“An emblem that allows you to go to the heart of masculinity”: how the new Netflix series was written, without glorification of the X star

Everything contrasts Rocco Siffredi and Francesca Manieri. The first is a world-renowned porn actor for forty years, the second, a feminist and committed screenwriter. Until now, the Italian author had written on subjects that are close to her heart.

She explores the tribulations of adolescence in the series We Are Who We Are by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name) and the question of transidentity in an Italian family in the seventies in L’Immensita with Penélope Cruz.

Seeing his name associated with Supersex, a series which retraces the life and journey of the “bad guy of the century”, inevitably arouses surprise. For AlloCiné, the screenwriter and creator explains how and why she agreed to take on this risky challenge.

AlloCiné: When Netflix came to you to write a series on Rocco Siffredi, you, I quote, “burst out laughing”. Your lives and your beliefs have nothing in common. Is it more difficult for an author to write about a subject opposed to himself or, on the contrary, is it liberating?

Francesca Manieri, screenwriter and creator of the series: It’s much more liberating! When I started working on this project, I said the opposite, but now I am sure that it allows you to free yourself and open borders. So I am very grateful to have taken part in this project.

What element of Rocco Siffredi’s life caught your attention or inspired you to start writing?

There are two answers. The first is much more conceptual. The second, I know, is very much anchored in reality. Perhaps the first is that, as I always say, Rocco represents the excess and not the exception of masculinity. It represents an emblem that allows me to go to the heart of masculinity.

If you have seen other works that I have written before, I have always worked on the question of gender. I told myself that this time I didn’t want to talk about femininity but about masculinity. So it was a challenge, and I took it on, and it was interesting for me.

Second, when you’re writing, you need something that can, like you said, hook you. I am used to constructing images in my mind and I knew from the start that three or four scenes would be my light during the entire writing period.

The first was the death of Claudio, his brother, and the connection he made between the rise of his sexual drive and the death of this young boy. The second was when his mother finally gives him that precious look he desires so much. And the third is, without spoiling, the cemetery scene.

These scenes were, for me, my eyewitnesses. As I worked on these images, I began to realize all the layers beneath them, namely the connection between the power of sexuality and pain, the influence of one’s mother and the impossible relationship between the gaze of the ‘other and his own.

I wanted to know everything about him, but not meet him because it would have been difficult to keep all my freedom.

How did your research go?

I watched all his films! And I read everything I could. And there were a lot of interviews. I studied a lot of material and came up with the main idea of ​​the series. When I had this idea, I decided to meet him and talk a lot with him but only when I was sure of the path I was going to take. I didn’t want to meet him before. I wanted to know everything about him, but not meet him because it would have been difficult to keep all my freedom.

What memory do you keep of your meeting with him? Have there been any disagreements between you?

It was difficult at first. Difficult but strong. We are similar because we are both very honest people. So we were naked with our differences. And if you agree to face the other’s difference and enter into conflict with them, not to run away from this conflict, something will happen. And that’s what happened. So we agreed to enter into conflict to begin to enter into his story.

I share with him the conviction that sexuality is something indomitable.

Did you have any preconceived ideas? And have any of these ideas changed following your discussions?

Strangely, I didn’t have one. Maybe because I’m an author and I try not to have any preconceptions about a person. I had an idea of ​​this icon, perhaps, but I didn’t really have an opinion on Rocco.

But when I met him, I realized the power of social construct over us, all of us, and also the indomitable power of sexuality. I share with him the conviction that sexuality is something indomitable. Of course, I realized when I met him that he is much freer in his vision of sexuality than we are supposed to think.

In the first episode, as a child, he is the victim of sexual assault by several boys in his neighborhood. The series shows that before participating in a system of sexual domination, he was its first victim.

Exactly. And the scene after this is, I think, for me, as a writer, one of the most important, because his brother will say to him: “Now you have the biggest cock in the world.” This is a mythopoetic act. The question is not whether what his brother says is true or not. This cock story is a construction and this construction is based on a difficult context in which it was constructed.

Netflix

In France, Rocco Siffredi is very famous but he is also criticized for some of his behavior towards women. What would you say to those who believe that Netflix glorifies the figure of Rocco through this series?

If you have seen the series, you will see that there is no glorification. There is a problematization of an emblem. I hear the point of view of these women who speak out and denounce because my point of view is similar. But it is not by avoiding a subject that we can take a step forward. The reason why I decided to tell the story of Rocco Siffredi is exactly this.

Let’s get into the thick of it. Let’s enter into masculinity. We need this series to understand, perhaps to speak, to ask questions about masculinity and femininity. This is why this series, here and now, is important to me. Talk about things, don’t avoid the subject, don’t be ideological. Get to the bottom of things. Because the paradigm is changing.

It can only change if we have the ability to enter into the mechanism that allowed Rocco Tano to become Rocco Siffredi. Only by showing the construction of masculinity can we deconstruct it. So we need to look into the matter.

Comments collected by Thomas Desroches, in Paris, March 4, 2024.

Supersex is available on Netflix.