“I don’t drink alcohol”, Marco Calvani Said by scanning a bar menu on a spacious terrace of the Los Angeles restaurant. “Well, I promised to stay away from alcohol for a few months. Can you believe it? He asks because there has been a lot of celebration and socialization when he is preparing for the deployment of The four seasons—Ne new series of comedies from Netflix co-led by and playing Tina Fey, and depending on Alan AldaTion of 1981 Film. Calvani spent last fall on the series; He spent winter in New York State, working on a new project with his writing partner. He then flew to Brazil to be with her husband, the Brazilian actor Marco Pigossi, which was making a new film.
“Now we fortunately rebuild a routine,” says Calvani before ordering a cocktail. “I just started going back to the gymnasium. It’s been two weeks. I hired a personal coach. I am serious – for two months, I know that I will be here, so I am committed. ” If you didn’t know better, it might seem to be in Hollywood, it’s in Calvani. The four seasons marks his first acting as an actor in more than a decade, offering what is easily the deepest role in his career: he plays alongside heavy industry from industry like Fey, Steve Carell, And Colman Domingo, Who plays Calvani’s husband.
But Calvani, 44, who has lived in the United States since 2013, does not seem disconcerted. He is bubbling in person, as warm and evil as he Four seasons Character, Claude, who (mainly) maintains a shiny smile even though her marriage hits some raw patches. The performance is so effortless that you would never guess that Calvani moved away from acting a long time ago. However, the question remains: how Calvani – an eminent international playwright and theater director who has just won raves for his beginnings as a director, High tide—And involved in this a-list crowd when he did not intend to act again?
Calvani and Pigossi met Domingo and her husband for the first time, Raúl, During an event for the equality of the LGBTQ + non -profit family in 2023. They chatted aimlessly, exchanged figures, then found each other later in the evening at a party at the house organized by Natasha Lyonne. This is where they really struck: “We sat down and we smoked cigarettes and talked and danced,” explains Calvani. The couples remained in contact; The following year, Domingo suddenly asked Calvani to get on a band. Calvani never told Domingo that he was a former actor. Domingo did not tell Calvani what the project was either. “I said to myself, I think Colman needs me for one of his projects with some of his friends – he needs an Italian who brings a lasagna plate and says something Italian, then Ciao,” says Calvani. “Two days later, I read this thing. It was too big to be true – and too big for Me. It seems horrible and clumsy to say that now, but if I look back, I was afraid. »»
But he went there anyway. Calvani was in provincetown when he obtained his official Four seasons reminder. He went down to the basement of his producer to play scenes for Fey et al. Again, and then officially won the room.
He has spent the last months to think about the reason why Domingo asked him to take this walk in the first place. “I am happy when I am with people. If I am not happy, if I don’t want to be positive, I stay at home. I think he and Raúl saw this enthusiasm and joie de vivre, and apparently I was a perfect host and a little clown,” said Calvani between Sips. “I do not know if he was aware of it, but I think that Colman also felt that he himself entered a new territory, in this type of comedy…. I felt that everyone extended their own skills. ”
Photograph by Jen Rosenstein.
Calvani thought he had finished with the path of action in 2000, when he still lived in Florence. He did not receive the best offers, to say it slowly, and his goal had always been to do his own business anyway. In fact, Calvani only aimed to act as a pre -adolescent because he had heard someone say – he does not remember when or where – he was a great director, you must first be a great actor. “I started playing, then I completely forgot that I wanted to be a director,” he says.
The theater reminded him. Calvani wrote his first play in 2002, just after being 21 years old, and became incredibly prolific. He built a theater company. He began to think of directing in the mid-2000s, when he wrote his fourth play, then finally took larger productions on both sides of the Atlantic, some of which Neil Swan Play in New York. In 2017, he made a short film, The view of up there, featuring Oscar’s winner Melissa Leo.
His writing style is politically loaded and radically intense, with a strong emotional current. Until recently, it was not particularly strange. “I didn’t want to be a” gay writer “. I didn’t want to be a “gay director”. I realized that I obtained a lot of internalized homophobia in me, ”explains Calvani. “I was a gay man all my life and a storyteller for most – almost 25 years old. I have never put gay characters at the center of my stories. It has never come to my mind to use this platform. ” He grabs me with curiosity nodding. “It’s interesting, right?” I think it’s really crazy. “
