Everyone is talking about it and everyone knows the story, Fortune Teller, the latest Italian docu-series that tells the story of Wanna Marchi, the queen of telemarketing, who is convinced she is so good that she can also sell fortunes.

Wanna, consisting of four episodes and produced by Gabriele Immirzi, highlights every aspect of the affair while remaining incredibly neutral. The script’s merit falls mainly on the unbiased documentation of all points of view, in no way influencing the viewer, rather captivating them as if they were following a fictional film.

In the first part, we are immediately catapulted into the 1980s, where television sets are transformed into small supermarkets and the network is giving huge slots to telemarketers, led by her, Wanna.

“I am 70 years old and the only thing I know how to do it sell – you tell me what!”

A farmer’s daughter from a modest and large family, with the support of her eldest daughter she created her empire beginning with the sale of slimming creams.

Wanna’s trump card lay in her attitude; she addressed women at home in a biting manner, scolding, instigating, almost insulting them as to spur them on. She was well aware that her target audience consisted of housewives and married women who no longer recognized their bodies after marriage.

“Getting a husband is so easy, but even easier is losing him.”

Wanna understood from the beginning the importance of having a constant and direct relationship with costumers; she wanted to know the names of each of them and where they were from; she would call them back later in the week asking for feedback on the product. In this way costumers, like fish on a hook, would hang on to her and future purchases.

A fraud, a liar, a saleswoman, a genius.

At this point those behind the camera take the opportunity to test Marchi, giving her a pen to sell on the spot, recreating the atmosphere we found with Leonardo Di Caprio in The Wolf of Wall Street.

The infamous pen is suddenly no longer a mundane writing instrument; it is transformed into a magical object. There’s no use in trying to convince you otherwise, that pen is more beautiful or more special than others, because the best way to sell anything is to make sure you need it.

Wanna Marchi, as mentioned earlier, knows her target audience well, composed mostly of housewives to whom she sells the illusion of a dream, which she masterfully managed to turn into reality for herself.

The parallels between Wanna Marchi’s story and the Martin Scorsese directed film do not end there; she, like the character played by Leonardo Di Caprio, goes out of her way to sell nonexistent products, products she has no certainty she will ever own using the ‘don’t hang up’ method until the customer dies or buys.

Wanna Marchi begins to sell an idea, sells nothing, and television, at the time the most influential to the public, is used as to publicize a whole series of products and interventions, fictitious or otherwise.

From selling fiction, to selling luck the step is so short that it’s almost necessary, even logical!

All in all, a marketing genius who, without knowing, or knowing it well, uses precise methods of the sale to the detriment of the costumer who takes the bait, believing he is buying the item he can no longer live without, now that he has learned about it.

The two Marchis’ thanks to the sale of stories became rich, very rich, billing more than 4 billion a month of the old lire, but anyone behind the initial sympathy can say that they sensed something strange in her, a fierce greed that then led her to ruin through her beloved television, the media that made her queen, finally punished her.

By Miriam Gagino