Wagner Moura - 'The Secret Agent'

Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to the 620th episode of the Hollywood Reporter's awards chatter podcast, I'm the host Scott Feinberg and my guest today is arguably the most successful and respected Brazilian actor in the world. He has been described by NPR as superb by the Washington Post as a powerhouse and by the New York Times as simply great. His credits include starring roles in two of Brazil's biggest blockbusters of all time, 2007's Elite Squad and 2010's Elite Squad The Enemy Within. The part of Pablo Escobar on one of the first hit Netflix series, Narcos, on which he starred from 2015 through 2016 and which made him world famous and brought him a Golden Globe Award nomination. And most recently, three different parts in Clever Mendonso Filio's massively acclaimed Brazilian film The Secret Agent, which is Brazil's entry for this season's best international feature Oscar race, which takes place during the Brazilian dictatorship in the 1970s and for which he became the first South American ever to win the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actor Prize and the first Latino ever to win the New York Film Critics Circle's Best Actor Award for which he was nominated for the Best Actor Critics Choice Award and for which he is nominated for the Best Actor in a Drama Golden Globe Award with the Best Actor Oscar nomination almost certain to follow. Wagner Mora Over the course of a conversation at the LA offices of the Hollywood Reporter, the 49-year-old denied discussed why he grew up thinking it was unlikely that he would ever be able to have a screen acting career, how the Elite Squad films impacted his profile and led to his role on Narcos, how the 2018 to 2022 Brazilian presidency of Jair Bolsonaro impacted his country and career and inspired the Secret Agent, the first project in 12 years in which he has acted in his native language, Portuguese, plus much more. And so without further ado, let's go to that conversation. All right, Wagner, thank you so much for doing the podcast, great to see you again and on this podcast we go through the major moments of each guest's life and career as much as you can in an hour and so we always start at the beginning if you could share where you were born and raised and what your folks did for a living. I was born in Salvador by year Brazil, my father was a sergeant of the Air Force, the Brazilian Air Force, my mom was a housewife. And siblings? I have one sister, she's a doctor. And what sort of a kid were you? I'm wondering what sort of preceded acting if there was any rhyme or reason to why you found your way to acting as a kid. Actually I was 15, I was born in Salvador but then my father, as a military person, he was moving all the time. So we lived in Rio de Janeiro for a while and then when he retired of the Air Force, he decided that he was going to move back to his little town, the town where he was born. It's a very small town called Haudelos in the northeast of Brazil. And we lived there, I think it was about 11, 10, 11, we lived there for 10, for two years. And then my parents decided we should move back to Salvador which is a big, bigger city because they want to, they want to just go to better schools for education purposes. And when I got to Salvador, I didn't feel any connection with the kids or with the, you know, I felt like a rural kid in a place there, I didn't belong and I, I wasn't interested in, and that's a moment, a very delicate moment, I was 12, 13, you know, when you were a teenager you wanted to be accepted, you wanted to be, you know, to have a group of friends and all that kind of, I didn't have any of them. My nickname was UFO, you know, that's how everybody called me. So I discovered this place where, but weirdly enough, when there was any activity at school about, let's do a homework and it, when acting was a thing, I was very good at it. I was, I liked it, I enjoyed it, even being very lonely and, you know, I did it well. And so I found this place, it was a theater group for troubled teenagers. And so I went there, not, not because I thought that I had any special talent for that, but I wanted to find a group of people, I wanted to belong to something and I could never, I can never forget the day, the first time I was 15 and I got to this place and I look at these boys and girls there and I'm like, I want to hang out with this people forever. You know, I wanted to date those girls, I wanted to be friends with those dudes and so I think that my, my beginning with acting was more like a social need for everything else. And yet, just a few years later, when you go off to university, your, what your focus was was, as I understand it, not theater or drama or whatever, but journalism, why was that? I'm still working with my therapist to understand that, I think that one, for sure, one reason was I didn't want to disappoint my parents because to become an actor in Salvador by Brazil back in the '90s was like, you know, they made such a, we were like poor, poor people, they made an effort for us to go to schools and study and I remember the effort that my father made for my sister and I to go to a private school, we would have a scholarship that would, every, every year he would, he would manage to keep that scholarship so we, he would pay for one and we both would go to this school. So it felt to me that becoming an actor, you know, and he never said like, don't do that. But I felt that I was disappointed somehow that I should be like