Guest of the Filming Italy Sardegna Festival 2024, Lillo gave us some previews of Sono Lillo 2 and spoke to us about his comedy, his childhood desire to become a dancer and his friend and colleague Corrado Guzzanti.
There is an actor and comedian who makes everyone agree. Children like his physicality, while adults appreciate his refined comedy based on nonsense and puns. We are talking about Pasquale Petrolo in art Lillowhich is both one half of the pair Lillo and Greg than a free hitter. Lillo has performed on stage, divided his time between cabaret and television sketches, for a while he became a permanent presence in cinepanettone 2.0 and above all he first successfully tried his hand at game shows/reality LOL – Whoever laughs is out and then in the TV series I’m Lillowhat how LOL is a Prime Video exclusive. For the sake of precision we must add that without LOL I’m Lillo would never have existed, what if Lilloguest of Filming Italy Sardinia Festivalcan you tell us about I’m Lillo 2it’s because, in 2021, he agreed to be part of the group of comedians who for 6 consecutive hours challenged each other with jokes and skits to make people laugh and therefore eliminate their opponents.
Since 3 years Pasquale he is very fast and has no intention of slowing down the pace. Sitting among us journalists at the beginning of a windy afternoon at the end of June, he gives us some tasty previews of the second season of I’m Lilloin which we will meet again Corrado Guzzanti. Lillo is delighted with this renewed collaboration, which provides greater space for the inventor of Rocco Smitherson, Lorenzo And That: “With Corrado we have known each other since time immemorial” – he says – “and we are great friends, we have also done many things together. He has already acted in I’m Lillo, appearing briefly in the first season. In the second, which will arrive on Prime Video in September, she will instead have a slightly more substantial role. I fondly remember our collaborations in Goofy Kennedy Show. Loving each other, as soon as one does something he calls the other. In real life we argue a lot while playing Risk and Monopoly, and we fight like two 6-year-olds.”
Of the many and hilarious characters invented by Corrado Guzzanti, Lillo he has one that makes him laugh to tears: “Corrado he always puts magic in all the characters he plays, but if we talk about pure laughter, what amuses me the most is Vulvia with his Reeducational Channel: I think ‘knight pushers’ is the thing that makes me laugh the most ever. His too Funari he was brilliant, not to mention Father PizzarroHowever Vulvia remains unattainable.”
The topic is closed Guzzanti we press on Lilo on the second season of I’m Lillo and luckily Mr. Oil speaks freely: “We are very happy with how the new season turned out, because I’m Lillo it’s become a little more surreal in the sense that I’m going to travel dimensions. Since in the first season there is me behaving as in reality but the story being told is not really mine, nor the wife I have, it is as if I belonged to another dimension. This time the dimensions multiply and I will come across many others Lilli, and none of them are doing very well. I’ll give you a preview, even if I couldn’t: in the new season there is a fabulous character who is the Master of the Universe, that is, the one that governs all dimensions. I won’t say anything else otherwise they’ll kill me, they’ll send hitmen. However, I announce to you that the Master of the Universe will be an incredible surprise: you will never imagine who plays him, he is not even an actor, but it is a character that has to do with the show.”
In I’m Lillothe actor impersonates Posaman, who however is not the only superhero he has created. Several years ago, together with Gregthe actor invented Normalman, and we ask him if superheroes are a passion of his: “As a nerd, I love superhero comics” – he replies – “so much so that I still read them. At home I’m full of superhero figurines, It feels like I’m in a 15-year-old’s room, so the superhero parodies I do depend on my love for them. Normalman I invented him for the comics, but then he became the main character of a series for GeekStick, which is a kids’ channel. Posemanhowever, was born from an improvisation during LOL. The idea was to do Posaman but I hadn’t planned anything, after all LOL It works like this: there’s no script, so I said to myself, ‘Okay, I’ll go in there in this costume and say that I’m Posaman, then I’ll see what I come up with.’ Actually Posaman it wasn’t meant to LOL: In his place there was supposed to be another superhero who had another mechanism that then broke, so at the last moment I said: ‘Yes. let’s do some poses, do me a little, and then I went in. I believe that the strength of that exuberant character depends precisely on this naturalness: it was clear that it was something that was born on the spot, and it is for this reason that I think people liked it. The children in particular had fun, because Poseman he is a physical character, not a joke character, and in fact you laugh at what he does and not at what he says. Physical comedy amuses me a lot too, and my models in this sense are John Belushi And Peter Sellers. Returning to LOLI received various messages on Instagram from people who saw the program and there were two children who were crying because I had left, but they were really crying, in fact they were desperate”.
The first season of I’m Lillo opens with Pasquale who is left by his wife, who can no longer stand his tendency to always joke and his ultra-geek habits. In real life the actor is happily married, even if his lady would sometimes wring his neck: “The real lady Lillo, when someone says to her: ‘How cute he is, how nice he is!’, she replies: ‘But you don’t live together’. She says it all the time, but it’s always true, because in everyday life we all have our worries. At home I make her laugh a lot but I also make her a lot angry, let’s say she goes from one mood to another.”
Lillo – which in the photo of the article is together with Tiziana Roccawho created and directs the Filming Italy Sardegna Festival – then tells us that he has just finished shooting a Christmas film with Christian De Sica, Paolo Calabresi And Isabella Ferrari. It’s about Curtain Expressand even though a very different director is at the helm Black Relatives (Eros Puglielli) the humor will still have something “holiday-like”. Also being there Lillo in the cast, perhaps the comedy will go a little in the direction of the aforementioned nonsense. And speaking of nonsense, the comedian explains to us when his love for this way of making people laugh was born: “As a kid I was struck by the Monty Python, I remember that they were super-demented, and that dementedness made me laugh. When then Greg and I met like two very young guys who start talking about the passions they have in common, we realized that we loved exactly the same things, and therefore, in addition to the Monty Pythonwe loved Mel Brooks, Jewish-American comedy and then some of our compatriots, because we have a great tradition of nonsense. Let’s think for example about Coco And Renato who were the greatest Italian nonsense comedians, oa The Giancactiviwith Francesco Nuti And Alexander Welcome. Going back to the 1950s, Raimondo Vianello And Ugo Tognazzi they made nonsense in the television sketches that preceded the move to the cinema of Tognazzi. Even now Greg and I follow the comedians who go in that direction. It seemed natural to us to make it our own. We have always followed what made us laugh the most without ever asking ourselves: What might people like? What people like now?”.
Among the many media through which he expresses his talent, Lillo he confides to us that his favorite is the radio, which among other things is very suitable for surreal comedy because it leaves the field open to the imagination. But there is still another form of expression in which Lillo excels: dance. Agile and graceful, Pasquale invented steps and choreographies, and among the first we like to remember the “double Anagni”. Regarding dance, Lillo che confides a half secret: “I danced as a kid, I wanted to be a dancer as a child and I told my father who was a real Calabrian. Imagine a stereotypical Calabrian who comes to Rome, here: my father was like that. At 7 years old I I was introduced to him and I told him ‘Dad, I want to become a dancer’. Imagine my father! He already looked at the world of art with suspicion, let alone dance which is not really a male thing! a straight dancer means having possibilities: it’s not a joke, it’s true. But my father was afraid, he considered homosexuality a problem, an illness, he was very worried, also because I imitated dancers and not men dancers, I especially loved Raffaella Carra. My dad wanted me to be an accountant and unfortunately he died when I had just started doing this job and to earn some money I sold oil to restaurants.”
