Breakout Star Marco Calvani on His Role in Netflixs The Four Seasons: A Very Gay and Very Italian Journey

When I sat down for lunch in Bryant Park, Manhattan, with "The Four Seasons" star Marco Calvani, I asked him whether anyone had recognized him on the street during the press tour for the Netflix series.

"I am learning to enjoy this time until it lasts," he said. "Those billboards on Santa Monica Boulevard, in three months, there will be another face. Sunset Boulevard, we took over, everywhere, my big, giant face. I didn't know any of this before, so I can't say I was afraid, but I didn't know what to expect. Yesterday, I was around New York, and 10 people in one hour on the streets stopped me. I'm actually more shocked by the fact that people actually watched it, many different people of different ages and looks. It's another opportunity to be nice to people."

Inspired by Alan Alda's 1981 movie of the same name, "The Four Seasons" follows a friend group of three married couples (Fey and Will Forte; Steve Carell and Kerri Kenney-Silver; and Colman Domingo and Calvani) over the seasons as quarterly vacations and gatherings test their bonds. Calvani plays Claude, the last addition to the group and one who occasionally feels like the extra wheel as a proudly flamboyant, neck-scarf-wearing gay Italian whose presentation on the surface looks like a caricature, but one Calvani imbues with depth and feeling.

Calvani's newfound friend Colman Domingo brought him on for the role. "He called and said, 'Hey, are you still an actor?' I said no," recalled Calvani, who got his start in Italian theater before emigrating to the United States. He's now primarily a director and screenwriter, including on his feature debut from last year, the elegant Provincetown-set "High Tide," a gay romance starring his real-life partner, the Brazilian actor Marco Pigossi.

Calvani said that he felt free "enough to do it, and it was fun, but it wasn't easy to try on a more practical and professional level," he said of his return to acting. "On the page, the character was close to stereotypical, and I didn't want to do that. It would have been boring for me because it's too easy. It was quite a challenge to bring pockets of depth into the role, into those moments. The script gave me enough to show some intricacy and layers, but I didn't want to play the stereotype, the Italian man who screams, who's theatrical, the middle-aged gay man who's flamboyant. It was a huge risk, but at the same time, we are doing a comedy...I think when [my character is] angry, even if I throw clothes and say things that are, maybe from an American perspective, an Italian stereotype, I hope I anchor myself to the truth of what I was feeling."

Claude is married to Domingo's architect Danny in the series, with Calvani in a role that's been retrofitted to modern times but was originally built for Rita Moreno in the Alda film. Calvani never saw the original movie, which is now streaming for the first time on Netflix. "This was one of Tina's favorite films. I wasn't familiar with it at all. I was born when the movie was made. When I was cast