Ayrton Senna is a very familiar name not just for fans of Formula 1, but for Brazilians and for Latines in general. The famed driver, who died 30 years ago this year, was killed after his car crashed into a concrete barrier while he was leading the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix in Italy. Senna, a new miniseries by Netflix, examines the famed driver’s death, but most importantly, his life.
Remezcla had a chance to talk to Gabriel Leone, who plays Senna in the miniseries, but also to Matt Mella, who plays Senna’s longtime rival turned friend, Alain Prost, as well as showrunner and director Vicente Amorim about bringing the life of Senna to the screen and what it means to celebrate his legacy all these years later.
“When he crashed and died, I wasn’t even one year old, so I don’t really remember anything,” Leone shared, but added that he “grew up in a family of Senna’s fans, so I grew up listening to his stories and listening to my parents talking about Sundays of races, and I remember every time I watched any Senna’s videos of his races and stuff, I got emotional from it.” This is the legacy of Aryton Senna. “I think if you’re Brazilian, you are instantly, from the moment you are born, a Senna fan.”
Mella, who was a little more removed from it, but came to understand the importance of Senna while filming, also said, “Someone said something really interesting that put it all into perspective [while filming], which was any Brazilian over the age of 35 knows where they were at two points in their life, 9/11 and Senna’s death, and I was like, okay, that’s the level of what we’re dealing with here.”
Leone agreed, and he really wanted to tell a story that was about more than Senna’s death. “We knew, of course, from the beginning, the end of our show, and how tragic that would be, but this year we are celebrating 30 years of his legacy, so I think there couldn’t be a better moment to pay homage to him, to his legacy.” Not just that, for Leone, “as a Brazilian and as an actor, it was such a huge honor to be portraying him, such a huge responsibility, and I’m really proud of our job, really proud of the result of what we’ve done, and just really anxious for people to get in touch with Senna’s story.”
Showrunner Amorim understood Brazil’s close relationship to Senna and brought that to his work. To the point that Amorim said “When this project came about, it felt like I had been preparing my whole life to tell this story because of what Senna means to people all over the world, but especially Latinos and to Brazilians. This is a very, very special story of somebody you can relate to very strongly, a Brazilian man, a Latino man making it in a sport that was really rigged, had always been rigged to favor European drivers and, uh, taking it on and becoming the only true hero of Formula 1.”
For Leone, to build that man, it was important to build Senna’s relationships—and none was as transcendental as the relationship he had with Prost, his foe on the circuit. “They were rivals, but also, they respected each other, they admired each other, they learned from each other, they pushed each other harder. They watched each other, in fact, they watched each other go so much because they were so different.”
“Say Prost was watching Senna in qualifying, going how the hell is he that fast on one lap, and then I imagine Senna was watching him going, right, how does he win the championship? In the end, we know the moment Prost retired from racing, they started getting closer back again, and they kind of became friends the years before Senna’s death.”
It isn’t a happy ending—for Senna or for Prost, who lost one of his closest friends. But sometimes, that’s life. It is still the legacy of Senna, that of a great driver, a great friend, and someone who changed the sport for the better. And everyone involved with Netflix’s Senna doesn’t just understand this, they put in their all to bring it to the screen.
Senna is now available on Netflix.
