Meeting Daniele Favilli at the Hub 7 Torchwood convention

After doing the Q&A with Daniele Favilli (who played Jack's lover Angelo in Torchwood Miracle Day) in August, I stayed in touch with him and told him about the upcoming Hub 7 Torchwood convention in Heathrow this November. He was very curious about the convention and eager to come over to the UK and be a guest there. We fans started a campaign and it all worked out very well when Daniele was announced as a guest in October. I was really looking forward to meeting him in person and that finally happened last weekend. 

Daniele was so gracious to grant us another interview, this time in person during a free moment at the convention, and my friend Cathy filmed it all, so that we have now about 25 minutes of video clips of an amazingly interesting talk with Daniele.

But before doing the interview on Sunday, I went to an "Intimate Encounter" with Daniele, an occasion for 12 con-attending fans to get to know a bit more about him. Here's my compte rendu from this encounter, followed by the video interview.

INTIMATE ENCOUNTER WITH DANIELE FAVILLI

At Hub 7 I was lucky enough to be part of an "Intimate Encounter" with Daniele Favilli. I was very interested in hearing what Daniele had to say, as he isn't so well known yet. And after the Q&A I had done with him as few months ago for Torchwood 4 Fans, I was really looking forward to meeting him personally.

Daniele told us that right now he is involved in two projects, one is a movie and the other a TV show. The movie is a modern western, co-producted by Daniele and they are in talks with Alfred Molina for one of the roles. It is an independant project, but with a budget of several million dollars and Daniele has meetings in London after the convention to see if they could win some well-known British actors for the film. His second project is a US/Italian co-produced TV show called "Magnificent", a Renaissance period piece that tells stories about the famous Italians from this time but in a kind of modern rock-star-like way.

Daniele explained that he wanted to act since he was 5, but was too shy as a teenager and young man to make a profession of it. He studied instead (as advised by his family who weren't happy with the acting ideas anyway), has a Psychology degree (he studied i.a. at the University of Kent) and became a member of a Rock Band. At a certain point in his life he realised that acting is his real passion and he just couldn't live any longer without making a serious go at it. He was dedicated to make a break-through and didn't take any other job, ready to "starve to death" to make his dreams come true. He said it was really hard but after a while his career took slowly off. One of his first jobs was a BBC documentary about the Italian Renaissance which was shot in Italy. His characters were often killed off and he "became very good at dying." He also played in a very unconventional Italian version of Macbeth (which is his favourite Shakespeare character), where the story had been set between Maori Warriors in New Zealand, and in a powerful scene at the end he is ripped apart.

Asked which was his favourite Torchwood episode, he said without any hesitation: Children of Earth. The whole 5-parter as it is just one very powerful and emotional story. He would love to know what happened to Jack between Children of Earth and Miracle Day, when he had left Earth (wouldn't we all? lol). He also loves episode 1 of Miracle Day a lot. He generally is a huge sci-fi fan and also loves movies where the characters are pushed, like "The Prestige", "Requiem for a Dream" and "Black Swan". But his all time favourite movie is "Back to the Future". Sci-fi fascinates him because it shows that to understand ordinary life you have to see the extraordinary, ordinary people pushed in extraordinary situations. Well written stories are about something that happens for the first or for the last time and how people cope. He likes the philosophy of Ancient Greece where the theatre was always halfway between the town and the temple on the hill, and was a kind of place where ordinary people met the Gods, so the actors are the messengers of the Gods.

He had known Torchwood before auditioning for the role of Angelo, mainly Series 1, and first thought that it was a kind of British version of The X-Files. But he was intrigued how openly the show treated sexuality and was impressed with it. He had some kind of intuition that he could one day be in this show. But when he was cast as Angelo he deliberately didn't go back to watch more of Torchwood because he wanted to play Angelo, who knows nothing about Jack, as authentic as possible. Once he had finished his shoot he watched all of Torchwood and thought it was brilliant.

Asked about the difference between the Jack/Angelo and Jack/Ianto relationship, he thought they were very different but that Ianto was definitely the better match for Jack. They worked both for Torchwood and Ianto could cope with Jack's uniqueness. Angelo and Jack wouldn't have worked because Angelo was too obsessed with Jack once he found out everything about him. For future Torchwood episodes he would love to see more flashbacks about Jack being involved in historical events.

We had a funny moment when Daniele said he was usually straight (he talked about an ex-girlfriend in one of his bands) and people wanted to dig deeper why he was a bit hesitating. ;-) He said that he had his most emotional moments in gay roles which made him cry. The first was when he played on stage in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" in the church scene during the funeral. The second one was the Angelo/Jack rooftop scene. That made him question himself a bit, why especially the gay scenes had this effect on him. And then he had to admit that John Barrowman is a very handsome man. lol We reassured him that John has this effect on a lot of straight men. ;-)

Daniele plays guitar and writes his own songs. He hasn't been part of a band since he lives in Los Angeles but he plays in little events there (as you can see on YouTube). But he is an actor and music is only his hobby now. He is not as driven as for acting. He could live without music if necessary but never without acting.

 

INTERVIEW WITH DANIELE FAVILLI

Part 1: About the convention

Part 2: His next projet

Part 3: On playing bad guys

Part 4: On fans and friends reacting to his Torchwood role




Part 5: About the sex scenes controversy and the cuts on Italian TV




Part 6: Surprised by the positive fan reaction




Part 7: About time travel and meeting people from the past




Part 8: The place of music in his life




Part 9 : Would he sing with John Barrowman





A big THANK YOU goes to Daniele for doing this interview with us and to my friends Cathy and Claudine for filming and taking all the pictures.