“Marco Polo,” between East and West in second Netflix season

A combination of Mongolia, the United States, Italy, China, history, politics and Oriental wisdom will come to television screens during the next season of “Marco Polo.”

In that mixture is the success of the Netflix series, starring Lorenzo Richelmy and his “teacher” Tom Wu, as they told EFE in an interview.

After a successful first season, mainly in Europe, the digital TV platform brought the Italian and his Hong Kongborn but Londonraised companion to Buenos Aires to promote the show’s second season, airing on July 1, along with other shows that have made a name for themselves on Netflix, including “House of Cards” and “Orange Is the New Black.”

The word is that Richelmy comports himself like a typical Italian, greeting every journalist who comes by for an interview with two kisses.

Meanwhile, Wu seems as serious as his character, the blind Taoist monk Hundred Eyes, who is tasked with training Marco Polo.

“I have martial arts experience but the character is so calm that I had to learn a lot of taichi to get that feeling. He also works a lot with internal energies and taichi is the best form of martial arts for that,” Wu said.

Preparing for the role was somewhat more complicated for Richelmy, since he practically had to go down the same road as his character: finding himself in a foreign world (13th century Mongolia), immersed in an unfamiliar culture (the court of Kublai Khan), learning to be a warrior.

“I did what can be seen in the series. I had to learn everything, from English to archery ... I wasn’t prepared. Nobody is prepared to insert themselves into that insanity, into that crazy series that is ‘Marco Polo,’” Richelmy said.

Getting into Polo’s character also meant that Richelmy had to learn about the real merchantadventurer, about which he admitted knowing little before landing the project.

“We had people there to advise us and say ‘you can’t do that’ ... because that’s a modern (gesture) ... It was a long process for which we had to study a lot,” the actor said.

But despite that, filming the series continues to be fun and “a dream come true,” Wu added.

Although they are staying mum about what is in store for the show’s second season, the pair said that viewers and fans “are going to (get) what they want to see.”