Riccardo Marinelli @riccardom23 - Twitter Profile

Luca Marinelli, the man we asked to play the role of Neil. I first learned of him through his role as the antagonist (Fabio Cannizzaro/Zingaro) in the Italian film "They Call Me Jeeg," and I fell in love with his amazing acting in Jack London's autobiographical film, "Martin Eden," which was released in Japan in 2020. It was a great film, and I was asked to help promote it when it was released. That was when I was contacted by a representative of the Japanese distributor. He told me that Luca had read my comments and wanted my contact info so he could convey his feelings directly to "KOJIMA-SAN.” Soon after, I received an e-mail from Luca. “I grew up with Metal Gear. I am a big fan of yours. I am very honored that you saw the film I starred in. I wanted to tell you this directly." During the pandemic, I was casting for DS2. Neil would be an important role that replaces Cliff from DS1. The fans would not be satisfied unless the casting would surpass Mads. I also watched Luca in "The Old Guard" on Netflix. I decided that Luca was the only choice for the role of Neil and sent him an e-mail with an offer. Apparently, Luca was in the mountains of Tibet filming "The Eight Mountains (2022)" at the time. I don't know if it’s true or not, but he had just come down from the mountains where he was filming and happened to be thinking about me before he saw my message, and Luca said, "This has been a spiritual experience." After that, I zoom called with Luca once he was home, pitched the idea of DS2, and he agreed to play the role. When I told him that I was looking for someone to play Lucy, he introduced me to his wife, Alissa, who is also an actress (and filmmaker). We did their scan and pcap during the height of the pandemic, but their on-set performance was excellent. You can see that in the digitized results from even the small bits of the trailer. I can only thank Luca and Alissa for agreeing to perform when we didn't even have a script yet.