When it came to playing Mario Puzo in The Offer, Patrick Gallo knew he could relate to the character.
Yes, The Godfather author and Gallo are both proud Italians, but it was more than that. “In the beginning of the process, as I started to explore him, I found so many wonderful similarities between the two of us,” Gallo explained in an exclusive interview with E! News. “Our perspectives on our struggle, our insecurities.”
Gallo said there was this “effortless” understanding of the author, who found success later in life. Gallo looked back on his own career, remembering the passion projects that he reacted to with pride, “but the world doesn’t respond that way all the time and it’s very frustrating.”
So, when Gallo learned that Puzo “begrudgingly” wrote The Godfather to pay off his debts at the age of 49, it was like a “bolt of lightning.”
“It’s interesting how an artist can move toward a piece of art like that, where it’s like, it’s not what I want to do, but I have to do it and it comes out of desperation in a way,” he explained,
“but that’s where I found him.”