ROME — The Netflix series “Supersex,” a fictionalized biography of Rocco Siffredi, started streaming worldwide on Wednesday.
The series had its official unveiling last month at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, also known as the Berlinale. Netflix also screened it on Tuesday for a select audience, including Siffredi and the actors in the show, at the opulent Salone delle Fontane in Rome.
“Both screenings were tremendously encouraging with people giving standing ovations,” Siffredi told XBIZ in an exclusive interview after the Rome screening. “In Berlin they applauded for over 10 minutes! At the Salone delle Fontane, Netflix hosted an incredible party for all of us.”
“I brought 20 people from my life as special guests to the party, very close friends who’ve known me for a long time, some for over 30 years,” he added, visibly moved. “Many of them were very surprised by ‘SuperSex.’ The way the story was told was unexpected for them. They thought they would see Rocco talking about sex and only showing sex. They actually see a different part of my life, which is all true. Sometimes, if you reveal true things about you to people, they may not even understand what you mean. But here they could see it dramatized, and tomorrow the whole world — 190 countries, they told me! — will be able to as well.”
Siffredi said the showrunners decided to foreground what he told them about his tough upbringing, and “show everything.”
“How I was born, the things I went through when I was a baby and a child — everything,” he said. “The only thing I had to ask them to change were some names and some of the precise family ties, to protect some people in my actual family.”
At the Rome screening, Siffredi said, the international Netflix execs made a point of telling him, “Thank you Rocco for this wonderful story.”
The Eye of the Beholder
Siffredi said that while most people have been very supportive, some of his staunchest admirers may feel concerned about certain dramatic choices the Netflix team made in bringing his story to life. He cited a review by Davide Turrini in the progressive Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.
“David is a huge fan of mine,” Siffredi explained. “He told me, ‘Your documentary, which you made with the French people, was much more honest than this series because I know you.’ Davide has interviewed me so many times over the years, and he said, ‘Rocco, this is not who you are. Those actors are fantastic, but this is not who you are. And I told him, ‘I believe you don’t want to see me that way.’ He said, ‘No, no — they made you look like you are always suffering inside.’”
Siffredi realized that the critic and longtime fan was tapping onto something that had been nagging at him as well.
“That’s the only problem I have with ‘Supersex,’ actually,” he elaborated. “When I saw it in Berlin, I was sitting there watching it with my family, so I could look carefully at everything than the first time they showed it to me. And afterwards, I asked one of the showrunners, ‘Why did you show me with this rage on my face since the first sex scene.’ And then I wanted to know if it was the screenwriters or the director, but it was apparently the choice of one of the actors.”
Siffradi thinks that Saul Nanni, who plays a young adult Rocco at the beginning of his career, really nailed the insatiable hunger and lust of his young self, but that Alessandro Borghi, as the adult Rocco in his prime, always appeared troubled by having to perform sex scenes.
“So I asked Alessandro, ‘Who told you to make those faces?’” Siffredi said. “‘Was it the directors? Was it the screenwriters?’ And he told me, ‘Sincerely, Rocco: I did.’ So I told him that when I started I was the happiest guy in the world! Sure, I had pain about what my mother went through, but porn was helping me get everyone to a better place. So, porn saved my life! I wasn’t angry.’
“‘This is the only thing which you guys don't understand about my life,’” he told Borghi.
“And then he said to me, ‘Yeah, but that's exactly what I did!’ So it's funny: the critic saw the same thing I saw, that there is this kind of pain and the rage in the face. But the actor saw it different. Alessandro told me, ‘Watch it a second time and you will see different things.’ I don’t know. Maybe he’s right. Because I'm too much in this, it's too personal for me. That’s also what the showrunners said. They all told me, it’s normal. How many people see their life portrayed like this? It messes with you.”
Another potentially surprising aspect of the series is that, despite the show literally being titled “Supersex,” sex takes a back seat to other elements and themes.
“Well, obviously, they can’t show too much sex, so they make the other parts of my life much more prominent,” Siffredi admitted. “Some of my fans are going to say, ‘Rocco, where’s the sex?’ It’s the world we live in: You cannot be liberal about sex, you have to always put some drama, drama, drama!”
Still, Siffredi is hoping for a worldwide smash.
“Netflix is now going to wait a few weeks to see how the first season does so they can decide whether to do a second one,” he revealed. “So I told the guy, if we do the second season, we need to show that I was happy I was in porn. The only times in my life when I’ve doubted myself or been down was when I decided to get out of it for whatever reason.”
Main Image: Rocco Siffredi, Alessandro Borghi and Saul Nanni at the Rome premiere of Netflix's 'Supersex' (Photos: courtesy of Rocco Siffredi)
