by Chiara Maffioletti
Interview with Francesco Mandelli and Fabrizio Biggio: The series “I Soliti Idioti” comes in 2023: “We left each other badly, then we met again, we cried together. Characters? Still politically incorrect. Ruggero and Gianluca assured “
Some loves don’t end. They do huge laps – and in seven years Francesco Mandelli and Fabrizio Biggio did it – and then, sensationally, they come back. The usual jerks are back. The comic duo, born in 2009 and soon after becoming a mass phenomenon, consecrated by intellectuals and adored by an audience that could not be more transversal, surprised everyone with the release of a song, Hélicoptèr, actually by Le Top or Fluide e Liquide, a couple of masked singers in the style of Daft Punk but a little suspicious of the Muccassassina. Some love never ends, he told himself. “Life is amazing,” they explain, so the metaphor of reciprocal love works wonders.
Then? What happened?
Mandelli: «For a few years we had to put our relationship, which was above all a friendship, on hold. We worked together and we were best friends – fantastic chemistry. After this huge popularity, we burned out ».
Biggio: «We broke up abruptly, went bad, like it happens in love stories. In recent years we have not heard from each other, no middle ground: each with their twists … but I have often thought about our dynamic ».
M: “We were contacted separately to advertise as soliti idioti”. B: “And without having heard it, he and I said yes separately”.
M: “We immediately found the old harmony again, even if we were a bit afraid at the beginning to deal with certain sensitive issues, those that had led to the break.”
B: «But after a while we opened up and really said everything. There we hugged and just cried. The most important thing of all was this moment. ‘
Are you ready to go back now?
B: «Yes, we got to work straight away and the ideas multiplied, we have a lot of fun».
M: «We are like a band that has been playing together for years and has had a very big success, but it has undermined our relationship and polluted our creativity. . Now we have to make a new record».
Translated: a new series?
M: “We have a lot to say, also because a lot has happened in recent years…”.
B: «We are evaluating where to release it, we are talking about 2023. Meanwhile we have started this project on social networks where we make fun of today’s music world. But we want to produce real songs, a kind of fake MTV.”
Will the historical characters return? Father and son?
M: «Ruggero and Gianluca must not be missing, as well as La postina. Others, such as homosexuals, would no longer make sense today. But we already have new ideas.”
It seems to be a marketing operation: a return to the origins freed from the blow of success.
M: «For us it all started with a very sincere and spontaneous thing: we thought nobody would ever see it. Then the boom. We had to get away from it, although we’re grateful: people still think we’re the usual idiots.”
B: «For the last few years, with everything he did, I got messages like: Have you seen? But this approach came when it had to happen, perhaps we wouldn’t have been ready beforehand. Now everything was easy and smooth, including the resumption of our comedy, disrespectfully even stabbing: Today it’s almost not there ».
Also because today one wrong word is enough to trigger chaos.
B: «If the question is: Do you still manage to be politically incorrect? The answer is: sure ».
M: “And without thinking about who will be looking at us: let’s aim specifically at what we want to tell”.
Can you guess just one of the new characters?
M: “There is a family of monkeys who order many things from Amazon, but only to throw them away and make garbage. They get upset, especially when arranging the objects that they don’t use. You discard them and end them ». In other words, the packaging is more important than the content ».
When you get back together after the breakup, you usually promise not to make the same mistakes again. Was it like that?
M: “It took seven years to understand what kind of children we are… We were both wrong: at a certain point there was no healing for the other. I won’t do it again.”
B: «Now we have promised each other to tell each other the things that bother us immediately, to talk about them and let them happen. There is certainly a lot of respect between us, we love each other. Indeed, Fra, I can say that I love you ».
Me too. We also spent a week together, with our families: never before ».
Guess what will happen when Ruggero sees his son Gianluca again after a long time?
B: «Ruggero doesn’t exist until the mask they put on Francesco with five hours of make-up doesn’t exist. The truth is I miss him and I really want to see him again.”
M: «I think if Gianluca hugs Ruggero he will ask him to make a video on Tik Tok how the boomers went bad».
August 19, 2022 (Modified August 20, 2022 | 09:13)
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