The long breath after the opening ballet and the Afona voice, following exhausting television marathons. If one wanted to summarize in two images Lorella Cuccarini would choose these. Slides that tell its passion, commitment, dedication.

Cuccarini is and it was all

Born in 1965, Cuccarini is and was all. Ballerina, presenter, singer, actress, up to that role as a “friends” teacher who has been giving her a second youth for a luster. “Having teenagers who stop me on the street is pleased,” he said recently. “In recent years I have experienced experiences that have a little reborn to me, especially in the eyes of an audience that did not know me so well”.

He approached dance, his great love, already at 9 years old, attending the school of Enzo Paolo Turchi. The gavetta was long and the first chances on the small screen arrived as a dancer in a row in the broadcasts “I give you Brazil” and “Sponsor City”. Fly appeared, however important for his formation: “I don’t forget anything, because every piece in my career was fundamental”.

The meeting with Pippo Baudo (who upset his life)

The encounter that upset her life was the one with Pippo Baudo. They crossed an advertising convention of the Algida and the spark snapped immediately: “We were in a large hotel in the capital – Baudo said – I presented this event and at the bottom of the room there was a girl who had struck me more than others. I wanted to know her and introduced myself”.

The first approach was not memorable: “We set an appointment for the next day and I went there with my mother – she revealed – I was a little prevented, as well as unwary. It seemed impossible for me that someone could notice me”.

Instead Pippo had seen us very long, so much so that he wanted to “fantastic 6”. The other illuminating intuition was not to opt for an art name. It was thought of a variation in Lorella Cari, or even in cute lori. “But basically, if Lollobrigida has been successful with that surname so bad …”. And the identity card remained intact.

From his mentor, however, he suffered a very hard reprimand even before starting. On the eve of the presentation conference, in fact, Cuccarini wounded at the forehead following a car accident. “I had no faults, I didn’t drive. They put me thirty points and thought that he would give me the bonervito. He did not go like this, but Pippo made me a lecture that I still remember.”

In any case, that prediction was decisive in the aesthetic sphere, with the tricks of the bangs useful to hide the scar. Needless to say, that cut became Lorella’s distinctive.

An erotic but never winking symbol

Beautiful today, splendid then. Despite this, Cuccarini has never been winking, or mischievous. Erotic symbol for Italians, probably, but never in a brazen and vulgar way. In this sense, they do not remember his nudes, embarrassing photos or inconvenient paparazzi. A monacal conduct, supported by a secret marriage celebrated in August 1991 with Silvio Testi.

With “Odiens”, at just 23 years old, the consecration materialized. From Rai he moved to Fininvest, thus cutting the umbilical cord with Baudo: “It was my first broadcast alone, I felt initially lost. Yet, it was an exciting experience, I began to conduct. Not to mention that I made the night flies’, my most iconic acronym”.

In 1991 he landed in “Happy Sunday”, giving life with Marco Columbro to one of the most close -knit television couples ever. Six hours of direct between games, races and skits that gave the Fininvest the thrill of the live, thanks to the Mammì law launched a few months earlier. Two memorable seasons, which donated as many abbreviations in the collective imagination: “free free” and “voices”.

The agreement with Columbro was such that, together, they also shared several editions of “Paperissima” and “Thirty hours for life”, with Lorella who at the same time got closer to Baudo, who wanted her to her side at the 1993 Sanremo Festival.

Two years later here is the encore, this time as a debutant singer. His song, “another love not”, placed himself in tenth place, complete with a double performance during the evening due to the sudden blackout who left some Italian regions in the dark, preventing the demoscopic juries from being able to pronounce. “They said I had been lucky, I considered it a bad luck. I was already at the restaurant I was waiting for a plate of spaghetti and warned me that I should have signed. I was panic.”

In the 1995-96 season he embraced “Happy Sunday”, not Columbro. The failure to reunion influenced the surrender of a transmission that, albeit elegant, had lost the magical touch.

The darkest years

The return to Rai materialized in September 2002. With Gianni Morandi and Paola Cortellesi signed “One of us”, a Saturday evening show combined with the Italy Lottery. The response of the Auditel was all in all satisfactory, but the defeats in the direct clash with “There is mail for you” generated many tensions, which pushed Morandi to stage the sensational protest in underwear against the detection of the listening.

The darkest years, professionally and not, were revealed for Cuccarini. Thyroid problems, the death of the beloved mother Maria and the difficulties at the helm of “Among that …?” (again with Columbro) they provoked the first real stop in his career. “I had an exclusive contract with Rai and after ‘we bet …?’ They put me on the bench.

He returned to Mediaset and ended with Massimo Boldi at the helm of “The last one? ‘

At that point he landed in “Domenica In”, up to a further pause that saw her relegated to marginal roles, especially as a judge of talent.

It was in that phase that Rai 1 conceived “very enemy”, an event show that should have compared Cuccarini and Heather Parisi, in a sort of affectionate duel between two queens of the eighties and nineties. The premises, unfortunately, were not respected and the controversies dominated everything else.

Raffaella Carrà’s role

On the other hand, Lorella’s safe harbor has always been the theater. “Grease”, “The forbidden planet”, “Rapunzel” and the most recent “Add a place at the table” are just some titles that have seen it protagonist.

For her myth, Raffaella Carrà, Cuccarini nourished countless feelings, starting from that very first contact in 1978 in the study of “Ma che evening”: “I found it in front and for the emotion I had an attack on urticaria. When I went home I filled myself completely bubble”.

For a game of fate, ten years later replaced Raffaella in Scavolini’s advertising, becoming an iconic testimonial. The two could have been able to meet again in 2015 to “Forte Forte Forte”. But Carrà, who had courted him for long months, in the end he did not live more alive, unleashing the excellent reaction of the Cuccarini: “I feel a deep bitterness. Especially because the responsible of all this is one of the characters that I have loved most in my childhood and in my professional life”. Anger that left room for affection and gratitude on July 5, 2021, the day of the disappearance of Carrà: “Nothing and nobody will ever scratch what you meant in my life. If you had not been there, the television of the variety and entertainment would not have existed. The most loved by the Italians you were forever”. About Scavolini.

The most recent wound on the working front is certainly attributable to “Live life” of 2019-2020, conducted in tandem with Alberto Matano. Starting between the smiles and an ostentatious affinity, the relationship between the two inclined with the passage of the months, also thanks to the Coronavirus emergency that redesigned dynamics and stairs of the container. The epilogue of that experience was traumatic, with a last episode carried out by separated at home a few hours after the diffusion – has never been understood by those who – of a letter of leave that Cuccarini had written to collaborators and workers, in which there were no lack of stored with his colleague.

A black period, aggravated by some political sockets that approached it to the sovereign universe, in vogue at that moment. “That’s why she returned to work,” the evil ones sentenced. The same who, on the contrary, did not raise a finger in the years of the distance from the screens, resulting from the apparent application of the identical logical in the opposite direction. “I worked in Rai with rights, left and center governments, as I have not worked in Rai with rights, left and center governments”, she defended himself.

Lorella’s new spring, to Amici

Past slag, because now Lorella’s star has returned to shine. By accepting Maria De Filippi’s proposal, Cuccarini is reviewed from the start by saying all the negativity. In the hope that one day, not so far away, you return to take the scene entirely.