a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer. That would make more sense. You've also said though and I don't know if this was something you were thinking about at the time, but that there's sort of an attitude in the entertainment industry in Brazil and believe I'm not pointing fingers because we have our own problems in America, but it sounds like you felt there's almost a xenophobia towards people from the Northeast. Oh yeah, no, if we, there was that too, I mean, if you were an actor in the Northeast back in the 80s and the 90s, there was no way you would work on television or films. Why was? Because the Brazilian star system is built up on, upon television, right? Like soap operas, novellas, and they're all producing Rio de Janeiro. So there is a specific accent and way of behaving and also geographically, it was so far away, they wouldn't go to, the cast director wouldn't go to these places to cast actress from the Northeast to play, you know, the rich guy. Like because the soap operas are like basically like a rich man and a poor girl that falling love and there's an evil dude that's right to, you know, but there were some parts that we could play like the funny guy or the door man or maybe, or maybe the bad guy, the bandit, but not like a good character, it was like some, so, but that was a good thing because when I started to work as an actor, I became a stage actor and the theater in Salvador was very strong back then in the 90s. And so this was, you were acting in this youth theater before college, you go to college, study journalism and kept acting and kept acting and kept acting and working on a newspaper. By the way, going to studying journalism was great, it was really great. I worked as a journalist for a while. I, most of my friends are journalists, I studied things that I keep in my mind, things that I read till today. It was very important for me as an actor, I think. But at some point, I just, you know, it was just acting was my, because also I had this, when I studied journalism, I had this romantic idea also of like all the presidents, man kind of thing, that was going to discover something and do something very revolutionary. And I, I, I was quickly disappointed with, with, with, with that, but have a lot, lots of respects. Sure, sure. But before journalists and journalism. Was there something at some point, it sounds like acting was always happening, but these were other things that were going on at the same time. Was there something with public relations as well? Public relations, I was, I had with, with, with some of my friends, we had like, we became, yeah, sort of like PRs for theater people. And that wasn't very profitable. No. Journalism and public relations, you're not going to get rich. It didn't work out for us, no. So the thing that it sounds like to me really kind of started you getting on the radar of, of top people, maybe this is wrong, I'm not sure. But there was a production called a machina, is that, that was the beginning? There was a play. And this sort of went out, it was successful enough that you went on the road with it. Exactly. Because there was a play made by people from the Northeast, from, from, from, from his Seafy clubber, his clubber Medonsofil is a, yeah, hometown. Directed by a guy from, from there, Kojunovokon. And that's yours from his Seafy and Salvador, my hometown. And very, yeah, grounded in, in, in, in, in the culture of the Northeast. And this play traveled to, you know, theater festivals and, in Brazil. And it was a huge success, a big hit. And then we moved to Rio to perform the play, me and the, and the other actors who are now very successful actors in, in Brazil, La Zeruhama, Vlajumi, Barista, Gustavo Foco. So cast directors started to call us because of the play to do the same characters of, you know, like the band, it's the doorman, the funny guys. And I think that we were part of a generation that started to change that concept. Not only us or what we were doing or the political approach of, didn't, not, not, not accepting characters that we thought it wouldn't be good for, for, for ourselves or for our people. But also I think the world was changing in the beginning of the 2000s. Well, I don't know if this is just a coincidence, but one of the things that happened in the early 2000s in Brazil was the movie City of God, which was a big thing all around the world. Really made people look at Brazilian cinema, the whole entertainment industry in a different way, I think. You were starting right around that same time, starting to come into film and TV production. Some of those tele novellas, I think you mentioned, but also working with really the top, some of the top directors in the early days. I mean, people who are now internationally known and even back then, in some cases, I mean, Walter Salas, right, behind the sun, moving 2001, Kaká Diegas, is the right way to pronounce God as Brazilian 2003, Hector Babenco, who had done "Kiss of the Spider Woman" and Peshot, and you're with him in "Karandero" in 2004. I mean, what do you remember about the beginning of your screen career and also just the vibe in the industry as City of God was changing? Exactly. It was called the, we call it "Hetomada do Cinema, Brasileiro", which is like the rebirth of Brazilian cinema, dearly to thousands, because Brazilian cinema is still very dependent on government funds. It's never a state policy, it's always like a government policy. So it changed on the Bolsonaro, for example, if we didn't have any films going on there. But back in the early