It was 2004 when Danilo Bertazzi, who played the protagonist Tonio Cartonio, decided to leave the film forever Melevision after 6 seasons. For years, fans of the program have wondered the reasons for this sudden choice and hoaxes and fake news about his alleged death from a drug overdose have also spread on the web. Since April, the actor has opened a channel on Tik Tok in which he tells the behind-the-scenes stories of The Melevisione and, answering a user’s question, explained why he left the children’s program.
Explanation
In a video published on Tik Tok, the actor Danilo Bertazzi (who played Tonio Cartonio for years) tried to explain why he had decided to leave Melevisione: “I have to tell you something! Every time I see a meme with Tonio Cartonio’s farewell to Melevisione, and there are so many, I feel a little guilty. Also because you make me feel a little guilty, writing to me ‘you were the first disappointment of my childhood, you shouldn’t have left us’ and these things. Then I will try to explain the real reason why I left Fantabosco. And it was my decision, I want to clarify that. It’s a bit like in love stories, there is never a single reason why two people break up.” The interpreter continues by talking first of all about health problems: “Meanwhile I was grabbed by the hair and I I had my first heart surgery. This changes your perspective on life a little, it makes you think about another meaning of life. I remember that I was in the hospital and I was very worried about being replaced, about never returning to Fantabosco of having phoned the authors and the producer saying: ‘Please don’t leave me at home’. Obviously I was in the hospital and they had cast a new character, Nina Corteccia”. After the operation the actor was still not well and so with the authors he had devised a solution: “We had invented the story of a Fantabosco illness, so I could lie in bed with my pyjamas. Because you should know that under my pyjamas I still had all the IV cannulas that I did every day. But my desire was to return because I was afraid of being out of Fantabosco.” However, the subsequent decision to leave the program was not dictated only by health issues, Bertazzi continues: “I had a wonderful relationship with the first director, with the second I didn’t feel so loved and so protected. I always had the feeling that I was there and he had to hold me.” But there was also another reason, perhaps the most important, that pushed him to abandon it Melevision: “I was losing Danilo. Almost no one called me Danilo anymore, not even at work or at home. Tonio was taking over my life. And so I wanted to get my being back.” The choice by the Piedmontese actor was however difficult, also because he did not leave because of another job offer: “I tell you that, however, I did not leave because, as some may have imagined, I was been called elsewhere. I didn’t work for two years and so I paid dearly for this choice.” The death hoax, which came out shortly after he left, was another bad story, but: “We’ll talk about it later in another video”, specifies Bertazzi.
see also
Melevisione, the photo of the reunion of the protagonists
The Melevisione
The Melevisione is a children’s television program broadcast on Rai Tre from 1999 to 2010 and on Rai Yoyo from 2011 to 2015. Set in the Fantabosco, a fairy-tale kingdom populated by characters such as elves, gnomes, princes, princesses, kings, queens, witches, fairies, wolves, the protagonist of the program in the first six seasons was the elf Tonio Cartonio, played by Danilo Bertazzi, later replaced by Lorenzo Branchetti who took on the role of the new character Milo Cotogno. The Melevisione it has become a real cult for kids who grew up watching it on TV. An episode that has remained in the collective memory concerns an episode broadcast as a repeat on 11 September 2001: at 3.33pm it was suddenly interrupted by Peppi Franzelin who announced an extraordinary edition of Tg3 to talk about the attack on the Twin Towers. This fact was also taken up by the Nuclear Tactical Penguins in the song Write to her stupid.
