Ask most actors what it’s like to work with Guy Ritchie and they deliver various platitudes. A treat, an honour, a career highlight. Benedetta Porcaroli begs to differ.
“I wanted to kill him!” the Italian actor, 28, says of her first day on set with Ritchie for The Gentlemen season two. “And he knows that I did.”
The Netflix smash hit is only the second English-speaking project Porcaroli has ever had, following her 2024 role as Sister Gwen in the Sydney Sweeney convent horror Immaculate.
She arrived on set having meticulously memorised her lines, aware that she was on the back foot as the only non-Brit on the call sheet that day.
“Then when they were putting the mic on, like two minutes before [shooting], somebody arrived with these new pages, and I was like, ‘Thank you, what is that?’ I read the scene, and it was completely different — completely different! Like not even one single word,” she laughs.
Luckily, co-star Kaya Scodelario was on hand to help. “She was so helpful,” Porcaroli remembers. “We went outside to have a cigarette together, and she was like, ‘Babe, listen, I was like you for the first two weeks last year, because nobody knew this. So don’t worry, everybody’s in the same boat.’”
Porcaroli’s journey into the acting world was more about chance than convention.
When she was 15, a family friend decided they wanted to set up a talent agency. They spotted a role they felt Porcaroli would be well suited for, then encouraged her to audition. A month later, when she’d forgotten about the audition altogether, she was offered the part.
Porcaroli cut her teeth on the set of Anything Can Happen, the Italian TV series based loosely on US show Parenthood. “After a while I understood that it’s not always as easy as it happened the first time,” she smiles, aware of her fortune.
After a brief break attempting to forge a “Plan B” career path at university, where she studied philosophy, Porcaroli realised acting was calling her back — and she couldn’t juggle both.
“It’s true that it is unpredictable, but at the same time, I knew I should really try [just] acting. Otherwise, it’s even harder,” she says.
Her breakout came in the form of another Netflix show, Italian series Baby, in which she played teenager-turned-sex worker Chiara. It was a big hit, which Porcaroli plays off with an almost British humility: “And it was a success blah blah blah,” she says, waving her hand.
As for what’s next after The Gentlemen, she is keen to continue flexing her new Ritchie-inflicted English skills, and even wants to tackle a British classic: a spy film, packed wit plenty of action, per favore. “There are actors who are terrified of everything and I’m not one of those,” she smirks. “So I want to see what I could do.”