to thousands, on the Lula, there was a government that believed in the Brazilian cinema in culture and industry, which there is a big tradition of Brazilian films. It's a cinema nova or a global hosha, you know, Leon Hism and all those, even Kaká Diegas just mentioned, Dr. Babanc. and one thing I'll just quickly say, people should go watch your criteria in Claset video because you talk about some of the most important ones. It's a cinema that it's very interesting because it's a very Brazilian cinema. It's a cinema that always tried to understand that country. That's why there's so many documentaries coming from Brazil. Because it's different from it's a whole South America cinema in general is a cinema that tries to. in search of some sort of identity, you know, as the countries are relatively young. And cinema was a young, we started to make films like, of course, in the beginning of the 20th century, but it's different from places like Europe or even the US that felt that the identity of the country was already too extremely reflected in their cinema. I think in South America, there was like a movement of filmmakers searching for identity and searching for like, what is this, especially Brazil, I think. Which kind of country is this, and so if you see like the films from Cinema Novo when we talked about Gobi Horsche and you see "City of God", "City of God" is a pop film with that same kind of root, you know, like what is to live in a family in Brazil, like it's looking for like social and anthropological results. So in the beginning of the 2000s, we experienced a rebirth and what was interesting and that's very lucky for me is that filmmakers back then were looking for faces that were not the faces of television, you know, they were not looking for the guys that were doing soap operas. They were looking for exactly the opposite, different faces, different accents, different. So that's when I started to do to make films and to work with people like Walter Salis and Dr. Barbeque and Carlos Diaz, you know. Well, I feel like maybe in some ways a breakthrough even after those ones that I mentioned, I know you've called it one of your favorite films that you've done was Lower City in 2005. Your character is sort of part of a love triangle in this. The film goes to Cannes and it was significant, I'm sure, just because you're in a movie that's a Cannes, that's a very big deal, but also, as it turns out, because it was there that you first met, I believe, this Brazilian critic who's there covering the fest, but also screening a short in the director's fortnight competition that year, Green Vinyl, and this person was. Clebberman, don't you feel the director of the secret agent? And so how did you guys even find each other there? Was he seeking out you because you were the Brazilian guy in this Brazilian film? No, I mean, the Lower City is a film that I love. It's directed by Sergio Machado, like you said, it's like Jill is a gem in Brazil in Salvador directed by this great director and with Alicia Braga, my very good friend and great actress in Lazaro Hamus, who was in that play with me, I'm acting as well, he's still one of my best friends. And all shot in Salvador by you, so it's a very dear film to me, it's a great film, I highly recommend it. So we were there at Ancestan Regarde, so Clebber came to interview us, like, you know, and back then it wasn't, again, it wasn't very normal to see journalists, critics, or actors and directors from the Northeast, usually actors, those people that would go to film festivals like Cannes or Venice or Berlin were people from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. So I, Clebber and I, we heard it off, this guy from Hissifian, and then I remember that I had read some of his reviews and he was a very mean critic, he had written very bad stuff about some of the films that I had really. But even though I liked him, I liked him, he was his so smart and so cool and I hadn't seen his film, he was there with Vinho Vigil and I hadn't seen any of his shorts when I went back to Brazil. I was like, I wanna see the shorts directed by that critic and they were all, I don't know, have you seen his shorts? I actually have not. They're all great, all amazing, but it was only in 2012 when I saw his first feature film, a film called "Naboring Sounds" that I was like, this is one of the greatest Brazilian films ever deeply grounded into the tradition of political films and it was, I have to work with this man. And then it was all these years later finally happens, but in between a lot of things happen that really exploded your profile in the, in not just Brazilian cinema, but all around the world. And I think maybe one of the first really huge things that happened was you being cast as Roberto Nascimento and I just wanna set it up. This is a captain in Bope, is that how he pronounced it, tasked with, which we should say, like basically the special forces of the police in Brazil. In this film, Elite Squad 2007, tasked with rooting out drug gangs in order to create a safe environment for a 1997 visit that really happened by Pope John Paul II to Rio's Archbishop. You played it first in 2007 that character when he was the captain and then in 2010, the sequel, Elite Squad, The Enemy Within, when he, by this point, he's a lieutenant colonel and then the undersecretary of public security now confronting corrupt cops and politicians. Both directed by Jose Padilla, both terrific. I really enjoyed going back and watching them just in the last week to prepare for this. And