Vittoria Puccini: “Without fear”

This article is published in number 12 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until March 23, 2021

At an age in which she feels as close to her mother Laura as to her daughter Elena, Vittoria Puccini clearly recognizes the inner thread that she has inherited from the first and is passing on to the second. «The sensitivity, the sweetness. A delicate approach to life and to people. Which does not mean not knowing how to impose yourself. My mother was and we are women of character and action: determined, operative.

But my touching you is light, always respectful, never aggressive ».

Physically «the same long feet, size 40-41, a symbol of good stability on the ground. We keep the fantasy in our eyes, but we never get up in flight. This directs me, concentrates me ». To the point that during the initial lockdown, that of the most ferocious silence, he spent whole days on the phone together with the management to create Unita, the national union of theater and audiovisual interpreters, a trade association that brings together many Italian actors, and of which you are president in an all-female executive trident. Today the association is talking with the institutions to help a sector, that of the entertainment sector, not only strongly affected by the pandemic, but also lacking in a collective labor agreement for the audiovisual sector, and with very deep, unacceptable, discrimination within it. kind.

To create a network and break through the famous “crystal ceiling”.

“Always saving talent and merit, which should be the only guides to inspire us, the statistics show that males still almost double women, in compensation and parts taken, women who are still too much called to represent stereotypical roles, of mothers fulfilling the within the family, of sacrificial victims, in any case of marginal figures, linked to sex or substantially passive, or worse placed on a par with aesthetic-choreographic decorative elements. Because of this objective and visible disparity, inherited from the centuries, and of this prejudice that works in a conscious and unconscious way, it is still very difficult for them to reach important positions and positions in high-budget productions: in percentage, both in the artistic and technical sectors. “.

The risk is also “not arriving” as we really are, in the narrative.

«Yes, because the discrimination involves the entire production chain, and it happens both creatively and in front of the camera. Not to mention that there are still grammar books for children with the sentences: “Mum cooks, dad reads”; “Mum irones, dad works”. When we are now females engaged in every field, luckily we also sit on armchairs that in the past were the prerogative of men only. Men who, on the other hand, have recovered an emotional dimension at home. And it is a message that must be rewritten strongly because it is through everything that a certain thought or another is produced. The series, the films, the way things are told determines inclusion or its opposite. One day in the family there was talk of a class with a child of two dads. Mine, almost 14 years old: “Well, what’s the problem? It will be that I grew up with Modern Family”».

How important is “good example”?

“After seeing me dedicate night and day to Unita, to give us a voice and institutional weight, Elena must have had a desire for active participation and ran for class representative, she prepared an entire electoral speech intended for her comrades to vote for her, she drafted in a programmatic manifesto the objectives to be achieved, the points to be avoided ».

What virtue does he retain of the great women of the past to whom he lent the body, from Oriana Fallaci to Anna Karenina?

“They weren’t heroines, but all were endowed with dignity and courage, made up of strength, fragility, ruptures, wounds too. They preferred action and risk to inaction. They threw themselves, even in the dark, believing it was right, even daring a little. In May I will interpret Beatrice in a very modern reading: we give her an earthly air, and we take away the ethereal nuances, the idealization, because it is the immense love of Dante, but what passion is a never consumed passion? ».

What do we women care about?

“The fear of expectation, this inadequacy that still takes us too often, and we find ourselves having to shake off our jacket, never feeling enough, it still happens to me now. Elodie used the right words in the monologue at the Sanremo Festival. We spend our time thinking we are not up to it and we don’t understand that height is a point of view, if anything, and not a problem ».

Self-portrait of a woman.

“I am a woman at peace with myself and my conscience. An honest, transparent and lucky woman, who has and has had a lot in life but also who has conquered herself, earned everything by working hard. Since I was a nineteen year old with an obsession with economic independence: I did not like asking my parents for money, and then I was looking for jobs – babysitting, tutoring of Italian – I wanted to “arrive early”. At 22 with Elisa di Rivombrosa I was independent, I paid the rent myself. An achievement that made me enjoy the freedom of not having to answer to anyone. I have remained consistent, I have not betrayed myself. I had a wonderful, desired daughter who completed me. I strongly had everything I strongly wanted ».

His model?

«My mother, hers is this dignity that I respect and demand, hers is my always overcoming tiredness. I remember her in a faded black and white photo: she was 21 years old, I wasn’t there yet, with my father and a group of colleagues in front of the Poggio Imperiale college where she worked for a long time as a governess, a sign in her hand with the words in block letters and large letters “Sciopero”. Or my maternal grandmother, too, who had just given birth in the Second World War, and in the basement of Palazzo Pitti in Florence, where they took refuge during the bombings, since she had a lot of milk in her breast, she also nursed the baby of another mother who he didn’t have it. ‘

His daughter?

«I like to see her as a wonderful travel companion. Even if I spent the nights out on the set, I always tried to accompany her to kindergarten, and it never cost me trouble if she slept on me, for example. Now that in full adolescence he is rightly cutting the umbilical cord, I also feel that I am his point of reference. We grew up together, we helped each other, he taught me a lot ».

Who would you dedicate a street to?

«To the poet Alda Merini,“ in the intimacy of the mysteries of the world ”. To the American magistrate Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in the 90s asked her how many women were enough in the Supreme Court, she replied with the fairest of provocations, that we should never forget: “Nine, nine … there were nine men there. for a long, long time, right? So why not nine women? ”».

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