OfHappy Cavallaro
«To play Vanina on TV I changed my look, it’s the first time. How hard it is to graduate with 3 children.” «I met Jan at dinner: nothing. After a year and a half I found it again
on the set of Don Matteo”
From Miss Italia 2012 to the first season of Ladies’ paradise. Passing by Don Matteo to the Young Montalbano. Then, psychologist in «Doc 2» and police inspector in the series «A step from heaven». Now promoted to deputy commissioner on Canale 5 in the role of Vanina Guarrasi, the protagonist of the highly popular detective stories of Cristina Cassar Scalia. And so Giusy Buscemi, 31 years old, already three children, a director husband (Jan Michelini), is on her way to becoming a sort of female Montalbano. While a series on Leopardi is being edited in which she will play the fatal Fanny Targioni Tozzetti, the woman the poet falls in love with.
An ascent at great speed. But tell me first because her three children all have double names and the second is always Maria, even for the two boys.
«Well, like my husband, at the registry office. Him too. Always hoping for the protection of the Madonna.”
Solid devotion?
«Practising Christians. At Mass every Sunday.”
Beautiful, charming, but is she therefore a star all over the house, church and set?
«I would say with irony that the set is the reckless road between home and church. In fact, I feel the importance of faith, education and life commitment.”
First time in public?
«The day of the first communion. Passed out in church.”
Was it the first major scene?
«Upon delivery of the parchment. An emotion and the collapse.”
How do you go from foils and parchment to Miss Italy?
«Even with a lot of luck. I repeat to myself that the math doesn’t add up. Yes, a lot of effort on my part. But also many gifts. I receive a lot. Miss Italia arrived for fun.”
Who proposed it?
«A family friend, Fioretta Mari, the great actress and then teacher of “Amici” for Maria De Filippi. I attended the Scientifico, in Menfi, my city, the city of wine. She told me: “You will never win Miss Italy, but someone will notice you”.
Hadn’t you thought about it before?
“Absolutely not. And I didn’t even think about taking an elocution course first. But she was categorical, with her Florentine accent: “You can’t be heard.” In fact, those reinforced double “Ts” from the Agrigento area… I will never stop thanking my parents. Once a week, ten times, in lessons from Menfi to Catania.”
Four hours by car.
«Four on the way out and four on the way back. For a course that started at 8 in the morning and ended at 10 at night. We left before dawn and returned at 2 am. The next morning I’m at school and my father is at work.”
Did you all believe in «Giusy Miss»?
«No one believed it. It was just a parenthesis before enrolling in medicine. Then, the opportunity completely overturned the plans.”
But graduated from Sapienza.
«After three children, last year. In Letters and Philosophy. With a thesis on dialects, on the beauty and importance of a language like Sicilian, “T” understood. A big challenge. A huge effort between family and set, but I had to close a circle.”
A bet?
«In life you must always try to close the circle. I did it so I could tell my children about it.”
The meeting with Jan-Maria, the director of “Doc”, “Don Matteo” and other series?
«At a charity dinner. Nothing for a year and a half. Then I find him on the set of Don Matteo for a very small role, Frassica’s daughter. A surprise, for both of them. The greatest of our lives.”
In the series «A step from heaven» she is a police inspector expert in proxemics. She is able, through movements and body language, to understand what people try to hide. And she?
«Complex art. You need instinct and sensitivity. I, on the other hand, overlook it. If they tell me a lie, maybe I understand, but I don’t investigate, I pretend to believe it.”
Nostalgia for the “city of wine”, for that Memphis surrounded by vines?
«I love the land so much that I have thought about my second life».
To do what?
«The agricultural entrepreneur».
From takes to the fields?
«My father is a farmer. I studied for a year. Exam done in January. On the set of Vanina I studied in the evening. As for graduation. What a pain. Promoted. I already have the IAP license.”
Meaning what?
«Since January I have been a “Professional Agricultural Entrepreneur”».
And her director husband?
«He loves Sicily and the countryside more than me. He knows about my grandfather nicknamed with the nicknames of the past “Nino ‘u seminzeri”. What he sows. Now we plant avocados and olive trees.”
Are you a child?
«To collect asparagus, melons. To tread the grapes with your feet in the earth of Diego Planeta.”
Did you know the patron of great wines?
«He was my first talent scout, in Memphis. For his honorary degree, he asked me to interpret a passage from his thesis on the history of wine. First acting, first applause, at 17.”
Menfi is not too far from Castelvetrano, from Campobello di Mazara, from centers suffocated by the presence of Matteo Messina Denaro…
«It is the contradiction of my land from where I brought with me a proud cultural background, but also the pain of a context that changes with the work and commitment of many. As happened in Menfi, almost an oasis, thanks to Planeta, the resourcefulness, the businesses, the cooperatives that were born.”
Is change possible?
«It’s a story that still bleeds. But an opportunity to improve and improve. As long as we don’t continue to suggest that it’s better to mind your own business. It’s time to mind other people’s business. As does Vanina Guarrasi, the policewoman marked at times by her pain, by the loss of her father killed by a mafia commando.”
Assonances?
«I love the human richness of this character. But Vanina runs away from love and she doesn’t want children.”
To look like her?
«For the first time in my life I cut my hair, I darkened it, I changed my look».
The dialect?
«First, the diction course to erase the accent. Now, the return with Vanina to inflections that are a little Catania, a little Palermo. Well, Sapienza’s thesis paid off. I studied on the videos of my grandparents who didn’t speak Italian.”
On family home movies?
«Birthdays, special holidays. They told me ancient things, Sicilian sayings. And now that I’m in heaven I study their words.”
In difficult moments Vanina could take out her colt. And she? Have you experienced harassment or harassing advances?
«Very lucky. Protected perhaps by a guardian angel. But up until I was 19, dad and mom kept me under a glass hood. Always followed. And I criticized them. Now I understand that it was the best thing to do. But I understand it as the mother of a 6-year-old girl.”
A suggestion to give to the little girl, and not only?
«Everything is possible, if you wish it».
May 6, 2024 (modified May 6, 2024 | 10:38)
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