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marie..
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Irons sviscera il buono e il cattivo del suo personaggio. Lo ritiene complicato, e pensa che abbia fatto ciò che doveva fare per mantenere la propria posizione. CITAZIONESome good, many bad, some nasty, many sad.
There were thousands of aspects to the complex Rodrigo Borgia, who eventually became Pope Alexander VI in 1492.
So if you're Jeremy Irons and you're portraying Rodrigo/Alexander in The Borgias -- a new TV series that debuts Sunday on Bravo! -- how do you divvy up and represent those many characteristics?
"You have to see what each scene is there for, what it's designed to do, and fulfil your role within that scene," the 62-year-old English actor said. "You do that with each scene, put it all together, and it appears complex.
"Rather like a petrol engine looks complex when it's working, but actually if you take it apart, you see that this part is this shape, and that part is that shape, and how it all works. So it's the same process."
Well, sure, we suppose good actors and good mechanics both need deft touches.
But notably, Rodrigo's blunt and crass approach both to becoming Pope and then maintaining the position is at the heart of the drama in The Borgias.
"I knew little things," Irons said when asked how aware he was of this powerful family prior to his involvement with the series. "I'd heard that Lucrezia (Rodrigo's daughter, played by Holliday Grainger) was a sort of spider woman, a terrible woman, who did terrible things. Not true."
While researching the role, Irons came across at least one possible explanation as to why the Borgia family has been so demonized through the centuries, when really in those vicious, brutal, dangerous times they were just going with the flow.
"(Alexander VI) pulled in a huge amount of humanist writers, it's all the beginning of the Renaissance, really, and peopled the Vatican with those writers," Irons said. "One building that still exists was full of them.
"But when his son died, he kicked everybody out. He said, 'I don't want all these hangers-on around the Vatican, I just want my people.' And the writers all left, so for the rest of their lives, they all wrote pretty libelously about him and the family, because they'd had their living destroyed.
"So there are lots of reasons why the stories have got down to us as they have. I think you have to, not take them with a pinch of salt, but examine them very closely."
Irons, of course, has been a famous and busy actor since the early 1980s. Through the decades on film, TV and the stage, he has played everything from demented twins (Dead Ringers) to an evil cartoon character (he voiced Scar in The Lion King).
With so many eras on his acting resume, one thing Irons has learned is not to be judgmental in a kneejerk way.
"I think (Rodrigo/Alexander) is a pretty good guy just doing the best he can," Irons said. "I mean, power corrupts. And it was a time quite unlike the time we live in today. There were murders in Rome every night, poisonings most weekends. There was incest here and sodomy there. You know, it was a good old rolling, rollicking society.
"And if you've got to try and run that, which the Pope attempts to do, then you've got to play by some of the games, by some of the rules, that society follows. We have to remember that he was more like a king than the present Pope.
"I didn't judge him at all. He was just trying to hang onto the position."
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CITAZIONE
LOS ANGELES – Francois Arnaud didn’t need months of preparation to play Jeremy Irons’ son in “The Borgias.”
“He was just like my dad,” Arnaud says. “I never thought that before I met him. But when we read together, I realized they were very similar.
“As my character learns to stand up to his father, I learned to stand up to him.”
Pretty bold, considering Irons plays Rodrigo Borgia, the cunning patriarch of the family that once ruled Italy with an iron fist. Arnaud’s character – Cesare – was one of two scheming sons who had their own agenda.
Arnaud, a veteran of several French Canadian projects (he’s bilingual), hadn’t been in a large-scale period piece on film.
“I’d been in them on stage,” he says. “But the wonderful thing about sets and costumes is they put you right in the spot. You can’t ‘act’ period.”
Characters like the Borgias, the 25-year-old says, are best when they’re relatable, no matter what the time period. “You have to think, ‘This could have been me.’”
When Arnaud first donned Cesare’s cassock, he wondered how he was going to be able to ride horses and clank swords. “You have to realize this guy has been wearing it for a long time. Even though I had had it on for two hours, I had to look like I had been wearing it for years.”
And then, when he had to doff everything for the miniseries’ nude scenes?
“Acting is very hard,” he says. “But it’s not hard to be naked. I hate watching those scenes but if you’re with an actress who is generous and giving, it’s pretty easy.”
And squaring off with Irons? “He was great,” Arnaud says. “He was always open to new ideas.”
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Versione tradotta dell'intervista ad Irons CITAZIONEJeremy Irons: divento Papa Borgia, peccatore e erotomane
BERLINO - Nella carriera di Jeremy Irons i personaggi ambigui o mascalzoni si accumulano. A Berlino è venuto per Margin call in cuiè il boss che in una notte decide di vendere azioni senza valore a migliaia di persone che il giorno dopo resteranno senza casa e senza lavoro, e intanto, conoscendo gli scandali italiani - «Ma gli italiani continuano ad amare Berlusconi, no?»- si preoccupa per la serie The Borgias, girato per la tv, in onda ad aprile nel mondo anglosassone. Nella serie è Rodrigo Borgia, papa Alessandro VI, che «ha avuto un immenso potere e una vita sessualmente scandalosa, almeno 12 amanti». Ma l' attore difende il suo personaggio. «Non era solo un libertino. Bisogna ricordare che i Borgia venivano dalla Spagna, erano emigranti e come tutti gli emigranti tendevano a chiudersi, a proteggersi come famiglia, perciò voleva essere lui a decidere le scelte sentimentali e il destino dei figli, in particolare di Lucrezia. Ho letto molti libri: per lui si usano tanti aggettivi, era un uomo dai mille colori e da un amore per la vita che significava anche amore per il cibo e per le donne». Ad Irons piacciono i personaggi ambigui, ricchi di contraddizione e «Alessandro è così. Era anche un ottimo politico, non era facile all' epoca amministrare lo Stato e insieme il Papato, all' interno del quale c' erano continuamente minacce, intrighi, cospirazioni, tradimenti. In una Roma devastata dalla violenza, c' erano trenta omicidi al giorno, in un' Italia ancora non uscita dal caos, papa Borgia si impegnò per riportare l' ordine, cercò contatti con Firenze consapevole dell' importanza della città per l' arte, operò per rendere Roma una città più vivibile. Papa Alessandro era un uomo di grandi appetiti nel bene e nel male. E secondo me era anche profondamente religioso, credente. Solo un grande religioso può diventare un grande peccatore», dice Irons. Una pausa poi «come il vostro Berlusconi», aggiunge sorridendo con maligna ironia. © RIPRODUZIONE RISERVATA - (m.p.f.)
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