VERA DRAGONE TALKS BOOK CLUB: THE NEXT CHAPTER

Interviewed by Culture Coast Talks editor Daniel John. Interview transcripts might have been edited for length and clarity.

Being the granddaughter of Vittorio De Seta, cinema always coursed through your veins, yet for a long time you never considered following in his footsteps?

I was a very shy child, but despite my shyness I loved going with my grandfather around the world to the various festivals he was invited to. So once on the occasion of a retrospective organized on him, I met my first acting teacher. She came up to me and told me that I absolutely should be an actress. Until that moment I had never thought about it, I loved singing and I was very good at designing, especially stage costumes, but I would never have seen myself on stage. But she managed to convince me and so I started taking lessons with her. In a short time I fell madly in love with this art. I understood that by being on stage my shyness vanished and I could live the lives of a thousand different characters. I felt protected and powerful.

For many it's hard to just find one creative outlet but this was one of many for you?

It's true, the first thing I ever knew how to do was sing. Singing has a lot to do with "getting naked" but I didn't know it at the time. I was quite alone, I had some family problems regarding my mother and I had found that way to find my inner peace. It was a huge outlet for me, but I did it on my own, at home, being very shy. Then I started drawing. I designed costumes imagining extraordinary women who could wear them. In short, in a certain sense I was already getting closer to what my life and my work would become and then it happened that for the first time someone noticed me and I started acting. This discovery was the most powerful of all, because for the first time I didn't have a means to express myself. I didn't have a sheet of music, I didn't have any pencils. I had myself, without any filter. It was scary and beautiful at the same time, and this magic continues and I believe will continue throughout my life.

Does it all ever intertwine?

When I start working on a character I first read the script many times. I begin to imagine the life of that character, even outside of what is written. Above all, I try to understand what her breaking point is and what mine is in that specific moment of life. Music comes into play during the study phase, because I create a playlist of that character in my opinion. Something that helps me put myself in her shoes and bring out her personality and her fragilities through me. A sort of “music flow”. And it's something that I carry with me even on set or in the theater. In short, the music is always there. Drawing comes into play more when I stage something of my own, and then not only the costumes but also the landscapes and the whole scene takes shape through sketches and sketches in my work notebook. For a few years now I have also been in charge of the artistic direction of the Ellington Club, a performance venue that I opened together with my partner and which was born precisely from the need to unite all the various art forms. There I create my shows in particular, with singing, dancing and acting performances, linked to the world of cabaret, burlesque-shows and retro-style variety shows. There the work is on all fronts, I think about every detail of the show, from the musical set list, to what I will have to say, to the costumes I will wear, and it is really stimulating on a creative level.

In this sequel to 'Book Club', the four best friends take their book club on the girls’ trip to Italy they’ve always dreamed of. With legends like Diane Keaton and Jane Fonda on set, what was it like being among them?

Jane Fonda and Diane Keaton represent the two reasons why I began to seriously think about being an actress. They are two extraordinary performers and having seen them in almost all of their films has been a huge inspiration to me. Jane in particular has always been an icon for me, a true guiding spirit. Just think, I've been training for years, even following her workouts, and my mother did it before me. I love her in every way. As an actress, as an activist, for the extraordinary life she had and also as a gym instructor. All my friends know well that I have a veneration for her and in fact when I found out I had to audition for the film I couldn't believe it! It was a magical experience on set. Of course I told Jane about my love for her and she hugged me, moved. And she, but also Diane, Candice and Mary continued to talk to me the whole time, putting me at ease and not acting like divas in the slightest. They are extraordinary women. I would obviously be immensely happy to find them all again. All four are actresses to learn a lot from.

How did you approach portraying Sofia?

I play a woman who is the manager of a luxury hotel and who knows Vivian, the character played by Jane Fonda in the film, well. Sofia is a cheerful, outgoing person who, despite the successful position she has achieved, manages to be friendly and welcoming with her clients. She loves her job deeply. I imagined that she was able to achieve important goals in her career thanks to her managerial skills and reliability. In short, a woman who has made it and who has no one to thank for this other than her extraordinary abilities. I see myself a lot in her. Mine is a job made up of a lot of "nos", and the nos far outweigh the yeses. This is why you need to appeal to all the inner strength you are capable of, to continue designing your dream. You have to have the courage to dream all the way.

This is a cast of iconic women in leading roles but, really, this is a kind of film that only exists because these great actresses have reached said iconic-status. Even when they were the so-called "it girls" of their generation, they were mostly playing roles next to leading men?

In my opinion, the way in which we write about women is slowly changing, an example above all is the recently released film 'Barbie', which has a woman as director, and I found it to be a truly brilliant film, a contemporary feminist manifesto. We have more and more directors, screenwriters and women working in the film industry, in Italy after Me Too we all started talking about what we had to suffer for decades and now it seems to me that a collective female conscience is awakening, albeit with difficulty, unfortunately still rarely supported by men. But that's not the point, or at least not only. To radically and fundamentally change the system there would need to be women in positions of power, in those who produce and manage the money for productions. At the moment they are all positions held by men, accustomed for centuries to having power and having decision-making power. In my opinion we need a radical reversal, after all, after centuries of male predominance it would be quite equal to do the opposite.

What would you like to do more of?

I love acting, my training is in theatre, I come from the Silvio D'amico Academy and in a rather anomalous way for Italy, where sectors are often divided, I have ventured into theatrical, television, cinematographic and musical experiences. I love each of these sectors, but perhaps having to choose, I believe that cinema has a language that is in tune with me and my expressive abilities. I love the truth and reality into which cinema catapults you, I love its language, I love reading the emotions in the actors' faces and I believe that this is where I express myself best. It's like magic. The silence of the set, the concentration, the sacredness of the moment that follows the word "action". The fact of showing one's emotions, one's pain, one's happiness without a filter. And the camera is there, attached to you, it becomes part of you, it just asks you to be sincere. And then I also love the familiarity, the moments of fun and the relationships that are created on set with each member of the crew. After a while it's like being in a big family.

Would you like to do more international roles like this?

I would very much like to act in other international productions and I sincerely hope that it can happen soon.