there is that just kind of amazing edge and energy and whatever. It sort of reminds me of Scorsese or Tarantino or whatever. Just violence, grit, but very, very substantial as well. And I wondered how you first ended up even hearing about the part and then getting cast. And then also, I know it's a big long question, but like when you were cast, did it seem like a huge, huge deal because I believe it's the case that it was not until after you guys were done shooting that your performance had made such an impression that the filmmaker goes and say at least for the first of these says, wait a minute, we're going to re-edit this and re-record some narration because this guy is actually the star. Yeah, this was, I had seen, have you seen a documentary directed by Jose Padilla called bus 174? I don't think so, but I'm writing it down right now. Putting your list could be because it's a great documentary. It's a documentary about this guy who hijacked at a bus in a human bus in Rio de Janeiro. And it's very humanistic because he treats the guy, we follow this guy and we understand what, how he ended up in that situation. So I was very impressed by that. And then some of my friends, the DP of the film, Lula Cavallo, was a very good friend of mine. And he was like, hey, this guy is directing this feature film about the police, about police brutality in Brazil and you should talk to him. And I met him and he invited me to, and he was, Padilla is a very interesting character, I don't know if I'm mad at him. Yeah. He was like, he put the script on the table, he was like, what do you want to play? You can play whatever, it's like he was like that. And there was these two rookies, they were the main characters of the film, right? There's two young guys. Back then I think I was on my thirties because my son, my first son was just born in 2006. And I thought that I was too old to play the rookie. The guys should, they should be like 22, 23 years old. But there was this other character there, Nascimento, who was a guy who was exactly, who just had a baby, just like me, and was experiencing some sort of emotional distress because maybe he didn't know, but he was starting to feel deep inside that what he was doing, going to the favelas, killing drug dealers and putting his life in danger, wasn't doing anything to the safety of the off citizens in Brazil. And that's the biggest thing about the lead squad. Then we did the film. It was crazy because we went through a very insane train. Oh, yeah, the training. The training? Yeah. The boppy guys, they didn't care if we were actors, they treated us as, it was, I've never heard you might have broken some guys nose. Oh my god, it was insane, man. And yeah, there was things with breaking people's noses, it was crazy. I've never, this would never happen nowadays, people would, it was, so we did that. And we felt that the film had an energy. We felt that there was something there. But the film was highly controversial in Brazil because the, I'm a left-winger since I was born, and the left in Brazil is started to accuse the film of taking the position of, how do you say this, of we were accused of glorifying the police, the action of the police, which I think is very crazy because no one says that Escarcese is glorified. But yeah, it's a political film, and it was very controversial, and I engaged firmly in this discussion, I wrote articles for the newspaper saying that no, the film wasn't, the film was accused of being a fascist film, and it was no, maybe the film is a very strong reflection of how we as a society are nowadays in Brazil, and how the police operates in Brazil. The police in Brazil doesn't exist to protect the citizens, it doesn't exist to protect the citizens, it exists to protect the state. This is a very different thing, and I think that's what's in the lead squad. But the craziest thing is that we went to Berlin with the film, and who was the president of the Jury in Berlin, Costa Gravers, the biggest left-winger director in the world, and he gave us the Golden Bear. So that was that was it, he was a big hit in Brazil, it was a big hit in Brazil. Well, let's go back, though, for a second, because I don't want to gloss over. You mentioned it was originally you get a center on these two rookies, but here, let me read you something that Padilla said, "In the cutting room, I watched the footage, and it was apparent that Wagner had stolen the show. I had to reconstruct the voice over to move the point of view from one character to another close quote." Remember how you first learned that this was going to happen? You had to come back and. Yes, because he was calling me to the studio, to record the voice over. I've never seen in my life a film. For example, the secret agent is exactly the film that I read on the pages of that script. He didn't change scene positions, he didn't cut many scenes, it was like scene one, scene two, scene three. It was exactly the same thing. Elite Squad, I had never seen anything like it. The script was completely different of the film that you saw the other day. And I mean, we have a great editor, Daniel Hasey, who edited a CD of God, got a Noscone animation for that. I don't know how they did that. So that first one, as you mentioned, controversial, but huge hit, critically, commercially, wins at Berlin. Obviously, when something's that successful, people often want to sequel. And in this case, that is what happened. But I guess you've said that you actually prefer, I think, the second to the first. Why is that? I think