But do you, your agent, call him often?
«At least once a day. Like my mother, even more so.”
The starting question was indispensable. And here it turns out that Sara Drago with the agent (it’s a she), Donatella Franciosi, feels «a lot, a lot. We discuss each audition, draft and project. And not only that.”
Thirty-five years old, with a scientific high school diploma and then a diploma from the Amateur Drama Academy, she is an actress born in Muggiò in Brianza (“but it was a little tight for me”), she commuted on a scooter to and from Milan (“I’ve never lived there but I would have liked to”) and today she was happily adopted by Rome (“I found my dimension »). Fresh from the second season of Call My Agent Italya revisitation of the French cult Dix pour centSara on Sky plays Lea, manager Stakanov, terror of assistants in an agency that manages faces of entertainment. «In life I am far from my character: she is more angular and precise than me. In fact, situations like Call My Agent I experienced them for real, but in reverse».
Stories.
«March 18th, my birthday. In the morning I wake up, I go out in my tracksuit, disheveled and with my hair in a bun: I had to help a friend make a self-tape on the other side of Rome. Just before switching the phone to silent to get to work I accidentally see a message: see you at 11.30 for the interview. Interview? I had an appointment via video and I was convinced it was in the afternoon. So: I couldn’t give up on my friend so I did the self-tape, I rushed home across the city, I jumped in the shower because I just couldn’t stay as I was and in the end I was (only!) 15 minutes late I introduced myself. Obviously I had forgotten my heels…”.
Is your manager, on the other hand, Call My Agent style?
«Donatella is an artist-agent. You also see yourself through who you represent: many come from the theatre, they have a non-canonical physicality. Like me, after all…”.
Let’s start with the theatre, his.
«Theatre is my great love. Now I have acquired a certain notoriety but I never see myself as having arrived – apprenticeship is a term that I would delete from the vocabulary -, I always remain part of the process: we must not stop testing ourselves. When I hear stories of actors sucked into success I shudder.”
After landing on Sky, do they recognize you on the street?
“A little”.
Sign autographs?
«No autographs. But they identify the voice.”
As?
«It happens that they stop me and tell me: I thought it was you but I wasn’t sure, then I heard you talking and I realized that it was really Lea. I like this: when I attended the Academy my teacher Silvio Castiglioni said that I still hadn’t found the right voice, which is very important for an actor. Now evidently I have found it.”
He made his debut on the smaller stages.
«Let’s clarify: there are small stages which however are larger than the large ones. I happened to act in well-known theaters without the experience leaving me with anything: there was a lot of marketing, a lot of commercial operation. On the contrary, there were performances in humble Arci circles that left me with a lot. The smallest stage I’ve been on, which is really small, is fantastic: that of the Pedestrian Theatre.”
And where is he?
«Teatro Pedonale is an association from Agrate Brianza, based in a former oratory. It’s a kind of remote cultural outpost: there are few aggregation proposals around, it’s where we get busy. The Pedestrian Theater has taught me a lot over the years, with the director Matteo Riva: we met at an evening course, one of those two hours a week, for amateur actors. When I’m in Brianza I go there as soon as I can.”
«His» Brianza.
«I grew up in Muggiò, I went to and back to Milan with a scooter and then with a car when I had it. I like the metropolis and in my town I felt a little out of place: the province has a different, slower energy. In the evening you find little open, you spend much more in your own home. The expectations widespread among my peers – I attended scientific high school – did not feel like mine: the permanent job, the house with the well-kept garden, the family. I was made differently. I’m precarious even now.”
When did she leave?
«Now I live in Rome, long live the chaos: I don’t feel so strange anymore. I moved in 2020.”
So he lived in the province a lot.
«When I was twenty I left home, I moved to Legnano but yes, I have always stayed in the area».
Why didn’t she move to Milan?
«Maybe because it wasn’t far from home. If I think about it now, I’m a little disappointed.”
What do you say to the Saras of today, who perhaps would like to live in the city but can’t afford it?
«That prices are a problem but that if you are motivated you will go ahead and get there».
When did you start supporting yourself with work as an actress?
«I’ve always wanted to act but I started supporting myself with this job more or less when I was thirty. From 16 to 29 I did many other jobs, even at the same time.”
Which?
«First of all everything that had to do with theatre: training, readings, workshops. At 16 I was a waitress at Bicocca Village, in a Mexican restaurant, then they took me to a pub in Monza. At Bicocca Village I returned to a herbalist’s shop as a sales assistant. In Legnano I was at the tables at The Mode. During the pandemic there was no work for us actors, so here I am again: I went back to being a waitress at the Circolone di Legnano, which is a club but also has aggregation programmes. Even now I repeat it to myself: if it doesn’t work out, in the world of entertainment, I’m always there as a resource for me. I roll up my sleeves and pay my bills.”
At the beginning of the interview he spoke about physical appearance outside the norm.
«The path to accepting me is a work in progress. Today I like myself more than before but when I was a teenager I had a lot of problems.”
What didn’t she like?
«I hated my dark circles so I never, ever left the house without makeup, not even to get the mail or drink a cappuccino. I was ashamed. Then things changed a bit, and it’s also thanks to the wonderful Marzia Ubaldi (colleague of Call My Agent, long-standing actress and voice actress, who passed away on 21 October 2023) who once on set exclaimed: what beautiful dark circles, I love this dark mark under her green eyes. It helped me that a woman like her said it. Today I like them and I no longer hide them.”
