Diane Warren Talks Emotion At Working With Andreas Bocelli On ‘Maserati: The Brothers’ Song: “I Was Sobbing” – Sound & Screen Film

Record-setting 17-time Oscar nominee Diane Warren received a rock-star welcome as she hit Deadline’s Sound & Screen Film to accompany and discuss her original song “One Right Here” for Maserati: The Brothers, about the rise of the Italian racing car dynasty.

The songwriter, who was nursing a bout of laryngitis, was greeted with a cheer and shouts of ‘Diane, we love you’ from the crowd at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

The swooping crossover duet “One Right Here” is performed by iconic Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and Grammy-winning singer Jennifer Hudson.

Working with Bocelli, who has previously collaborated with the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Céline Dion, Stevie Wonder and Jennifer Lopez, was a dream come true, Warren said.

“I’ve been trying to get Andrea Bocelli to do a song of mine for 10 years,” she said. “He gets really close, and then he doesn’t.”

Warren recounted how she had written the song with Bocelli’s voice in her head after the film’s producer Andrea Iervolino told her the tenor had signed up to sing the track.

“I kind of didn’t believe him,” she said. “But I wrote the song for [Bocelli], for his voice, with those high notes. All that stuff he’s singing, I heard in my head… when I first heard him… when it was first sent to me, I was sobbing, hearing him, that’s a dream. And then the idea was the idea to put Jennifer on that with him, like two different worlds together.”

Produced by Iervolino under his Andrea Iervolino Company banner, Maserati: The Brothers is directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Bobby Moresco. The film tells the story of the Bologna-based Maserati brothers, whose passion for engineering and racing still defines Italian craftsmanship a century later. Al Pacino, Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Alba, Andy García, Michele Morrone and Salvatore Esposito feature in the ensemble cast.

Warren said she had wanted the song to encompass several aspects of the film.

“It’s about different things, the Maserati brothers who created the car, of course, but they loved each other and all the tragedy and triumph of that family. But then there’s also a couple love stories in there. I wanted the song to fit all that, and then the idea that there’s one right here who’s here for you,” she said. “Then I just had the idea of let’s make it a duet… as soon as I heard it because I wasn’t there when Andrea sang it, but I was there when Jennifer did… I was in the studio… . I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is better than I thought’.”

Check out the conversation in the video above.