Ratzinger "may have been a traditional pope, but then with his resignation he did the most new thing in 700 years." This is what Giorgio Colangeli tells ANSA, who from January 13, with the two dates at the Ciak theater in Rome, resumes the tour of The Two Popes, an Italian adaptation, directed by Giancarlo Nicoletti, of Anthony McCarten's play, already transformed into a film for Netflix by Fernando Meirelles with Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce. Colangeli lends his face to Benedict XVI, while playing the cardinal and future pontiff Juan Mario Bergoglio is Mariano Rigillo. After Rome, the show will make stops in Pescara, Campi Bisenzio, Latina, Lecce, Altamura and Benevento, among others. "Of the two Popes, the one who is most surprising is Ratzinger himself. He is also a character who is evolving, because he knows how to change his mind despite his firm convictions," he adds. I like characters that are a little different than you expect. At the beginning I was counting on doing Bergoglio, which I felt was more congenial. But then I read the text and of the two, Benedict XVI is the most complex and fascinating of the two. Playing it brought me closer to this figure, because I, like many others, had judged it in a hasty and somewhat superficial way. I also read one of his books and I must say that with his way of thinking he fascinated me further. He is a great man, a great philosopher, a theoretician, but the media representation that forces us to think that if you don't appear happy you don't exist, has not made him known to us in his true value." Colangeli also loves the relationship he has created with Mariano Rigillo: "We are different, but we work well together both on stage and in life. Mariano is a great gentleman of the theatre, and not only that, I have great respect and admiration for him. He doesn't have any rigidity, he always keeps putting himself out there." The actor was also among the interpreters of the phenomenon C'è ancora domani by Paola Cortellesi (so far almost 35 million euros at the box office), in the role of the protagonist's father-in-law, ignorant and chauvinistic. "With this film there was the pleasure of going back to see a film in theaters, the importance of word of mouth returned. I am very happy and proud to have been part of it. Paola and I had never worked together before, and it was a very pleasant surprise to find her an extraordinary author. She is an intelligent, sensitive, determined, attentive woman. An actress who does our job in the noblest way, with a focus on the moral and ethical consequences of what you do. The film shows this in the themes it deals with (such as violence against women, ed.), which there was a great urgency to talk about." We will also find the actor among the performers, in the role of Cardinal Franco Merola, in an international horror film Immaculate by Michael Mohan with Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria) and Alvaro Morte (La casa de papel): "I did it with great technical difficulty - he comments smiling - both because I speak little English and because the translation of the script was a bit approximate.... A grotesque aspect also came out in the story, but it could turn out to be a good film, because that type of project is also very resolved in the editing. However, it was an important step to be part of an international cast, although I don't follow many series, I didn't know Alvaro Morte and Sydney Sweeney before... Friends have scolded me a lot for this. With Sydney in particular I have two very strong scenes." Colangeli has always loved to put his trust in first-time directors, so among the various new roles he has those in first films such as Volare! by Pier Paolo Paganelli and in L'ultima Sfida by Antonio Silvestre, a film about the world of football, "an area that is not familiar to me because I don't follow it, but the story is very interesting. It offers a complex image of football, even in the way it talks about corruption and more hidden aspects, which in any case fail to scratch the great interest of the public in this form of contemporary mythology".
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