Born in the United States, transplanted to Italy – which she considers her country – Irish husband and Roman heart. Gabriella Pession is a citizen of the world and this cosmopolitan soul exudes in her work as an actress. Discovered by Lina Wertmüller when she was just over 18, “with blond curls and a yellow duck on her shirt”, in 27 years of career she has worked with the biggest names in Italian cinema, including Leonardo Pieraccioni and Carlo Verdone, acted in cult fiction – from “Capri” to “La porta rossa” – and graced important stages. An international project was missing, which has now arrived with “Those About To Die”, an American TV series directed by Roland Emmerich, with Anthony Hopkins in the role of the protagonist, available from July 19 on Prime. “A dream” she tells Today.
What is it like to be part of a production of this level, but also to work side by side with an Oscar winner like Anthony Hopkins?
“For me it’s the fulfillment of a dream because I’ve been trying to enter the international market for years. I was born in the United States, I’m married to an Irishman, I have a child born in Dublin and I’ve lived around the world for years. I returned to Italy three years ago, to Rome. My focus in these years was trying to get a foot in the international market, but I never would have imagined a project of this magnitude. The project is epic, it has a budget of 170 million euros, we shot it entirely in Cinecittà. Truly Murphy’s Law, because I was in America to try to work there and when I returned to Italy, to resume my career here, I was chosen for this entirely American project. The workers are Italian, we really have great resources and I take this opportunity to remember our camera operator Bomba, who left us a month ago and was a fundamental pillar of this film. For me it was a wonderful experience, not only for the project but also for the role. It was the role I had been waiting for for 25 years of career, because it is a bit of a sum of many characteristics of characters I have played but with the maturity of my 40 years today. My character is a mature woman, who did not live in ancient Rome, but was inspired by several real women such as Livia Drusilla, Agrippina, Messalina. She is the villain of the series and is a patrician, therefore a noble, which is why I had to work with a dialogue coach, because in this series all the nobles speak high English, the Shakespearean one, so I had to study to remove both the American accent, the Irish accent, and the slightly Roman one. And then shooting with Hopkins… He is a man completely immersed in the human being, in being a listener. He was already wonderful before, today he is unrivaled”.
The series is set in ancient Rome, which in 79 BC was the richest and most powerful city in the world. You recently returned to live in the capital after years spent in Los Angeles. Why did you choose to return to Italy? And how did you find Rome?
“I am Milanese, born in the United States, but my heart is truly Roman. I am madly in love with this city, I came here for the first time when I was 18. I chose to come back to live here because I feel deeply European and I wanted to raise my son close to my family and let him know our roots. It was a life choice, which is the most important thing. We always travel, but my son goes to school here, plays here and I feel Roman from Rome”.
For some years now, Italian cinema has been suffering a bit from the spread of seriality on on-demand platforms, but in general it seems that the local market is the prerogative of a few. More than a few actors have said that the same people always work. Is this a good reason to enter the international market? What prospects do Italian actors have?
“The main reason why we Italian actors don’t work much abroad is the language. Until a few years ago they were very closed, the Hollywood market almost wanted to transform us foreign actors into actors who could copy this American accent. However, I believe that it is moving beyond this, because finally the American market is opening up to accepting accents and origins from different countries, it is more multi-ethnic. Undoubtedly, very few Italian projects reach abroad. Many projects that are praised here as international projects, abroad they don’t see them, they don’t even know what they are. There are few who know: Gomorra, Sorrentino and Guadagnino are highly esteemed. We must try to make more courageous projects, produce things that are more exportable. Today the market is so vast. Here we still have a monopoly on Rai, which is our real television, in America there are hundreds of networks, streamers, even too many, and the competition is very high. We must therefore be a little more daring in wanting to produce things that are more scathing, less reassuring. Today, great television is great cinema. This year I shot “Montecristo” for Billie August, “The House of the Spirits”, all for TV. Here there is still this form of snobbery that I hate. There is no longer a distinction between cinema and TV: there is very bad cinema and very beautiful television, and there is very beautiful cinema and very bad television. It is the project that counts. We have to stay in the past, we are 10 years behind”.
Your debut in cinema, 27 years ago, is linked to Italian comedy. The first film you acted in was “Fuochi d’artificio” with Leonardo Pieraccioni, then “Ferdinando e Carolina” with Lina Wertmüller and “L’amore è eterno mentre dura” by Carlo Verdone. Even in Italy, when it comes to big names, we defend ourselves. You have had great teachers…
“My great teacher, the person to whom I owe everything, was Lina Wertmüller. She took me when I was a 35-kilo girl, with blond curls and a yellow duck on my shirt. I was really unlikely at 18. She gave me this audition and gave me a leading role out of nowhere, in an important film. It was a very stimulating professional relationship for me, Lina was difficult, she was tough. I came from sports, I had already received a lot of scoldings while skating, because I had very tough coaches, so I was already shaped by it. But she was my teacher, I also debuted in the theater with her. Undoubtedly then Carlo Verdone, another one from whom I learned a lot. I’m writing my first television series, for Rai 1. It was born from an idea of mine and I’m writing it with three other authors, my idea is to work here. At the same time I also like to work abroad to bring the name of our country outside, so that they respect us and that this stereotype no longer exists. We suffer from a stereotype abroad, even actors, they always see us in a certain way, they always think we are behind. They are right about some things, but anyway. Our Rome is the hub of civilization, everything starts from here, and I want to bring this name to the top. Why not let our name travel abroad for beautiful things? Sabrina Impacciatore is having a beautiful career abroad. In Italy, if you work abroad, no one gives a damn. There is this misperception, so either you are in the Italian market or you are over there. I, on the other hand, just try to do my job well”.
Last year an important door closed. “The Red Door”, a thriller series that saw you as the protagonist for three seasons, much loved by the public. Do you miss Anna Mayer a little?
“The Red Door was a wonderful journey that lasted 6 years, between the first season and the last we had children, they grew up. We started out as kids and we ended up being parents, almost all of us on the set. It was a watershed in Italian television, there was truly the courage to produce something completely unusual. The protagonist dies in the first scene of the film and becomes a ghost. Very realistic, strong writing. Do I miss it? I miss reading beautiful things, that’s true, because it’s quite rare. Beyond Anna Mayer, the twist and turn of the characters, the noir line was very interesting. There was no good and bad, but each character had a shadow, and it’s a more modern way of making television in Italy. If there’s a project like this, I’m always at the forefront of doing cutting-edge things. A project that I loved so much in my career was ‘Oltre la soglia’, where I played a neuropsychiatrist who suffered from schizophrenia. We were the first to touch on the theme of mental illness on television, we were at the forefront and we suffered a bit from this. It didn’t have great success with the public because in my opinion we were a bit too ahead of our time, the story was a bit too dark, but it’s a project that I loved madly because I believe in the character and in what he tells, beyond the numbers. This is very important for an actor, because when you focus on repeating the same thing over and over again to be successful, boredom sets in, which is the death of creativity. I almost stopped doing this job in the past, because I didn’t feel any more stimuli. I’m just looking for those”.
So is that the character you’re most attached to?
“Yes, Tosca from ‘Oltre la soglia’. I wanted to bring to the small screen the ability to have dignity in illness. She is a character who struggles to live, she is not reassuring, but she has great empathy and is not ashamed to talk about her illness, in this case mental. Girls who had seen the series, with psychiatric problems, came to the theater and told me that it had helped them a lot. Some had tattooed themselves with ‘I am not my illness’. If even just one person has received this message, for me it is worth more than 10 million viewers. And then there is Antonia, my role this year in ‘Those about to die’. She is my dream, what I wanted and what I went to get”.
