Paola Barale: “As a Madonna lookalike I earned a million lire”
Paola Barale retraces her private and professional life, from her relationship with Raz Degan to her debut as a Madonna lookalike and on to the theatre.
Interviewed by Evening Courierthe showgirl, presenter and actress states: “If I were still the girl who turned the wheel of fortune in a Mike Bongiorno program I should be worried. Experiences change us and I have had a full life: I have been working for 40 years, I started at 17. I thank the universe for having brought me so many opportunities, but already when I left Happy Sunday in 2002 that TV felt too small for me.”
The interpreter then explains why he left Maurizio Costanzo’s Sunday show: “There was less room for the entertainment that I liked. I remember that Costanzo made the guests come down a staircase because he said it communicated stardom. At a certain point, he made an ordinary lady come down, with a shopping bag, suspecting that it would be enough to make her a character. In that intuition there was everything that would happen on TV”.
Her private life was also crucial, characterized at the time by the crisis with her husband Gianni Sperti: “It was also a period in which I was no longer comfortable with my husband at the time. I told myself that I was lucky, I had earned a lot and that when you have the opportunity to choose you have to honor it. So, I left. A year later, Gianni Sperti and I had broken up, but I had gone from being requested every day to suddenly having no requests at all. It can be harmful, if you don’t have a solid balance”.
Shortly after, Paola Barale began her relationship with Raz Degan: “I met Raz Degan, I was madly in love and I started to travel the world with him and there I realized that the world was bigger than the one I had known. I didn’t miss TV. I felt that I had lived under a glass bell, but I hadn’t enjoyed life. I had always only worked”.
Relationship ended after thirteen years after he cheated on her with Kasia Smutniak: “I also forgave. In the course of a long relationship, you question yourself. But, now, I am anti-forgiveness, because I forgave and then I discovered that he had fallen for it again. And there I had to learn to leave even if I was still in love. Since then, in front of a man, I ask myself if he is telling the truth or is fake. Then: I still hope to open a door and bump into the man of my life, but I don’t start looking for that man, I don’t miss him”.
The actress has been officially single since 2015: “But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had someone. I’m more for the ‘situationship’ than the relationship. It’s time that women can admit to having a sex life without being judged.”
On the rumors that she is bisexual, she says: “Apart from the fact that, ideally, I could also fall in love with a woman, I have an idea… Maybe because I have never slept with anyone for work and because, if I’m not on TV, I don’t wear heels, I don’t wear skirts, I’m masculine, and because I had a size 5 and had surgery to have a size 3. We still live in a society where, if you wear combat boots, maybe you’re not straight and it’s not clear why someone isn’t happy showing off their breasts and butt.”
Paola Barale also remembers her beginnings and when she began to take her first steps in the world of entertainment as a Madonna lookalike, mainly for economic reasons: “It wasn’t my favorite activity, but my mother gave me an allowance of five thousand lire a week, while for an appearance they gave me a million and I liked having money. I never aspired to wealth, but economic security, yes.”
From there the great success: “I went to live alone, the following year Mike took me. After seven years, however, it was becoming a kind of office job and I’m not an office person”.
“When Canale 5 asked me if I wanted to present Do you know the latest? with Gerry Scotti, I accepted, but they told me that I had to tell Mike, who was an old-fashioned gentleman. We had a formal relationship, like between employer and employee. I told him and he seemed to take it well. He comes back the next day and, in the studio, in front of everyone, he accuses me of ingratitude, he treats me terribly. I wasn’t expecting it. I had a fit of crazy tears”.
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