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."
And Gallo said it was an honor to play Puzo, saying that when The Godfather movie came out in 1972, it was like the Italian-American community was finally being recognized.
In The Offer, some members of the Mafia express concern about it negatively affecting Italians, but Gallo said that it had the opposite effect.
"In The Godfather, there were perspectives and views on the world that were similar to the people that my parents interacted with," he said. "There was an excitement that that world was being represented in such a beautiful and artistic way too, because it could have been a s--ty film that was made by a director that wasn't really good."
Gallo continued, "That's what I think made it so unique and made people feel differently. It gave everyone a different taste of cinema and view into that world, so we were celebrated. It was a rite of passage to know it."
He feels the same way about other movies in the mobster genre, sharing that his two favorites are Miller's Crossing, a "riveting, dark, beautiful film," and, of course, Martin Scorcese's Goodfellas. He said, "Scorcese really did something special with Goodfellas and that really changed the landscape again."
New episodes of The Offer stream Thursdays on Paramount+.