Taming The Leopard
It’s based on one of Italy’s greatest ever novels – so how did British creatives Richard Warlow and Tom Shankland team up to deliver lavish Italian-language drama Il Gattopardo (The Leopard)? They tell DQ about reuniting for this Netflix series set against the backdrop of revolution in 1860s Sicily.
Working together across time and space, writer Richard Warlow and director Tom Shankland are well versed in the challenges of making period drama. They previously toured 1970s Asia together for true crime drama The Serpent and visited 1880s London for mystery series Ripper Street.
Shankland has also spent time in 19th century Paris for Les Misérables and Second World War Africa for SAS Rogue Heroes, and is already in the editing room for House of Guinness, a Netflix series that explores the family behind the iconic brewing company in 19th century Ireland and New York.
But it was while they were collaborating on The Serpent, the true story of murderer Charles Sobhraj, that Warlow first revealed to Shankland that he was working on an adaptation of revered Italian novel Il Gattopardo (The Leopard).
“Richard was under the cosh trying to deliver scripts with The Serpent and there was a conversation where he was like, ‘I’m really sorry, I’ve got to go away for a couple of weeks to write this pilot,’” Shankland tells DQ. “I’m like, ‘What the fuck? We’re flying to Thailand and we’ve only got four scripts,’ so I said, ‘What is it?’ He said, ‘Well I’m not supposed to talk about it, but it’s this thing called The Leopard.’ I was like, ‘What the fuck!’ So then I had to play it super cool because I love the book, love Italy and love Sicily.”
Set against the backdrop of revolution in 1860s Sicily, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel centres on Don Fabrizio Corbera (Kim Rossi Stuart), the Prince of Salina, who leads a life surrounded by beauty and privilege. But as Italy moves towards unification and the old aristocratic order is threatened, he realises his family’s future is in jeopardy.
Eventually Don Fabrizio is faced with an impossible choice. He has the power to engineer a marriage – between the rich and beautiful Angelica (Deva Cassel) and his nephew Tancredi (Saul Nanni) – that could secure his family’s legacy, but doing so would break the heart of his favourite daughter, Concetta (Benedetta Porcaroli).
Shankland describes making the six-part series as “nothing but a very joyous adventure” that started when Warlow was first approached by Moonage Pictures executive producer Will Gould with the opportunity to adapt The Leopard for the small screen.
Gould had earlier met with Indiana Production, the Milanese company that held the rights to di Lampedusa’s work (one of Gould’s favourite books), with a view to developing it as an English-language adaptation in the same vein as War & Peace or Chernobyl. Former Ripper Street exec Gould then called up Warlow to discuss a reunion.
“It was a bucket-list project,” Gould says. “As we developed it, the novel’s narrative of Italian unification felt particularly relevant amid Brexit and discussions surrounding national identity. The exploration of how we define ourselves as individuals in relation to our nation is deeply relevant. The struggle for a sense of self and belonging — especially in turbulent times — remains just as significant as it has ever been and all fed into Richard’s scripts.”
“Indiana had been trying to get it away in Italy but not with much luck. The timing was fortuitous, and [Indiana co-founder] Fabrizio Donvito was a massive fan of Ripper Street,” Warlow says. “It basically came about because Will was determined to make it happen, and here we all are.”
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Shankland and Warlow both identified a “fear” at the thought of adapting the novel for television in Italy, where Luchino Visconti’s 1963 feature film adaptation is still held in enormously high regard. The idea that it would be filmed in English then provided a way to “unlock” the project and distance it from the film, which starred Burt Lancaster as Don Fabrizio.
“The ghosts of Visconti and the huge cultural weight that any Italian involved in drama feels, we didn’t experience that,” Warlow says. “They also don’t have an enormously long history of adapting their works of literature, whereas obviously every week there’s a new Jane Austen or a new production of Shakespeare. That gave us the boldness to take it on.”
Shankland, who has an Italian wife and speaks the language, admits he was “always uncomfortable” about the idea of making the series in English and could imagine “this huge tiramisu ‘Europudding’ appearing on the horizon,” with the project crudely assembled from numerous international parts.
“Knowing the Italian landscape and having now a wife and relatives in Sicily, one huge thing you lose [in English] is the sense that here is this island very much with its own traditions and way of doing things and its own language, to a point,” the director says.
That vision never came to pass, however. When The Leopard was picked up and later passed over by a British broadcaster, the project landed at Netflix, where recently appointed VP of Italian originals Eleonora Andreatta saw the perfect opportunity to bring a classic novel home.
“Me, Richard and Will all had slightly different reactions at that moment, because it all had a happy ending,” Shankland continues. “I had a lot of relief because I just thought, ‘Fantastic. Now we can absolutely lean into authenticity.’
“There was a little conundrum of what happens to all that wonderfully worked dialogue and all the nuances in that script. How are we going to protect the integrity of all the decisions there? But I feel like it all ended up in the right place.”