we had more control over what we wanted to say in the whole controversy about the film, endorsing, maybe that's the word I was looking for, endorsing the police brutality. Yeah, the film was super edited and the first one, it's very strong, but I think the idea, what we wanted to say with the film, went out of control. Which is okay, which I think this is what films were supposed to be, and I have a read on the film, and maybe you see the film in something else. But in the second one, we wanted to make sure that people would see that we were actually talking about something very important, which is like how the police in Brazil operates, and how a policeman can suddenly understand that his entire life, and everything that he believed and everything that he fought for didn't really mean anything. That's a very tragic thing, that's a, nothing matters, a very tragic character. I feel him like, as one of those Greek tragedy characters, the characters that walked towards a tragic path without, there's no way this won't happen, this is going to be tragic. So I really liked it, I think that we had more control over it, and I really liked the result of the second one. But I love the first one. Yeah, they're both amazing, and I guess coming out of the second one, which again I think became the highest-grossing Brazilian film ever, there have been so much anticipation, but so that second one comes out in 2010, and I think pretty soon after that, you're, if not even before that, you're starting to hear for the first time from filmmakers outside of Brazil. We want to, we want to work with you, and I guess what ends up being the first Hollywood project was Lesium, for your alongside Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, you're being directed by Neil Blomcombe. Now did you immediately acclimate to working abroad, or was there a bit of a, because I think after Elite Squad, I think you've alluded to this, like when we had, you were nice enough to do our actor round table, and you said there were people early on who are saying, you know, lose the accent, do this, do that. I'm sure there's a certain amount of play of the kind of guy you've just become famous for playing. What was it like as the world suddenly started to open up? I guess that I was, my experience being an actor from the Northeast of Brazil and having gone through all that in Brazil, made me more aware of that, you know, like of course people, and also too, I think I was lucky because when I started working here, things were a little still like very stale, but I think it is changing, it's been changing a lot. But I think also that the actor, it's an actor, it's your responsibility to go like, no, I won't do this, this is not right, this is not, you know, this doesn't say, it's not good for my people, it's not good for myself, for me as an artist. But Blancamp was great because he's also South African and he had directed the film that I loved, a district nine, you know, very political too, in my opinion, you know, it was a metaphor of the apartheid in South African and Elysium II is somehow, I tend to see politics and everything, but Elysium II is a very political film, it's like to have and have nots people that, you know, like refugees in there. I really liked it, I really enjoyed the experience, I know, and I was like, very like, can you imagine man, I mean, you've been doing independent films in Brazil and then suddenly you were doing a film with green screens and Matt Damon and Judy Foster and all that in spaceships. Right. Was it a bit of a shock? It was great. Yeah, it was great. I felt great. I loved it. And I went full on the character that was like kind of crazy and spoke with her, you know, the weird voice and it was, you know, linking from how the cane and, you know, so my friends are like, dude, you put all the cards on the table there. Well, and that, so that was 2013 and then probably very soon after that, although the next thing that I'm about to talk about doesn't come out till 2015, but I'm imagining a couple of years before that, you hear again from the Padilla who we mentioned had made the elite squad movies. At this point, maybe also because of the success of those films, he's being people around the world are wanting to work with him, including Netflix. So they basically hire him to make a show about Pablo Escobar and the, and more about even more so about just the, the, the drug trade, right? And they say, do you have somebody already in mind to play Escobar? And he goes like, yeah, I have the perfect guy and they go like, does he speak Spanish? Of course it is. For people following at home, who, you know, I hope they know this, but if they don't, the language in Brazil is Portuguese, so you're being volunteered without your knowledge, right? Yeah. So he says, you're going to do it. You're going to have to, and you're a skinny guy. This is a guy who's quite overweight. He's a guy who speaks Spanish. You did not ever speak Spanish. A lot of them like I can, yeah. So what happens? He then calls you up. And now that was the craziest thing I have ever done in my life because Netflix, he's so crazy. But you didn't, and I adore him. He's a, of course, he's a weird, very good friend and, and, but he's crazy and he, and he's like, you do it. He didn't make it clear to Netflix that, that was, you know, that he had invited me to play the part. Oh, so he'd already. So he was like, oh, I have, I have this guy. And he's like, okay, you know, we should maybe, maybe task or auditions in people or that's maybe, I