Checco Zalone, in his film Good Waywhich is hitting the box office in every corner of Italy, wanted two well-known TV faces to play its women. If the protagonist’s ex-wife is in fact an (unrecognizable) Martina Colombari, the cast also includes a former gieffina, the Venezuelan model Mariana Rodriguez.
Mariana Rodriguez in Checco Zalone’s film “Buen Camino”
Beautiful, South American, capricious and above all, half her age, Mariana Rodriguez plays the girlfriend of the vain billionaire Checco, who cunningly, as her interpreter herself explains, trades wealth for the protagonist’s desire to have a trophy girlfriend.
In an interview with Corriere della Sera, the former gieffina talks about her experience on the set of this phenomenon film and also how far away her character is from her.
He says, for example, that he didn’t know whether to expect the incredible public success that “Buen Camino” is having but, he adds: “It’s nice to see this empathy: all of Italy united in laughter.”
At the center of Checco Zalone’s film there is a non-existent father-daughter relationship that needs to be built before it becomes impossible. A theme that really touches Maria Rodriguez, who confesses that she was moved at a particular moment in the film: “My father had 4 other children with 4 different women, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. In the
film Checco says to his daughter: ‘You never called me dad’, I burst into tears.”
Oh yes, because the thirty-four year old has a rather difficult past behind her, from which she escaped as soon as her age allowed it. In fact, speaking to the newspaper, he recalls: “Even when my father was around I counted the cents to go on the bus to school. Dad was a policeman before they shot him in the face. I find it hard to talk about him. My mother worked in a dangerous favela. Drugs, violence. My cousin was killed in a score-settling.”
“Buen Camino”, the new film by Checco Zalone between scratch and good feelings
“On Big Brother I was bullied by Valeria Marini”
Then, the “escape”, but even that wasn’t so simple: “Arriving in Italy was my dream, I was 18 years old”, recalls Mariana Rodriguez. “In Caracas I saved up for the plane ticket by working as a sales assistant. I learned Italian thanks to Tiziano Ferro, everyone said I should be a model […] At Madrid airport they stopped me because I only had 50 euros in my pocket. I was in a cell for three days, they made me feel like Pablo Escobar’s daughter.”
In the end, she arrived in Italy and began her journey in the world of entertainment, also passing through Big Brother, of which she doesn’t have a great memory, especially because of a roommate: “On Big Brother Valeria Marini mentioned me every week. I, who am considered the family clown, couldn’t answer her or defend myself. She insulted me about everything, I preferred to be bullied than to speak.” Finally, she reveals her point of view on success: “It is thought that success is who knows what, the day you die is not what you take with you. I felt empty, I didn’t feel good about myself and to find myself I took a spiritual journey to India”.
