We make no secret of it: we loved the supernatural-forced series Christian very much, directed by Stefano Lodovichi, and we were anxiously awaiting the second season, which will arrive on Sky and NOW with the first two unmissable episodes on March 24th. Here’s what the protagonists say.
If, like us, you were left hanging at the end of the first season of Christian and you were wondering if and when we would see again the holy beater, the son of the boss Davide, the former drug addict Rachele, the postulator Matteo, Lino’s henchmen and in short, the whole world created by Valerio Cilio and by the director Stefano Lodovichistarting from the inspiration of the graphic novel Stigmata and gives an idea of Roberto Saku Cinardito distance yourself from it, you can breathe a big sigh of relief: the second season is upon us, it will arrive on March 24 on Sky and streaming exclusively on NOW with the first two episodes, for a total of six, two every Friday. What to say? The miracle takes place againjudging by what we have been able to preview and something (a lot) that is already guessed trailer.
Christian: what happens in the second season
At the end of the first season, Christian (Edward Fish), after the murder of his mother, he killed his executioner, his half-brother Lino (Giordano De Plano), creating a dangerous power vacuum in Città Palazzo. The boss’s son. David (Antonio Banno), convinced of starting a new life with the girl he is in love with, finds himself at the mercy of her revenge. At the beginning of the second season Christian, advised and assisted by Rachele (Silvia D’Amico), who has tried in every way to get away from him without success, is invested with the powers of the boss and everyone expects that he will change things for the inhabitants of the City-Palace, giving birth to a new kingdom of justice and brotherhood. Meanwhile, a new supernatural character enters the scene, the Black (Laura Morante) which he reveals to Matthew (Claudius Santamaria), whose son Christian has restored his sight, that his benefactor and the mysterious Biondo do not work for the Good and instructs him to infiltrate his entourage to discover its weaknesses and annihilate its power. The postulator is rather confused and perhaps conflicted, but since the Nera is more or less blackmailing him, he does his best to move to the City-Palace and fulfill her mission. On site he will also know Esther (Camilla Philippi), a woman with whom he will form a bond. In the meantime Davide, alive but crippled, returns and refuses the miracle of his old friend/enemy and entrusts himself to the care of an old acquaintance of ours, the venal veterinarian/surgeon Tomei (Francis Colella). Will the thug with the stigmata, with the help of his faithful, be able to create his forced utopia, despite the opposing forces in the field? And whose side is everyone on?
Christian: producers, directors and actors speak
Sonia Rovai Of Sky Studios Talks about Christian like a series etched into the network’s DNA and promises that the ante and the temperature have been raised this season. Christian, as a teenager that he was, has evolved a bit but is not yet an adult, he inherits a kingdom and must figure out what to do with it. The progression of the stories, he says, “is even more ironic and light-hearted, and the themes at stake are made more understandable”. “Christian – the director speaks (only this time) Stefano Lodovichi, founds the forced utopia, a “Christian” version of the perfect model society in which everyone must feel like a family. He has to get his hands even more dirty and seize power, which he would gladly avoid. And to do that she’s going to have to manage his Round Table, his assistants who are kind of the knights who help him, and then there’s Rachel who’s always trying to get Christian to do the right thing.” Second Matthias War Of Lucky Red, who co-produces the series, “its strength is in the characters. Each of them lives its own life, so much so that it would be fantastic to have a spin-off for each character and this is a great credit to the authors and has been a big boost to the success of the series abroad, where it has been sold in more than fifty countries”.
The chaos and the quest to bring order to Città Palazzo arouse similarities with today’s situation: “Of course it reflects the current situation, but it is a constant” – says Lodovichi – “there is always a mess that one tries to sort out, it is very difficult to do so. We live in a world where everyone has freedom of speech and can express themselves and we have to take risks to do so. However, this story lives half a meter from our world and we can make our characters run these risks”. Among the inspirations cited by the authors is the Italian comedyin the second season explicitly mentioned with a tribute to Nino Manfredi: “Christian”, continues Lodovichi, “draws from two worlds, one of which is the typical Italian comedy, our desire to interpret reality through our culture. Then there is the component that wants to go beyond this reality. The work with Valerio was fundamental in this case, he is a great lover of all that cinema and that Italian cultural tradition that gave the possibility to create Christian’s substrate. I put the most pop and cartoonish interpretation”. “Manfredi’s idea,” he adds Valerio Cilio“comes from Edward Fish, and it is symptomatic of the harmony of tone that has been created between us and the actors and between the actors and their characters. Nino Manfredi is one of Edoardo’s heroes and mine too”.
One of the many things that strikes seeing Christian is the cure for the soundtrack. There are many songs also in this season, such as “L’isola che non c’è” by Edoardo Bennato, which are not placed there at random but have a bearing on the themes of the story. “This too”, says Lodovichi, “is done, like everything else, in participation, by talking. When editing with the editor we try to make many attempts, we rarely go directly to a song. In this case the idea came from the assistant editor , Angelo Santini. We were looking for a somewhat folk and popular Italian song and he suggested Bennato and we understood that he perfectly portrayed the warmth of the choral relationship that exists in the story. It’s like a big family, the betrayal of one character against another is as if it were done to a family member. For example, in the third episode we used a song by Mango, “Oro”, very experimental, with a strong electronic component and which obviously has to do with the theme of the episode. We made use of the musical consultancy of Giorgio Giampà and with the first season we won the best music award at Cannes Séries. We can talk about music with the musician and with the actors, we are all listening”.
As for the figure of irony, Valerio Cilio says that “It’s the only possible key. In this way Christian has allowed us to tell things that otherwise risked becoming too rhetorical or dangerous”. “Those who take themselves too seriously” – echoes Lodovichi – “as a spectator bore me so much. It was automatic to put irony into Christian because it’s the two of us who do it”. Among the new entries in the series we were saying there is the very welcome return of Laura Morante, in a role for which she prepared following the indications in the script, which initially confused her: “Black was described as a cross between Bid Spencer and the Bree’s Desperate Housewives. And I asked, what does that mean? So there was a work of aesthetic construction of the character, for which I looked for pictorial, comics and cinematographic references, such as Helena Bonham Carter in the movies of Tim Burton. We went back to that dark model. Stefano is a very demanding director, in a positive sense, I like to quote from the story of Karen Blixen Babette’s Lunch, the singer’s letter in which he says there is nothing worse for an artist than not being asked for the best’. He clearly had in mind what he wanted, for me it was not so clear and I tried to get closer to this model that he had in mind ”.
Edoardo Pesce says that Christian“unlike Machiavelli, he focuses on a more hipster forced utopia, instead human nature, as we see in Lord of the Flies, will take over”. Silvia D’Amico jokes about her role as Jiminy Cricket, saying that “As I contain Edoardo’s exuberances off the set, on the set I try to guide and encourage him. The difference between the first and second seasons is that while initially I was trying to take personal advantage of Christian’s powers, here we are asking together how to govern ”. The actors point out that they have had more freedom to improvise this season and that their work, if we are to use a musical metaphor, resembles a jam session. What is the utopia for an actor? He answers Claudius Santamaria: “Always aiming for the good is important, the world tries hard to be bad, negative, wrong, even in our profession we can make a difference by choosing projects with a civil, political or recreational value. I choose on the basis of what I would like to see in the cinema or on television”. In the next few days we will offer you our interviews with the cast of Christianwhich confirms itself as one of the most original, best written, acted and directed series among those offered by the panorama of Italian seriality. From March 24 on Sky and streaming exclusively on NOW.
(photo in Lucia Iorio)
