rewrite this title ‘My Brilliant Friend’ Filmmaker ​​Saverio Costanzo On Collaborating With The “Very Tough” Elena Ferrante & Why He Believes It Would Be Impossible To Make The HBO Series In 2025 — Thessaloniki

“She’s very strong, but she’s never conservative,” Italian filmmaker ​​Saverio Costanzo concluded this morning during a Q&A at Thessaloniki when asked about his enigmatic countrywoman Elena Ferrante, whose acclaimed Neopolitan novels he adapted to create the popular series My Brilliant Friend.   

Costanzo co-wrote all 34 episodes of the HBO series. He directed the entire first season, with Alice Rohrwacher subbing in for two episodes in season two, and Daniele Luchetti and Laura Bispuri taking the reins for seasons three and four. Costanzo is also known for the feature films Private (2004), which won the Golden Leopard at the 2004 Locarno Film Festival, and the Venice competition title Hungry Hearts (2014). 

Costanzo told the audience in Thessaloniki that he first made contact with Ferrante through her publisher with the intention of adapting her other novel, The Lost Daughter. Costanzo said Ferrante was generous and gave him a favorable rights deal to attempt an adaptation. 

“She wrote me an email and said I could have the rights for six months for free to work on the script, and then if I make something good out of it, we can talk about money,” Costanzo said. 

Costanzo, however, said he was unable to create a successful adaptation of the book, which is shaped around complex flashbacks and ambiguous narrative changes. Costanzo said he wrote back to Ferrante, telling her he was unable to adapt the novel, and he didn’t hear back until the novelist’s publisher contacted him and asked if he would try his hand at adapting the Neopolitan novels. (The Lost Daughter was later adapted for the screen by Maggie Gyllenhaal). 

Costanzo said he quickly found a way into the Neopolitan novels, and thus began a collaboration with Ferrante, with whom he co-wrote every episode alongside Francesco Piccolo and Laura Paolucci. Although Costanzo has never met Ferrante and doesn’t actually know who she is. The name Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym, and the novelist’s true identity is unknown. Costanzo said all communication was done through email.

“Writing to Elena Ferrante wasn’t easy at the beginning, of course, but once you start, you see that it is part of the creation because she already did 90% of the work writing the books. After four seasons, I have probably one cubic meter of emails between us,” he said, adding that the novelist was consistently open to her work being changed.

“She was very open to any changes because once you translate a book into a film, you have to change everything, in order not to change anything,” he said. “I don’t know who she is, but whoever or wherever she is, she is very tough.” 

On the topic of Ferrante’s real identity, Costanzo has, over the years, strongly dismissed suggestions that the novelist is a man writing a woman’s name. During the Q&A, Costanzo expanded on why he believes the rumor has no basis in reality, citing conversations he had with Ferrante while writing My Brilliant Friend season three. 

“I remember the third season, I wasn’t up for it. I wasn’t ready to direct again after four years,” Costanzo said. “I couldn’t live with the same shooting schedule for four or five years. So I said, I will not do it. And I told her, let’s hire a woman to direct. And she said no.”

Costanzo said Ferrante’s reasoning for declining his resignation and suggestion of hiring a woman director was because of her desire to preserve what she saw as the inherent conflict that is created when a man collaborates with a woman. 

“She said to me that what we did, what we created, is the tension between a man and a woman,” Costanzo said. “And what comes out of that tension is an equal relationship. And this is what feminism is looking for.”

Costanzo illustrated how some of that tension between him and Ferrante manifested, with an anecdote about the show’s casting. 

“When I shared the cast with her, she had some very bad notes, and they were wrong,” Costanzo said. “That’s when I had to say to her, ‘Okay, this is my job. You do yours.’ And I was right. Most of the time, she was right. But in that case, I was right, and she told me as much.”

Elsewhere, Costanzo curiously said that he couldn’t see a world in which My Brilliant Friend could be made today because of the time and money the production spent to make sure the show’s cast could accurately communicate in the now mostly defunct Neapolitan dialect, which is used by characters in Ferrante’s story.

“We worked in a very serious way because we had the money to do it. Thank God we had the money. Nowadays, it would be kind of impossible to make My Brilliant Friend,” he said. “We basically created a kind of laboratory where all the crew, the main actors, and the secondary characters came together and worked on the language. For six months, we just did that.”

My Brilliant Friend ran for four seasons on HBO and RAI in Italy. The series follows Elena Greco (Alba Rohrwacher) and the most important friend in her life, Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo (Irene Maiorino). After meeting as children in 1950s Naples, their story goes on to cover over 60 years, exploring the mystery of Lila – Elena’s brilliant best friend and, in a way, her worst enemy.