know, let's see if Javier Bardem is available or something like that. But he was like, no, this is it. This is it. And he was like, yeah, you're playing Pablo Escobar, so I took it seriously. And I flew myself to Colombia. Like I paid my ticket and I, and I booked myself in this foreign school for foreigners, to learn Spanish. And I was just living there and going to places where Escobar, I was reading the books, I was doing everything. And I was eating there new. No, no, no, no, nobody knew. And nobody knew. And that's the strength of foreigners. I was doing this by myself. And then, and then, and then I was there eating like crazy to get Chubby and living away from my family. I was there for, I was already there for three or four months already. And Netflix didn't know this was happening. They didn't even know that you know. But I guess, there was there I had been cast, but you know, I'm sure he was saying like, yeah, yeah, I have the guy and they were like, yeah, but maybe let's, and one day they went to Medellin to scout to see locations. It was like producer Eric Newman, who also became a very close friend of mine, Chris Brinkado, the writer. And Padilla. And Padilla was like, okay, now you're going to meet the guy who's going to play Pablo Escobar and he, and he arranged a dinner and we sat like, and we talked. And thankfully, the conversation went super well. It was awkward in the beginning because it was great. Can you believe this? It's like, it's like asking you to go, you are going to, let's say, to South Africa. And you're going to play Nelson Mandela. I don't know. It was something like that. Well, on one level, I could see why it's crazy. On the other level, it's like if you're hiring Padilla on the basis of the elite squad movies, you get the guy that made the elite squad movies with them. Yeah, and back then Netflix was very open to that. Okay. It was the first years of Netflix. Remember that time? Of course. And Netflix was like, they would just give you, they would just hire the talent and go like goal. Yeah. Yeah. So we benefited a lot from that. I remember the conversations about whether Americans would read subtitles or not. That's what I want to ask you about next because we have to just remind people because the world has changed so much. It's only just over a decade since Narcos came out the first season. But at that time in 2015, when it went on or when it dropped, as you say, like Americans historically had not really shown up to watch or at least they had not bought tickets to go to a theater to watch this. Now maybe part of the thing was the ease of taking a chance because you're just at home and you can click on something. But you guys really blazed the trail. The parasite wins best picture. There are people a few years later, five years later, I think after after Narcos went on the air, people there were saying, this is only possible because of something like Narcos, which conditioned people to in America to subtitles. Then Squid Game becomes the biggest thing ever on Netflix on and on and on. Now every year, there are multiple movies, hopefully, and should be secret agent among them that are not English that are getting nominated for best picture. It's kind of amazing the impact you had, but you didn't think nobody thought that was going to happen. No, I remember vividly like talking to Newman, to Padilla, and we were like, yeah, I think this might be, this might work in Europe, you know, things like that in other territories. But yeah, the US, we don't, this is not going to happen. So what was the first realization? I guess Netflix even then was dropping the whole season at once, right? So the day that the show drops from then, how quickly after that did you start it to realize that things were going to be different? I don't really remember. I think it took some time. I think I think it was when I got nominated for the Globes, you know, I got an nomination for the Golden Globes for doing this. This thing in Spanish, I think that's when I was like, okay, and I started to become recognized here in the US. I was walking on the streets and people were like, are you the public from our guy? I think that's like, but that was like, I don't know, at the end of the first season. Yeah, we had to release the first one, yeah. Amazing. Then the second season, it's kind of interesting because this was the one, maybe, where your challenge was even more different because we see a lot more of him with a family and you have to kind of essentially humanize a monster, which obviously every person is a human level. But was that, I mean, was that or was something else, maybe like, what did you find the most daunting about that character? You know, again, I went back to the previous experience of playing Nasi Mantle in the lead squad. And because when I said that the left, the left wing in Brazil was angry about the film, the accusation was like, you humanized a torturer, a killer, and I always found that accusation can't kind of crazy because I'm going to be like, this is kind of my job. Yes. It's like, everybody is a human, you know, like Nasi Mantle was a human being. And I don't have to agree with the things that he's done, but I have to look at him and see him as a person, and Pablo Escobar was the same. Of course, he was a despicable person, he was a sociopath, but he was a human being, right? I mean, I think I've read everything that was written about that man, you know, and seeing everything. And he really loved his family, his kids, you know, was a good friend to some of