Warlow says: “Once I’d got my head around the idea that the scripts were going to be translated, moving it into Italian was clearly the right thing to do, and I’m so relieved now.”
While Shankland has a good command of Italian, Warlow jokes that he has “no Italian beyond a pizza menu and a wine list.” So once the scripts were written in English – co-writer Benji Walters penned episodes four and five – he went on a “very strange and interesting journey” watching them being translated. Ultimately, that meant handing over his work and trusting his colleagues to honour his creative choices in the series.
“At that point, that’s all you can do, really,” Warlow says. “It really does mean that, as a writer, you actually do have to let the bloody thing go. You can’t even understand what they’re saying. There’s no fun in watching the rushes and calling up the director and going, ‘Could you make sure they say the bloody lines?’ Anyway, it’s a gorgeous thing. I’m very proud.”
During the writing process, Warlow paid little attention to Visconti’s film, instead focusing on the source material and making what Shankland describes as “bold decisions” when it came to bringing the “interior” novel to the screen and dramatising some of the events that take place off the page. One example is a revelation about Conchetta that rises up at the end of the novel, but on screen is weaved into the story much earlier. The series also continues beyond the climax of the film.
“[Someone] said it’s the longest short book ever written, because it has such space between the lines and the chapters that time passes off screen, almost,” the writer explains. “So there are all these opportunities to move into that space.
“Part of the reason I love writing period is the research aspect of it, so it was really just engaging with historians, finding out more and more about the details of time and place and what they were doing. Then the key thing was finding a way to bring out the other characters from the margins of the book,” including Concetta, who is given as much perspective through the story as other central characters. “That was really the thing that unlocked it and gave it six hours rather than a movie.”
Neither was the previous adaptation a “burden” on Shankland, who reveals that leading actor Stuart had never seen it. Filming the series, Shankland eschewed handheld shots in favour of wides intended to capture the epic as well as the intimate.
But coming off SAS Rogue Heroes, a series that uses an AC/DC-flavoured soundtrack and other contemporary elements to bring a riotous edge to period storytelling, here he wanted to lean into the show’s classical stylings and instil a sense of nostalgia among viewers.
“It was very much about having an imagery that is sumptuous, that is lavish,” he says. “Importantly, it didn’t become this tacky, kitsch, shiny beauty. It had to always feel like it had a more dusty poeticism about it as a way of giving it a certain realism. When you go to Sicily, it’s about the heat of the sun and gardens and fruit. So I felt it invited me to paint a world that just feels beautiful.”
Together with Danish DOP Nicolaj Bruel, Shankland tried to push the boundaries of the production on location in Palermo, Syracuse and Catania, not least when attempting to capture a really important two-page romantic scene at sunset, which only gave them about 15 minutes to capture the moment. “By hook or by crook, we managed to capture loads of the magic of the Sicilian light,” he says. “That whole image of a sun setting, which is how it begins, was always there in Richard’s script from the get-go, but it became a bit of a key thing because it’s a sun setting on a family, a sun setting on a society, and that journey of light and sun was always a big thing for us.”
Gould says: “We envisioned the tone and style of the project to be cinematic, authentic, ‘classic’ – but not old fashioned. Tom assembled an amazing Italian crew, the best of the best. Nicolaj was the only other non-Italian in the key creative line-up, but his objectivity and sense of wonder lenses the world in such a unique way. The collective effort involved was colossal, and this dedication came from a love of the book, of the scripts, of Tom and Richard’s vision.”
Being on set with the largely Italian cast and crew also represented the first time Shankland had directed in another language, but he championed the values of visual storytelling to ensure he got his instructions across. He was also supported by Giuseppe Capotondi and Laura Luchetti, who directed episodes four and five, respectively.
“When you’re looking at performances, you’re looking for what feels true. You’ve thought about a scene a lot. You’ve thought about these people and the world a lot,” he says. “Even had I not been able to speak Italian, I still would have been able to get in there and judge the rhythm, the musicality and the authenticity of what I was looking at and what it should sound like.”
But being able to speak the language “was always going to be important,” he adds. “I wanted them to feel it was an Italian set. I could have had translators, they all spoke different levels of English, but I just thought it’s a massively important Sicilian story with an Italian cast and it’s got to feel like an Italian set. So that was the rule.”
The Leopard, which is now available around the world on Netflix following its launch on Wednesday, stands out as an exploration of timeless themes – power, love and the cost of progress – wrapped up in “the beauty and pain of 19th century Sicily,” Warlow says.
Shankland promises the series will take viewers on a “great ride.” He adds: “It’s going to be about tradition, power and family, all in the most amazing and beautiful landscapes in a world that you are going to massively want to be in and be incredibly sad to leave when it fades out at the end.”
tagged in: Indiana Production, Moonage Pictures, Netflix, Richard Warlow, The Leopard, Tom Shankland, Will Gould