On the set of “Il Re” with Zingaretti: the Sardinian actor Alessandro Gazale in the role of agent Piras

The most attentive have certainly noticed that that Sardinian accent, in the TV series of the moment, "The King" (on Sky), is not a script but absolutely natural. And this is because the actor who plays Davide Piras, the custodian who is the right arm of the protagonist, Luca Zingaretti, is a genuine Sassari. Alessandro Gazale, born in 1961, is one of the most impactful characters, the one with a clear personality from the first episode (eight in all), present in the most significant scenes of the first Italian prison-drama, set in a real prison now in disuse (the sets were set up in Civitavecchia and Turin). The story unfolds inside there, in the structure that recalls the panopticon, the one designed in the late 1700s by Jeremy Bentham. A sort of central tower from which the various sections branch off, a bit of a metaphor that suggests how everything in life can be controlled.

Zingaretti is Bruno Testori, the director, the one who decides everything for everyone and with more than questionable methods. There is no shortage of violence, drug rounds, and deaths. The story unfolds in a parallel way between the investigations into these crimes and the internal one between the various inmates and policemen. With the inevitable interference of the judiciary who wants to see clearly.

Testori can count on a circle of very loyal agents, his “ praetorians ”, and among these there is Piras: “One who speaks little - Alessandro Gazale explains to L'Unione Sarda -, more than anything else acts. While the director is the mind, Piras is the arm. When the 'dirty work' has to be done, he often gets him to intervene ”.

Gazale started as a kid, he liked to make his mates laugh, “then there was the desire to do something more structured, the cabarets on the radio started almost by chance, and finally the stage. In thirty years I have interpreted something more comic but also dramatic, from Eduardo to Pirandello ”. And cinema, which brought him more than one recognition such as the Gassmann award for best actor at the Bari international film festival in 2019 for his interpretation in Bonifacio Angius' Everywhere protect me.

In Angius's film as in “The King” hard and important issues are faced, can cinema help to draw attention to social problems?

“It is the cinema that tells and provides the photograph of society and of the historical moment we are experiencing, it always communicates to enter the consciences of the beholder and also to raise a theme. In the Sky series there is a whole discourse related to the management of prisons, with the expedients of the narration to season the story and make it interesting, but the theme is there, it is concrete. 'Everywhere protect me' wanted to draw attention to the forgotten, to the people you meet on the street and who have their conflicts. In short, you don't have to tell a hero ".

Is acting with one's accent, one's cadence, a richness?

“Yes, so much so that once they called me for a role in a series in which I had to act in Calabrese, I tried to study but then I went back, a true Calabrian was in my opinion the right choice. There are musicalities in dialects and languages that cannot be improvised, you can prepare a lot but people will still notice that something is out of place. I'm not that trained to speak other dialects or play characters from other regions. Piras is Sardinian in the script, it was fine for me ”.

Was it you who identified with him or did you give a little bit of yourself to him?

“Personality comes into play, this character came out quite naturally, I immediately felt very comfortable on the set, with the director, with Luca Zingaretti, all this helps to find concentration. Piras works because there is nothing 'loaded', without stereotypes. His life is all inside the prison, he would have liked to become commander but the director prefers his colleague Sonia (Isabella Ragonese, ed ). He pretends to understand the reason for that choice, but in my opinion it is not like that ".

A joke that also represents you as a person?

“What I say to Testori while in the courtyard he kicks the ball and the human side comes out a little: 'Go home with your daughter, you see a movie, the children then grow up…'. This was the substance, which suggests or suggests that something in Piras' life has remained behind. I also tried to reconstruct what hypothetically his past may have been, with his years in Sardinia, how he got to that job, there is none in the script but I needed it to understand the character and give him a soul ".

He also said something in Sassari.

“Several jokes. For example, when I lower the door of a cell and wish good night with "cabi di ca ..." (head of ..., ed ), which initially had to be in Cagliari but then they made me say it in my dialect, or the interlayer ajò. And then other phrases, some swear words in short ".

The hardest scene to shoot?

“In reality, the wait is harder than the moment when the take takes place: you ask yourself a thousand questions, I always question myself emotionally and until that part is over, the tension is there. In addition to the dialogues I often go to the hands, already in the first moments of episode 1 we put a prisoner upside down in the void ".

He is not only an actor, he is also a teacher.

“Yes, of physical education in a middle school in Sassari”.

Are you bringing art to class?

“Five years ago we started the permanent laboratory of the show, something that could remain in the future, and I involved a series of colleagues who, even without specific artistic skills, are bearers of many experiences, are very good and available. There is the theater part but also the scenography part, we are recovering an old auditorium, embellishing the outdoor spaces of the school and trying to create a small museum by restoring equipment. Projects that every institute would be nice to have, in Italy we have not yet taken the opportunity to take care of the sense of art already on the benches ".

The scene that you think is the most beautiful?

“For me, who lived the whole experience in an almost magical way, every time I was on the set I watched others work, to learn and understand how the various sectors work. Certainly all the moments in which the human side of people emerges are the most exciting ".

There is always a bit of the idea that actors are actors even off the set, is that a mistake?

“As far as I'm concerned, yes. Everyone has roles in life, when I teach I put on the 'mask' of responsibility, but you have to know how to behave in the right way in every place. For the rest I am always the same, no ambitions, just a lot of passion for what I do ".

We have seen it in the past in two video clips of Salmo.

“Yoko Hono and 1984. I had a lot of fun. It makes me happy to be able to express myself in the artistic field, but I can also say 'no' to a project if I don't like it ”.

Were there other Sardinians in the Sky TV series?

“The boy who is put upside down in the first scenes, Malavida, is of Sardinian origin, as well as a set designer, and another of photography. In short, Sardinians are everywhere ".

In the last scene, however, Piras is not among those who - without spoiling - have an ungrateful task towards the director, this already suggests a second season.

"Who knows, I hope a second season will be confirmed soon."

After your various professional successes, didn't you feel like leaving Sardinia?

“Absolutely no, categorical, I feel great in Sassari, I have the school, my environment, and there isn't all this noise around me that now pushes me to make choices. I am serene, I obviously have the desire to work with other directors as well, in addition to those I already know and with whom I have always found myself well, to have experiences, but I look at what life gives me every day. For now, something great and beautiful has arrived, but without expecting anything ".