The third key member of the revamped cast is Fabrizio Gifuni as Nino Sarratore, Lila and Elena’s schoolmate turned roguish intellectual. Nino has had intimate relationships with both friends; at the end of the third season, he lured Elena away from her husband and children. “Fabrizio is really courageous, because to be Nino Sarratore in the fourth season after we know how much he’s hated by everyone, this is a real challenge!” Costanzo says with a grin. “You see, through Fabrizio, what it means for a man not to be able to be what anyone expected him to be. I know how much effort he put into loving this character, which is not easy—to make him human, to make it real.”
Costanzo began developing the series in 2016. Almost nine years later, he still hasn’t met the mysterious Ferrante. “In the first season she wrote the scripts with us,” he says. “I asked her opinions about some actors, and that wasn’t the right choice. She’s not a director and she has her own image [of characters], so it’s hard for a writer to be involved. Also, she’s kind of a ghost, so you cannot really have a discussion with her.”
Ferrante continued to collaborate on scripts, but this season she was a bit less involved. Costanzo speculates that it’s because Bispuri, a woman director, was at the helm of the series. “I remember when Maggie Gyllenhaal made The Lost Daughter, Maggie told me Ferrante sent her an email saying, ‘Whatever you do, it’s okay because you are a woman, and I respect what you have to say.’” This attitude encouraged Bispuri to make her own creative mark on the season. “Laura was free to experiment with the show’s grammar, and I really liked the way she did it. She doesn’t want it to look like anybody else, she wants to be herself,” Costanzo says, comparing it to the way Elena’s character forges her own literary style. “This is exactly the story of My Brilliant Friend.”