After prison and scandals, Fabrizio Corona reinvented his parable, transforming it into a digital narrative product: with Falsissimo and the streaming platforms he no longer chases news, but governs it, rewriting the rules of Italian gossip
Fabrizio Corona not only did he survive his turbulent career as king of the paparazzi (whom he hired for years) and the related legal consequences, but he is transforming that whole saga into a consumer product: with Extremely false on his YouTube channel and on Netflix (which produced a series about him) with I am news. He was among the few “journalists” (even if he is not registered) to transform himself into a brand. First with underwear and perfumes, now with more or less verified news. A brand that now passes through the most modern online platforms. Its headquarters are in the Central Station area of Milan. Square table full of notes, eight huge screens on the wall. Always connected. Always on the phone. His collaborators, all of whom he nicknames, struggle to keep up with him. «Ama», which he hammered out during the videos, has disappeared for a few episodes. In his place there is now «Ben». In the Atena company, a small Srl with 1,000 euros of share capital, 99% belongs to mother Gabriella and 1% to Francesca Lostwho ended up in prison with him for having hidden 1.7 million euros in cash in the false ceiling of the house and who now – with 10 euros of capital – is an administrator. He does not appear, but it is clear who the captain of the pirate ship’s crew is. Part Captain Harlock and part character from the Australian writer’s novels James Roy. Always on the edge. Always from a reckless life. Someone who, according to those who frequent him, has a obsession: “To surpass his father”. Vittorio, a thoroughbred journalist (like his brother Puccio) who, in 1993, as deputy director of Open studiowanted to revolutionize the news, causing quite a bit of anger Emilio Wedding ring. Imprinting, therefore, arrives at home. And Fabrizio the journalist tried to do it. “But they were starvation wages and I wanted to earn money,” he admits in an episode of Extremely false. Then he focuses on the image and chooses it as a field of action. First as a photo model, a period that dates back to the nineties and during which he claims to have met Melania Trumpalso a model who, “at the time”, she says during a brief conversation with the lawyer Ivan Churchhis historic defender, “stayed at the one-star Hotel Pola, it was the hotel for models who ran away from home.” It is during the Milanese nightlife that he begins to build his network of relationships that will become the basis for his entry into the world of gossip. In which he enters from the main door, thanks to a friend, Lele Blackberryat that time among the most influential agents of the Italian television industry. He founded the paparazzi agency Corona’s, which soon became central to what went down in history as the celebrity photo blackmail scandal, which exploded in Potenza in 2007. The prosecutor Henry John Woodcock he has him arrested. Corona spent 33 days in prison in Potenza, another 44 in Milan, where he even managed to take a selfie with a disposable camera. He is investigated, acquitted, then investigated again, then tried, then sometimes acquitted and sometimes convicted. As in the case of Corona’s bankruptcy: 46 months in prison. In 2015 he already has a cumulative sentence that exceeds 13 years and for a while he was also a fugitive. And after another 823 days in prison he obtained probation. But other sentences are pouring in: 1 year for escaping from house arrest, 7 months for resistance (while the police are trying to bring him back inside he protests, causing injuries to himself live on Instagram).
In September 2023 he finishes serving his debt to the state and becomes free. For the Milan Police Headquarters he is a subject of “special surveillance”, but the judges reject the proposal, believing that he is not dangerous. And a short time later they gave him his passport back. In that period, with little luck, he launched an Academy in which, with his usual attitude, he gave lessons on how to make money with cryptocurrencies. Until it arrives Extremely false. Which is not a program. And it’s not a television format. It’s not even a web series. It is the taking control of the story. Here is the real leap: from a man chased by the news to a man who tells it. Each episode (there are already 20 uploaded, and sometimes reuploaded after being killed by YouTube’s controls) is constructed like an episode of a trash saga, between revelations and frontal attacks. He acts, makes faces, imitates voices. Yes, we like it. He wears polo shirts that enhance his physicality. He poses like a bodybuilder in front of the mirror. The language is heavy, sometimes ungrammatical, sometimes violent. In the reconstruction of the judicial news there is no shortage of legal blunders, but the script as a whole holds up. The leitmotif is always the same: “I’m the only one who’ll give you this news, don’t believe in fairy tales.” It’s the same mechanism as the paparazzi season, but translated into digital. First there were the photos. Now he’s here, the digital storyteller. With two particular skills: that of transforming the protagonists of a news story into characters (the lawyer Massimo Lovati in Gerry The Frog) and that of having his inner circle tell him stories, from friends, acquaintances, people who talk to him because they trust him, because they want to vent, because they are looking for help or protection. He listens. Record mentally and more. Accumulate. Then, those events that begin as private events (separations, betrayals, conflicts, resentments, fragility) are transformed into public cases. It happened with Fedez and Angelica. Crown sucks the stories, rearranges them, renames them and dramatizes them. Confidence becomes narration and personal history an episode. With some hiccups for those who decide to entrust him with their confidences or their material. It happened to the two who wanted to report a football betting story to him and tried to sell him a video. They have become part of history. One thing is for sure, next time Crown However, he manages to gain more trust. It happened when he showed up, complete with a hidden camera, at the house of Cyrus Cricket and he also resumed Beppe struggling with reading. With CrownCiro, who remained silent throughout the trial, let himself go: «The magistrates are now holders of sexual morality… they are holders of public ethics». And he also gained trust with the raid on the house of Eva, the temptress of Temptation island. After making out with his mother, he set up the girl, taking her to a beach for a very long interview. In the studio he played an audio message that he would have sent her a couple of times Raoul Bova: «One of the strangest things I’ve listened to in my crazy life», he comments, before shooting the actor about how a famous character should behave with «a little girl». He was “seduced” and abandoned by Crown even a smart lawman like Lovati. And finally there is Alfonso Gentlementerminal, once, of many of the photographic scoops of Crown. Someone who for years decided who to tell and how. Today it is told by Crownwithout rules and on a stage that no one controls. It is the cruelest handover of gossip.