his friends, and did very good things for some people and for poor people in the image. Until today, if you go to Medellin, he built like an entire neighborhood. But this is, you know, the kind of thing that happens also in the favelas of South America in places where the state doesn't get in, or in places where the state only gets in with brutality, with police, with force. That's when people like Escobar or, you know, Narcos, they take over, you know, because they start to occupy a space that the state left alone. So after the second season, the show continued, but that was it for Pablo and for you. And I think from what I've read, you were pretty okay with that, it's been a lot, and also probably a lot to carry around for that time, mentally, physically, all of that. But now you're, and you hadn't taken work in between the seasons, you were focused. So now, for the first time, you have with a bigger international profile than ever, you have to consider what to do. And I wonder if you can talk about how I think, at around that time, you must have been thinking I want to direct. Yes, it's interesting, because I feel sometimes like, right after Elite Squad, and like you say, the Elite Squad was huge in Brazil, huge, like the Nassimento became like a pop culture character in the United country. And right after that film, what I decided to do was to go to theater and play, and so I did hamlet. And right after Narcos, I felt that I had to retreat to do something similar. You know, I was getting the same offers, like let's, to play bad guys, Latinos that were mean and violent and things like that. Nothing interesting was coming my way. And I thought that instead of, nothing interesting was going on in Brazil as well. So I had this project of directing this film about this revolutionary, this man who was the leader of the armed resistance in Brazil against the dictatorship, a man called Carlos Marigela, a biography about him was had just been released. I bought the rights for it. I got together with Fernando Marelli, the director of City of God, who was the producer of the film. And we produced this film and I directed my first feature film, which was, again, not an easy choice in a moment, but Brazil was starting to become very polarized politically. That's right. I wonder if I can interrupt for once because I want listeners to understand. You finish Narcos in 2016, or it drops in 2016. Marigela comes out in 2019. And between in 2018 is when we have Mr. Bolsonaro show up. I think, first of all, people should read and look into this themselves. They can also check out this new documentary, Apocalypse in the Tropics, which gets into this. But can you just give the kind of cliff notes version of what happened in 2018 to 2022 that affected a lot of Brazilians, but certainly among them, a lot of artists, including yourself in Clevver and your film, it affected your film. Listen, Brazil was under a very heavy dictatorship from 64 to 85. And after 85, we had the most liberal constitution in the world, you know, the country walked towards a very liberal and left-winger and with social, let's fix the social issues and let's let's be like free education, free health, it's like it's beautiful actually. This is still there. But we lived under the illusion that we had buried that past of authoritarianism and fascism. And it's not only the dictatorship, the history of Brazil is built upon violence and colonialism and imperialism from America, from the US and interventions and things like that. And Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish its slavery, for example. So all these things suddenly manifested in a man called Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right congressman who was like a joke when he was a congressman, we all looked at everybody like, oh, the clown, you know, and suddenly, I don't know what the, I can't talk about. I don't know what caused this, of course, there was a movement in the world of the far-right and everything, but he became serious contender to become president of Brazil. And then we stopped laughing and then he won the election. And when that happened, it was like we were living in the worst nightmare ever, like because he was bringing back the values of the dictatorship, he praised the torturers, he praised the killers, he openly, he was like these guys were heroes in Brazil. So and I had just directed a film about a revolutionary that fought against the dictatorship. And as you know, like the technology, and that's why again, my journalism is so important, the technology and made like the way people get information, you know, people are living in their islands of information, those bubbles of information, causing polarization. I did another film about that, with Civil War, we can talk about this later, which is exactly about that. You know, the aftermath of a polarized situation. So that's how Brazil was back then, and that's exactly when I was about to release myself. So we received like death threats, horrible things, people saying that they were going to go to the set and break shit down, it was hardcore. The film was released in Berlin, in competition, it was great, like in a special screening, it was beautiful in 2019, super well received, all the critics, everything was great. We started to go like to many other film festivals in the world, but we couldn't release the film in Brazil. How did that actually work? They made people just not theaters were busy or what would they do? There is an agency in Brazil called Uncini, which is the agency