For his upcoming movie, The House of Gucci, director Ridley Scott secured some of the best known names in Hollywood—Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, and Al Pacino—to play members of the notorious fashion family. But some descendants of the $15 billion brand’s founder have their silk-lined lingerie in a twist.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Guccio Gucci’s great-granddaughter, Patrizia Gucci raged that paparazzi shots from the set of the biopic—which focuses on the 1995 murder of her cousin—don’t do the high-powered, fabulously wealthy clan justice.
She said Pacino—who has an Oscar, two Tonys, and two Emmys for playing a host of commanding businessmen and patriarchs—was insufficiently handsome to play Aldo Gucci, who ran the company for more than 30 years.
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“My grandfather was a very handsome man, like all the Guccis, and very tall, blue eyes and very elegant,” she said. “He is being played by Al Pacino, who is not very tall already, and this photo shows him as fat, short, with sideburns, really ugly. Shameful, because he doesn’t resemble him at all.”
Leto, who plays Aldo’s son Paolo, also failed to meet their standards. Patrizia told the AP that she was alarmed by Leto’s “unkempt hair and a lilac corduroy suit” in photos from the set. “Horrible, horrible,” she said. “I still feel offended.” (Patrizia Gucci did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment).
The production, adapted from Sara Gay Forden’s book of the same name, follows the 1995 killing of the fashion house founder’s grandson, Maurizio Gucci, played by Driver. In the subsequent trial, the designer’s ex-wife, “Black Widow” Patrizia Reggiani Martinelli, played by Lady Gaga, was sentenced to 29 years in prison for ordering the hit.
Patrizia isn’t the only family member to make her displeasure public. Reggiani, who was released from prison after 16 years, told the Italian outlet ANSA in January that she was “rather annoyed” that Lady Gaga was playing her, “without having had the consideration and sensibility to come and meet” her.
“It is not an economic question,” she said. “I won’t get a cent from the film. It is a question of good sense and respect.”
In the 2000s, not long after the book was first published, Scott’s wife and collaborator, Giannina Facio, met with members of the Gucci family for a different project.
According to the AP, that project would have centered on Patrizia Gucci’s father and grandfather, rather than the sensational murder, but that didn’t pan out. For the film under way, the producers are collaborating with Gucci brand, which the family has not owned since 1993.
“We are truly disappointed. I speak on behalf of the family,” Gucci told The Associated Press. “They are stealing the identity of a family to make a profit, to increase the income of the Hollywood system… Our family has an identity, privacy. We can talk about everything. but there is a borderline that cannot be crossed.”
Ridley Scott and Al Pacino did not respond to requests for comment.
