Marco Nanini details open marriage: ‘It gives me a fire, a vitality’

Actor Marco Nanini, 75, and producer Fernando Libonati have been together for 36 years. In an interview with Conversa com Bial (Globo) this Thursday (6), Nanini gave details about the dynamics of the relationship: he said that the two have other partners, that this was never a problem and that it is a happy marriage. “We have a stable union. We are great friends,” he says.

Nanini explains that he and Libonati live in neighboring houses and there is a passage between the walls so that they and the dogs can pass from one house to the other. “He has his companions, I have mine. It was never a problem, not when we started, not when the flame started in the beginning. We had this clause.”

Presenter Pedro Bial then tries to remove the labels on the relationship. “We can skip the word marriage and say it’s happy, it’s a happy story”, says Bial. “Yes, it was happy, it still is today”, replies Nanini. “He is very affectionate with me, very attentive. That, for me, is very important, because it gives me a fire, a vitality, a need to work.”

In the interview, the actor also talks about some of the topics addressed in his biography “O Avesso do Embroidery”, written by journalist Mariana Filgueiras. Among them, addictions he had throughout his life.

He tells Bial about the experience of taking a hallucinogenic pill with actor Milton Carneiro. “It was the Mandrix [comprimido]. It was a fever at the time and I didn’t know it. I didn’t even know he did that”, he says. “I was going to face ten hours of travel, the buses weren’t comfortable at all, so I went to the pharmacy and asked the pharmacist for a sleeping pill”, explains the actor. “I took Mandrix and then it started to take effect, me getting on the bus. I started laughing at everyone, you know? I started to have a strange feeling, but it was a good feeling. It was a drug, right?”

Nanini says that the vices lasted a few years, including smoking and drinking. “The hardest thing was smoking. I had to sweat. I took medicine, with a doctor. But I stopped drinking because I wanted to.”

Meeting with musician Renato Russo was part of the fight against alcohol. “It was such a pleasant surprise,” reports Nanini. “I didn’t know who Renato Russo was, I didn’t know what his band was.” According to the actor, after meeting him, the two got along well and began to meet frequently. “One day, I was drinking with him, already on the fourth caipirinha, and I said ‘I can’t take this anymore'”.

Nanini reports that Russo asked if he would like to stop drinking and, upon hearing a positive response, offered to give all the Alcoholics Anonymous books to help the actor. “I opened the first book and stopped drinking”, says Bial.

And what has changed with age? Nanini says that habits were the main change in his recent life: he became a vegetarian, cut out smoking and drinking, and does daily physical exercises, physiotherapy and pilates.