When seeing Carla Pandolfithe attentive viewer will be able to reflect out loud: “I have this actress from somewhere,” and they will be right. It would be almost impossible not to have seen her in a movie, series, television program or play.
On stage he has shared a cast with performers such as Luis Brandoni, Diego Peretti, Adrián Suar, Hugo Arana, Darío Grandinetti and Jorge Marrale. It was directed by Javier Daulte, Juan José Campanella and Guillermo Francella, among others.
He had a very prominent role in “Extortion” and was part of “Violetta”, “Tierra incógnita”, “A rooster for Esculapio”, “The protectors” and “The mind of power”.
This year we could see her in “Envidiosa”, “In the mud” and in “Espartanos”. In theater she stands out in “Mamá” and dazzled in the one-woman show “Ana por la Ventana”. In the midst of such intense activity, Pandolfi manages to take a break to have a coffee and talk with NOTICIAS, an ideal opportunity to review his more than twenty years of experience.
News: Are you one of those actresses who fantasized about getting on stage since you were a child?
Carla Pandolfi: Yes, I’m that one! (laughs) I lived in a very small town in Córdoba called Leones and I started doing theater workshops there when I was 8 or 9 years old, then I went to study in Belleville, later to Villa María and Córdoba capital, where I did my degree in Theater, finally I came to Buenos Aires when I was 21 years old. Even at a very young age, I already had experience doing independent theater in Córdoba and also in some local film things. Once settled here I began to develop my television career.
News: Does this current situation look like what you dreamed of as a girl?
Pandolfi: I think that as a girl you dream idealizing all things, it is precisely a child’s fantasy, but I feel that there is a part that is similar to that dream because I am doing what I like. There is also another facet that has more to do with the new realities that you encounter as you develop the profession. Maybe I always saw myself working as an actress, I never imagined myself doing anything else, there is something of that desire so deeply rooted in the mind that is the driving force for you to achieve it and the result of that determination is a bit what is manifesting now. My parents asked me: “Are you going to do theater, and what else?” (smiles).
News: Were they worried and looking for a plan B?
Pandolfi: Yes, because I am the only actress in the family. My father owns an FM radio, my mother is a drawing teacher and never fully developed in the art, she has worked with my father, but I was very determined to be an actress. At some point I thought about pursuing Physical Education, what has to do with the expression and movement of the body interests me, but in the end I stuck to my own path.
News: In the end the issue of the body manifested itself on the other hand because her husband is a physical trainer, right?
Pandolfi: Clear! (Series). My husband is a Physical Education teacher and basketball physical trainer in San Lorenzo, it seems that in some way I attracted that desire. He coaches the youth teams and is also a physical trainer at the UBA with the women’s handball team. He is very companionable, the same as our children. The oldest was two years old when I started doing “Parque Lezama”, they are used to our jobs, we all accompany each other, respecting each other’s activities and that is very good.
News: He named his children and it is inevitable to ask him about “Mom.” You joined when Romina Gaetani left, what is it like to enter a work that already has a previous tour?
Pandolfi: They had called me from the beginning for that role, but it was impossible because I was filming “In the Mud”, I couldn’t combine audiovisual and theater, that workload with young children is incompatible. But when Romina left they called me again and this year is very quiet at work, especially in the audiovisual field, we are experiencing a situation where there are not too many projects, so I joined. There is also something about doing comedy that amuses me a lot and except for “Envidiosa”, the last characters I played were all more dramatic. Comedy is a genre that I love to explore and “Mamá” has a very sitcom rhythm, I had already been doing it with “Inmaduros”, the work I did at the Nacional with Adrián Suar and Diego Peretti. This year the vertigo that the audiovisual did not generate occurred in the theater.
News: At one point he was doing two works at the same time, “Mamá”, and the one-woman show “Ana por la Ventana”. What is it like to leave one play and enter another all in the same night?
Pandolfi: I managed quite well, on Fridays I did both plays, one after the other in different theaters, I admit it was kind of crazy! There is some of the energy that you bring from the first performance, it is like the body is already available, you warmed up, even though they were two very different characters, the actor always works with dissociation, being other is our job. If you’re looking for dissociative people, have coffee with an actor! (series).
News: In recent times there have been notable one-man shows like “Prima Facie” with Julieta Zylberberg or “Pundonor” with Andrea Garrote, even Ariel Staltari, his partner from “Un gallo para Esculapio”, did “Agotados”. As an actress, where does the fascination with the one-person show come from?
Pandolfi: For me, the one-man show created a challenge for me, to see if I could be alone on stage. I always watched one-man shows as a spectator and it seemed impressive to me that an actor or actress could carry the entire journey of a work alone. For me it was a space of validation, a way of saying: “Yes, I can do it,” after so many years of experience.
News: Despite being from Córdoba, you don’t have a tune, Messi seems like he left Rosario yesterday. When they were making “Immatures” it coincided with him, right?
Pandolfi: The thing is that I come from a town where the tune is not so loud, maybe if I speak in a hurry, maybe it escapes me. It is true that we coincided with Messi in “Immatures”, and there was a duel of accents. In rehearsals, Suar suggested that I play my character in Cordoba and I thought it was spectacular, he added a lot of comedy to a role that was more serious and I thank him, it was Adrián’s discovery to take advantage of that. So when Messi came to the function, Córdoba and Rosario met. He had a great time in the theater, we saw in the videos how he laughed, it was spectacular, he saw the show right after the Copa América and before the World Cup. I think we brought him luck (laughs).
News: In “Immatures” she had great figures as companions, but she was also directed by Javier Daulte in “Baraka” with an unbeatable cast. There were Hugo Arana, Juan Leyrado, Darío Grandinetti and Jorge Marrale. How do you remember Hugo?
Pandolfi: With much love. Huguito was a great teller of anecdotes, a super sensitive person, very socially connected to everything. He has given me a lot of spectacular advice, at that time I was very young, 26 years old. He couldn’t travel when we went to Spain with the play because he had a health issue, but we shared the entire tour we did here, in fact, my first performance was with him. We spoke until two days before we had the sad news of his death, it took us by surprise because he had contracted Covid and was hospitalized, but after recovering from the illness, I keep his last message where he told me: “I’m fine, I don’t know why I’m still here.” Hugo is and will be an artist who marked us all, he had something that transcended the screen, his human quality shone through, he was a very sweet and happy person.
News: Were you part of a theatrical version of “Rain Man” with Fabián Vena?
Pandolfi: Yes, I played the character that Valeria Golino played in the film, Fabián Vena reprized the role of Tom Cruise and Juan Pablo Geretto played Dustin Hoffman, he was excellent! It was a project that didn’t last that long, I have a theory that when you bring to the theater something that was so popular in the cinema you compete against the spoiler that the public has in their head. There are exceptions like “Rocky”, for example, but in those cases it seems to me that if you go to the theater it is to see an artist that you really like in an iconic role. Even though “Rain Man” was not a success, it was a super nice experience, more than a decade has passed since we made it, incredible…
News: It is easy to find common ground between you and the splendid woman you play in “Envidiosa”, but how did you compose a character so far from your image as the policewoman in “En el mud”?
Pandolfi: I love when they call me for characters that are very remote, I am excited by the challenge. Between the guidelines they gave us and the imagination that one can bring to the job… when I saw it I was surprised too. I had another internal record of the character, I had not seen anything, I intuited something because there was a conscious search for where to take it, but when I saw the series my character was so different from who I am that it generated amazement in me and that is great. Maybe because of the doubts of that terrible character, I didn’t ask to take anything from the set as a souvenir (laughs).
