Henry Ford said that “failure is simply the opportunity to start again, this time in a more intelligent way”. And it is from the story of failure that the project of Miss Fallaci, the series produced by Minerva Pictures with Miriam Leone in the role, begins. of the famous journalist arriving soon on Rai 1. This story begins with a phone call, the one that the director Alessandra Gonnella made to Miriam Leone at just twenty-four years old, asking her to play Fallaci in one of her short films about her failed meeting with Marilyn Monroe.

Leone liked the idea, accepted the role and the short film attracted the attention of many production companies. Alessandra Gonnella’s idea was to start from that episode in Fallaci’s life to recount his beginnings as a journalist, always with Miriam Leone as the protagonist. The idea was liked on paper but the production commitment that this project would have required scared many companies, even important ones. The project then reached Minerva Pictures who chose to continue with it, encountering, according to producer Gianluca Curti, numerous difficulties during production.

The beginnings and ambitions of Oriana Fallaci

The first two episodes of Miss Fallaci start from the story of her failed attempt to interview Marilyn Monroe: the journalist, twenty years old at the time, was dealing with entertainment and customs in the editorial office of the European newspaper; the assignment gave her the opportunity to interview the biggest stars of the moment but Fallaci’s ambitions were very different: already from a very young age, in fact, her goal was to deal with politics, interview the great protagonists of history and be witness to the most important events of his time.

Fallaci manages to have the magazine send him to New York with the aim of tracking down Monroe – who at the time was living a retired life in the Big Apple – and asking for a promotion, but all his efforts prove in vain. Returning to Italy empty-handed, Fallaci then decides to talk about that failure not in a conventional way but with a piece written in the first person in an era in which only the likes of Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote could afford it.

The series talks about Oriana Fallaci’s formative years, her beginnings, the solid foundations on which she built her success, her personality and her determination, but also the difficult moments and the pain of not being understood.

Miriam Leone: “I discovered I was pregnant while I was filming the episodes on abortion”

Only the first two episodes of the series were shown at the Rome Film Festival, the others will also talk about her tormented relationship with the journalist Alfredo Pieroni, played by Maurizio Lastrico. In the following episodes we will also talk about Fallaci’s abortion as told in the book “Letter to an unborn child”: Miriam Leone told the press that she discovered she was pregnant when she had to shoot the episodes on Oriana Fallaci’s abortion and that this coincidence of fate was very challenging for her both as a woman and as an actress.

Leone said he carried out a long preparation work to immerse himself in the role, with the support of the writer’s family and in particular his nephew Edoardo Pierazzi. There are few photos of Fallaci from the time and there are no audio or video interviews, so the search for performers and authors had to focus on the family’s archive materials and letters preserved by Pieroni himself.

All the places in which Miss Fallaci is set – New York, Los Angeles, Milan, London and Florence in the late 1950s – were reconstructed in Rome and its surroundings with the aim, said Miriam Leone, of restoring the atmospheres of the The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel series, a fictional story of an aspiring stand-up comedian in New York in the late 1950s. Another point of contact with the Amazon series is also the clash between a promising young woman and a chauvinistic environment that does not give her the right space to be able to emerge, an objective that directors and producers have also set themselves who hope to reach a large audience of young people, especially young women.

A generalist fiction with an international dream

Miss Fallaci would have all it takes to be a wide-ranging international project but the result is more similar to that of a generalist fiction. Maybe it’s because both the directors Luca Ribuoli and Giacomo Martelli and the head writer Viola Rispoli come from that world, but watching Miss Fallaci one thinks more of Ladies’ Paradise than of Mad Men or, indeed, the Fantastic Mrs. Maisel. There is nothing wrong with wanting to create a popular product designed for the general public and sometimes it would be enough to admit it to avoid comparisons that are not good for the final product. Don Matteo will never be True Detective but it continues to break ratings records and ultimately that’s fine, or rather, very good.

Rating: 5