The actor and director: “My mother used to take me to the Foro Italico for the Internazionali tennis tournament, there were only a handful of us there. I didn’t like tennis, I loved wrestling and I was a midfielder. Now, however…”

You can’t change your allegiance. “Always Roma. My wife is Neapolitan and wanted to take our two daughters to the Scudetto party. We had fun, but when we got home I told the girls, ‘Now it’s back to the Giallorossi, otherwise I’ll make you sleep on the terrace.’” Luca Zingaretti, actor, director, producer, and great sportsman, is joking. “When I was young, I liked the mud, I was a pure midfielder, I wasn’t interested in scoring goals. With tennis, it’s different: I’m not very good, but I’m very passionate. I would describe myself as a baseliner who stays at the back of the court, but then I get bored and I know that to win I have to go to the net, or at least play an attacking game.”

So you must have loved Panatta…

“How could you not love him? He’s a nice, intelligent man, and he’s part of my youth. I like him and all the members of the team. I remember when my mother, who was a big tennis fan, used to take me to the Foro Italico: a sandwich for lunch, and off to the stands. It wasn’t like it is now; there were only a handful of us at the Internazionali. Anyway, my mom tried for a long time to convince me to play tennis, but I didn’t want to know about it back then: for me, tennis was for people dressed in white, for the world of elegant clubs. An aristocratic sport, which I found boring. I liked soccer, the contact, the fight.”

Then came the Academy of Dramatic Arts and my meeting with Andrea Camilleri. Would you say that yours was almost a symbolic coach-player relationship?

“I like that metaphor. After all, I was an instrument of his art, I took it around Italy and the world.”

The monologue “Autodifesa di Caino” (Cain’s Self-Defense) is a physically demanding text, as probably all monologues are. How does an actor prepare for a show of this kind?

“More than anything else, I approached it with a lot of doubts. Because this is a testament, Camilleri wrote it in a few months and it was his last work, which gave me an additional responsibility. It is unusual that Andrea chose the character of a loser to convey his last messages, but Camilleri said that history is not entirely true because only the winners write it. I liked the idea of giving voice to such a complex character, considered the source of all the evils in the world.”

Speaking of winners and losers, would you like to bring a sports story to the screen as a director?

“I’ve always been passionate about soccer, but soccer, with its long pauses and moments of stagnation, doesn’t lend itself well to being represented. In fact, if you think about it, there are very few films about soccer. Perhaps because I’m influenced by the many works I’ve seen, I think I would choose boxing. Boxing is all about hard work and sweat: it’s an extremely poetic sport.”

Is there a sports figure you would choose?

“The idea of a film about a sports figure doesn’t really appeal to me, but if I had to do it, I would go with Maradona. Even though many films have been made about him, I think there is still a lot to say. I like Maradona’s dark side. In a famous interview, he said, ‘Think about what we missed out on, what kind of player you would have seen if I hadn’t snorted cocaine.’ But that’s only one side of his personality. I’m interested in his guerrilla spirit, his fighting for the poor: an aspect that has yet to be explored artistically. And then I’d like to tell the story of Schwazer and another sport involving a lot of hard work and a lot of glory. I’ve seen documentaries on Netflix: Schwazer’s story is terrible, he was betrayed by those who should have supported him, and the second time he was sent to the gallows without any evidence.”

From sports stars to your character, Montalbano, from whom you wanted to distance yourself at a certain point…

“It was for strategic reasons: Camilleri always said, even at the academy, that you have to leave to applause. But then I thought, if I like it and enjoy it, why not continue? And when we finished the last series, we left not to applause, but to a standing ovation, with record ratings even for the reruns. So I think I won the bet.”

What do you miss about Camilleri?

“His friendship, his novels, but also his civic voice. He rarely spoke out, but when he did, he set things straight. Unfortunately, there aren’t many charismatic figures like him in our current cultural landscape.”

Let’s go back to your passion for tennis: you now also have a position on the FITP Committee of Lazio.

“Yes, President Emilio Sodano involved me: he thinks that as an outsider, I can have a different perspective and find some ideas to improve things even further. I find that difficult, given how the tennis movement is going in Italy and the extraordinary talents it produces. Let’s say I take it as a new challenge.”