With this interview to Roberto Palermo we inaugurate a series of articles dedicated to the voice actors of “Gangs of London”, the great Sky Atlantic TV series for which Dream & Dream was responsible for the dubbing.
Roberto gives his voice to Elliot Finch, which is perhaps the most complex and enigmatic character of the series, as highlighted by his own words.
Elliot Finch is a character full of nuances and ambiguities.
How would you describe him in the complex chessboard of the series?
He’s well-dressed and put together, but he’s poking around in a puddle of a very dirty alleyway.
He’s struggling, but he’s doing it with dignity and without contempt.
From the moment Sope Dirisu appears in Gangs of London as Elliot, it’s clear that Elliot is a man who has suffered greatly and who is always committed to make sacrifices for a higher purpose.
We will only understand this purpose later, thanks to his relationships with the other protagonists and especially with his father.
His psyche and his conflicts confirmed me why I instantly took to him from the very first frame. I was very curious to get to know him.
Do you feel related to him?
Did you have to overcome some difficulties?
Of course, he lives in a world which is not close to mine. However, dubbing him gave me the possibility to express to the extreme some of the characteristics I share with him and the opportunity to look inside myself.
Besides dubbing Gangs of London ’s protagonists, you also give the voice to Antoine in the successful Fox series “Candice Renoir”.
Did you find any similarities between Antoine and Elliot?
However, their conflicts are very different from one another.
How did you get on with Gangs of London’s dubbing director, Marcello Cortese?
“On the other side of the glass” there was a director who understands and guides very well who is in front of the microphone, and who has very clear ideas but always accepts and welcomes suggestions (a lot, in my case…).
Every time I left the recording suite, I always felt enriched.
How did you start dubbing?
What does dubbing represent in Roberto Palermo’s professional life?
Which characters gave you great satisfaction?
I actually started as a video-editor.
My passion for dubbing has always been a river that flowed under my skin since I was a kid, but I never thought I could do it professionally.
I took many acting, screenwriting and dubbing courses out of self-interest in my life. Suddenly I decided to attend some dubbing shifts and, terrified, I found myself entering the recording room just to dub one line.
Long before I got my first roles, even very small ones, I understood that video-editing, my first love, would leave room to the passion for dubbing without jealousy.
But one passion does not exclude the other.
Video-editing, acting, screenwriting, and everything that involves our emotions, can blend with anything else in order to always give a different point of view to the scenes.
And when this point of view is brought back to real life, sometimes it is enlightening.
