between on 24 and 25 July 1943 when the last meeting of the Grand Council took place.
The actor plays Dino Grandi, president of the Chamber of Corporations and Fasci; the hierarch who decided to oppose Mussolini’s choices by convening the Grand Council to remove the country from his hands.
«Grandi went down in history just for that night with his “famous” agenda. In fact he is a little detailed figure in school books.
We know his name, but little his life. I too had to study it thoroughly. Mussolini feared him. He was cultured, refined, ambitious. He was a friend of Churchill, he was ambassador to London for the Kingdom of Italy.
He went to the meeting with two hand grenades in his pocket. The story could have also taken another turn” comments Boni.
«He passed away at the age of 93 in 1988, but he remains an interesting figure to know. Also because, despite everything, he incredibly remained a convinced fascist until the end.”
Alongside his stories, those of the royal family, of Edda and Galeazzo Ciano, of Claretta Petacci, and of the hierarch’s wife, Antonietta Brizzi, the only woman he has ever listened to.
All in a game of entanglements, betrayals and intrigues.
Alessio Boni: «Revisionism has nothing to do with it»
In a moment of revisionism like the current one, is it just a coincidence that it is going on state TV right now?
Let’s clarify immediately to dispel any ambiguity. We started filming the series long before the current government came to power. So much so that on set we joked about “however, we’re in fashion”. Furthermore, interpreting does not mean endorsing a character. Revisionism and current politics have absolutely nothing to do with it. We were very careful in the reconstruction with the screenwriters Franco Bernini and Bernardo Pellegrini. Otherwise we would have made a documentary and it would have been a different project.
His character is a false hero, in fact. Neither fake, nor hero.
Heroine for me is Ilaria Cucchi. Or Eglantyne Jebb, the nurse who founded Save The Children. We tell the story. If you know it, you also know yourself, you know where you come from. Maybe you wouldn’t follow influencers anymore who tell you how to dress and what to think like pied pipers.
Are you referring, perhaps, to the Ferragni case and the restaurateur from Lodi who ended up at the center of controversy and then found lifeless?
Social media can be ferocious.
Alessio Boni: «Evoke, don’t imitate»
You have already played real characters such as Giorgio Ambrosoli in The price of courage. His method is “evoke without imitating”. How did he prepare?
I watched several documentaries on Grandi, read news reports of the time. I analyzed his posture, his hand gestures. If you limit yourself only to imitating someone, the interpretation becomes an aesthetic factor and not an internal one. The actor must capture pieces of the soul instead, otherwise he turns into a caricature. In any case, it wasn’t so easy to enter that climate, into the fascist mind.
In what sense?
I struggled to practice the Roman greeting in front of the mirror, for example. It wasn’t quite that automatic. When you do something you have to believe in it. And you have to be credible. Bruno Ganz ended up on the analyst’s couch after playing Hitler in the film Downfall, Hitler’s Last Days. However, this is the job of actors.
Returning to the series, in the script there is also a lot of attention to women. To those women who then had the right to vote only after the war, in 1946, as Paola Cortellesi said in There’s Still Tomorrow.
Women inspired and advised, but the culture unfortunately remained patriarchal. And we also come from that world. When I was little my grandmother said she had to “cook for the boys”, then she and the other women of the house would lock themselves in the kitchen. It was normal for her to think like this.
He said that in his career the “no”s have been important. Ever regretted anything?
My rejections have sometimes been decisive for the careers of other actors, it happens and that’s okay. Maybe there are two, three jobs that I would have avoided, but negative experiences enrich you.
(Photo by Massimo Insabato/Massimo Insabato Archive/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)
Why did the auditions stress you out so much? Do you remember one that put you to the test?
That time with Carlo Lizzani for the TV series The Woman on the Train. He tells me: “You’re fine with me, but you’re missing something, the protagonist is a Gascon, bring out a bit of irony, tell me a joke.” I’ve always been bad at jokes. So what did he come up with? Looking at her white hair I thought of my grandmother and I repeated a nursery rhyme in Bergamo: Sich sach de sòch sèch, i è car ac a cà. That is: “Five bags of dry logs are also useful at home”. He got me. I did not believe it.
The flashes that save you. What do you miss in your life as an actor?
Film directing. I’m putting the puzzle together. But I have to stop for at least a year and a half.
And on a personal level?
I am the father of two boys (Lorenzo and Riccardo born from the relationship with the journalist Nina Verdelli, ed.), but now I want a girl. We have already decided on the name: she will be called Maddalena.
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