“House of Gucci” is now in theaters and people are absorbing the over-the-top cast doing their best (and sometimes not-so-good attempts at) Italian accents as they portray the opulent Gucci family. Though critics have either been in love with the choices on-screen or absolutely against the campy nature of the performances, the Gucci family itself is not happy. Not one bit. And Ridley Scott isn’t going to listen to their complaints.
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Immediately upon the release of “House of Gucci,” the heirs of the Gucci family spoke openly about their disgust with the film, including threatening potential legal action, after seeing the film.
“The Gucci family reserve the right to take every initiative (necessary) to protect their name and image and those of their loved ones,” the heirs of former Gucci chairman Aldo Gucci said (via THR). The statement went on to say the family didn’t like being portrayed as “thugs, ignorant and insensitive to the world around them.”
Also, Patrizia Gucci had also previously stated that casting Al Pacino in the role of her father made her family seem “short, fat and ugly.”
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Needless to say, confronted with these comments, “House of Gucci” filmmaker Ridley Scott, who isn’t someone known for biting his tongue and keeping quiet, had plenty to say in his response to TotalFilm.
“The people that were writing from the family to us at the onset were alarmingly insulting, saying that Al Pacino did not represent physically Aldo Gucci in any shape or form,” Scott said. “And yet, frankly, how could they be better represented than by Al Pacino? Excuse me! You probably have the best actors in the world, you should be so fucking lucky.”
Scott went further to pre-emptively tackle the criticisms for some of the portrayals in the film, particularly that of Jared Leto, who is under a ton of makeup and prosthetics for his role as Paolo Gucci in the film.
“I think a lot of it is comedic,” he added. “Certainly for the first two acts. Jared Leto, there’s not a lot of information about [his character] Paolo, but there are pictures of Paolo and that’s exactly what Paolo looks like. We found the pictures and Jared did what he did and dressed the way Paolo dressed. There’s not a lot of Paolo on camera talking. And so that had to be, to a certain extent, imagined, but clearly Paolo was a very colorful and flamboyant man.”
“The flamboyance of Paolo was quite nicely captured,” Scott concluded. “And how could that be offensive? We paid attention to not getting too overt if we can avoid it.”
So, in the back-and-forth public debate between the Gucci heirs and Ridley Scott, it appears the filmmaker isn’t going to back down or temper his feelings one bit. And honestly, who wouldn’t want Al Pacino to play them in a film?
“House of Gucci” is in theaters now.