Is Zerocalcare’s Netflix series My 2 Cents based on a true story? Discover the real-life inspirations behind the show and the mystery of Lorenzo Montini.
The third series by Zerocalcare, My 2 Cents, is finally on Netflix, following the success of Tear Along the Dotted Line in 2021 and This World Can’t Tear Me Down in 2023. Once again, Netflix is bringing Zerocalcare’s art to a truly global stage—an art that, while rooting its comedy deeply within the neighborhoods, the philosophy, and the everyday slang of life on the outskirts of Rome, still perfectly manages to hit on universal themes like the anxieties of adulthood, navigating a complex society, and those classic inner battles with our own conscience and guilt.
Once again, the story Zerocalcare tells revolves around characters and events that feel drawn directly from his own life, and it is no coincidence that the very first thing viewers wonder is whether there is a true story behind the series. In fact, looking at how much reality is woven into his work is the most fascinating angle for exploring this modern storyteller, and it’s a question that feels even more pressing for international audiences who are just now discovering Zerocalcare’s world and his complex portrait of Roman society through Netflix.
Is there a true story behind My 2 Cents? Who is Lorenzo Montini, the kid who carries such a heavy emotional weight in this latest series, and how much truth is there behind Wild Boar, Smeralda, the restaurant, and those debts to the criminal underworld? The world Zerocalcare puts on screen looks like something straight out of a Hollywood thriller, making it incredibly interesting to see how his personal life and real-world encounters intertwine with the story we are watching on Netflix.
Wild Boar, the Restaurant, and the True Story Behind My 2 Cents
As always, Zerocalcare (the Italian cartoonist whose real name is Michele Rech) keeps his private life deeply personal and doesn’t easily reveal the real people who inspire his characters. At the same time, though, the stories he tells are closely tied to what he saw or went through growing up on the outskirts of Rome, and that goes for My 2 Cents as well. As he explained in an interview with the Italian magazine Best Movie, “the characters in My 2 Cents don’t actually exist—there is no real Smeralda, there is no real Tripwire—but all the situations in the story are things that happened to me, or around me.”
Still, anyone who follows Zerocalcare in real life will have recognized at least a couple of details taken straight from his own life. The first is the restaurant that he and Wild Boar open in the series. Zerocalcare is actually the co-owner of a restaurant that opened in 2025 called Osteria Sauli, a spot that serves traditional dishes not just from Rome, but also from the Abruzzo and Puglia regions. And as this article on Gambero Rosso explains, the project started alongside two of his long-time friends who were already well-known in the Italian food scene, Antonello Magliari and Francesco Ciacciarelli. The theory, then, is that Wild Boar is based on one of them. During his interview, Zerocalcare even said, “in real life, Wild Boar wasn’t the one who stole money from me—I’ll have to warn him before the series comes out.”
Another element drawn from Zerocalcare’s personal experience is Giulio the dog, who eventually becomes Zero’s new companion at home in My 2 Cents. In real life, Zerocalcare recently got a dog named Ziggy, whom fans have gotten to know during the public events the cartoonist has attended. And even though the author started writing My 2 Cents before Ziggy actually arrived, the idea of getting a dog was already on his mind while he was working on the series.
The criminal underworld on the outskirts of Rome shown in My 2 Cents is likely a reflection of the real environment Zerocalcare encountered growing up in Rebibbia, a neighborhood famous for hosting the largest prison in Italy. We don’t know how much firsthand experience Zerocalcare actually has with Rome’s criminal circles, but Rebibbia prison itself clearly appears at the end of My 2 Cents, tied directly to the character who, more than anyone else, has sparked the viewers’ curiosity: Lorenzo Montini.
Who is Lorenzo Montini in My 2 Cents?
There are two moments in My 2 Cents that carry a particularly strong emotional weight. The first comes at the end of the very first episode, which closes with a face drawn by Zerocalcare and a dedication below reading, “Bye Lorenzo 2004-2025.” The second is that heartbreaking letter Zero writes to Montini—the kid who ends up in prison at the end of the series, whom the main character views as a hero who was able to free the rest of their world from Tripwire’s bullying oppression. And the most eagle-eyed viewers will have noticed that Montini’s first name is actually Lorenzo, visible on the car documents Smeralda drives in the fifth episode.
In the series, Lorenzo Montini is a very unique character. He starts out as a minor background presence, described as a guy who had been bullied by everyone since his school days and grew up as a complete outcast. In the story of My 2 Cents, he ends up targeted by Tripwire’s aggressive abuse too, as the criminal uses him whenever he needs a car to get around. Tripwire represents the violent face of Roman micro-criminality that has tightened its grip around Zero and Wild Boar, eventually making things deeply personal after discovering that Zero is friends with his girlfriend, Smeralda.
By the end of My 2 Cents, several characters step up to put Tripwire in his place. But when a crowd gathers on the street around his freshly stabbed body, Zero discovers that the killer is the person you would least expect: Montini himself. After spending years as a victim of the world around him, he finally snaps and fights back after Tripwire almost kills his dog. Because of this, Montini becomes a symbol for that side of society that quietly takes the abuse of violent people, always holding onto the silent hope that one day they will be able to balance the scales for all the injustices they’ve endured.
The sheer bitterness of how Montini’s story ends is exactly what moves viewers to tears by the finale of My 2 Cents. A victim of society, isolated and without any friends, Montini also becomes the only one who gets punished. The legal system is forced to judge purely on facts, and the facts say he was the one who stabbed Tripwire. Yet in the hearts of Zero and the other characters who have spent their whole lives being pushed around by the powerful, Montini is a hero—someone who, even through a violent and illegal act, tried to restore some sense of balance to their world.
Lorenzo’s name hasn’t popped up in any interviews or posts published by Zerocalcare recently. However, a look through social media reveals a deeply moving Facebook post dedicated to a young man named Lorenzo Giurintano, who passed away in 2025. In the post, his father honors his memory using that exact still from My 2 Cents. Because of this, we can reasonably assume that Zerocalcare knew Lorenzo personally and chose to dedicate this latest project to his memory.
My 2 Cents as a Mirror to Modern Society
So, there isn’t a specific true story behind the plot of My 2 Cents, but the series honestly reflects the most typical elements of contemporary life. In an era where the economy is getting harder and harder for ordinary people, and where having a child becomes a financially disruptive event, struggles and debts can bleed into our lives like a plague. Being an adult today is objectively much more complicated than it used to be, and Zerocalcare explains this by taking the normal parts of our lives to the extreme: starting a family, running a business, and keeping up relationships with friends and parents while life takes shape around us.
Amidst all this, My 2 Cents also shows us the world of the local criminal underworld—an explicit choice by Zerocalcare, who wanted to lean into the noir genre in his own unique way. The Rome we see in Zerocalcare’s series obviously has a highly cinematic feel, but these are all elements that are part of real life in any major city around the world. We didn’t need a true story to portray the struggles of being an adult in today’s world: My 2 Cents is incredibly authentic just as it is, serving as a sincere reflection on life told by an artist who knows how to make us smile even while highlighting the wounds of modern Western society.
