Brilliant & Bellissima

As the first of Elena Ferrante’s beloved Neapolitan novels comes to TV, Jason Horowitz meets the young newcomers picked from thousands to star.

UNDER RUSTED LAMP POSTS on a dusty street in a postwar Naples neighborhood, the wiry and fierce Lila Cerullo marches past an old man roasting chestnuts and kids kicking a soccer ball made of string. She sees her best friend, Lenù Greco, along with other girls in buckled shoes and buttoned sweaters, swooning over the handsome Solara brothers.

“You don’t know anything,” Lila says. “They are dangerous.” As she storms off, the girls mock her as jealous. In Neapolitan dialect, Lenù calls out for her to wait.

“Stop-a!” comes a voice from afar, and a boom microphone over the girls’ heads lifts away. The chestnut roaster pulls out a novel, the extras check their cell phones, and the acclaimed Italian film director Saverio Costanzo races out of a white tent to coach the unknown stars of My Brilliant Friend, the much-anticipated HBO television series adapted from the best-selling book by Elena Ferrante, the anonymous author whose novels have captivated the literary world.

“You should have the eyes of a crazy person. Stronger,” Costanzo says to fourteen-year-old actress Gaia Girace, who plays Lila, the olive-skinned force of Neapolitan nature (and the brilliant friend of the title) described by Ferrante as “tense in every fiber.” The girl listens intently as a makeup artist hollows out her cheeks. “The important thing,” Costanzo says, “is that the body keeps the tension.”