that regulates our industry. And they took over, you know, and so it wasn't censorship how it was back during the dictatorship, like you want to release a film, they just made it impossible. All the channels were blocked, it was like, but even though we did it, the film, of course, we could only release it in 2021, like in the end of the pandemic as well, but it was a beautiful movement because people in Brazil were like, they were like, this film needs to be, we had so much, so many support, it became a political tank. You know, in many places we had to have metal detectors at the theater and things like that, but we screened the films, the film in social movements, you know, in Indigenous trial. It was very, it was very strong. And it was in this same time period when Bolsonaro's giving artists of all kinds a very hard time that you and Cleber kind of reconnected? That's how we got together again because Cleber was also very vocal against Bolsonaro and when he released his film in Cannes, a film called Aquarius. That's what's before Bolsonaro, but that's, there was the beginning of the movement that led Bolsonaro to power because we had a coup d'état that ousted our first female president Dune Rousseff. And Cleber in the red carpet and the actress, they displayed like posters saying there was a coup d'état going on in Brazil right now. And he suffered the consequences of that when Bolsonaro took over. So we were both like any fascist president, if you go to the manual of fascism, they all go after journalists, university and artists, you know, and especially the ones that are vocal against him. So it was hard. So Cleber and I started to call each other in going like we have to do something. How can we react to this and that's how a district agent was born, I think, from our shared perplexity over what was going on in Brazil in the 20th century. I think you've also said that the character who you play or you really are playing three characters in a way, but the core of the of the guy is that it's a bit of Cleber and a bit of you, right? So this is a very personal, it may be set back in the 70s right when the different issues were being or different characters were part of the national problem, but it speaks very much to the deliberately to the current moment. To Brazil under Bolsonaro, yeah, yeah, right, to the under Bolsonaro. And by the way, in case anyone's listening and thinking like I'm not putting together also some of the, you know, parallels, I mean, a clown, a person who everybody thinks of as a clown who somehow gets elected. And then by the way, we didn't even mention that two years after our January 6, 2021, you guys have your own January, say, same thing, try to storm the capital to overthrow or the government buildings to overthrow, try to overthrow a democratic election. I mean, it's just crazy. And at what point in this process, by the way, you also, you moved to America and became a citizen here, thinking you were getting into a better situation on the Donald Trump, right? Yeah. Yeah. But I have to point out that that right now, our clonies in jail, right? Well, right. You guys took care of the problem. For attempting against democracy in the country, yeah, well, and ours, and ours just paid a visit to South America, so who knows what's, yeah, anyway, between Margiela's in 2019 and, and the secret agent is 2015, I just want to note, there's also the movie Sergio about, yeah, Sergio Viera de Mello, you played the, the UN diplomat in that, 2022, you received an annual ordnomination for voiceover acting in Pus and Boots last wish, which I know you've said, you know, people can sometimes poop and animated movie, oh, it's for kids or a cartoon or whatever. But like, it was significant for you first, good movie, but also. It was awful. Yeah. And bit for, you felt more comfortable language? Yes. Yes. It was great, because as, you know, I had never done that before, so I, I was just showing up, you know, I was like, I was always, I always took two things that were very important for me here, there were two recent things that I've done that made me more at ease, not only with the fact that I'm not speaking my, my native language, but also like, as a nature, I always took preparation very seriously, as you can see, when I did, when I did NARCRA, but with, with, with Pus and Boots, I was just like, you know, what, I would just show up, you know, and see, and so try, so I was trying different voices and then doing things because it was just having fun, and that was great. And then right after that, I was at my place, it was Friday, and I got a call from my age and saying, like, Ridley Scott wants to talk to you, and I was like, what? Yeah. And indeed, he calls me and he goes, they made a, we have this thing here, it was Friday, but we, can you fly tomorrow and can you be shooting on Monday? And I was like, I'm sorry, Mr. Ridley Scott, I can't, I can't do that. And then, and then I read the scripts written by Peter Craig, it's a series called Doepthee. And then, and then Brian Terry Harry called me and to the move me, he was like, I know dude, it's too much. I mean, I appreciate that you took the time to read it, but it's crazy. And as soon as I heard his voice, I was like, I'm doing this. So I went there, really not knowing, so it was two experiences that really fortified me as a, like, I didn't know the character, I didn't know the lines, and I just showed up, you know. And I was interesting, you have to be careful with what you ask for the universe, because I was like, I think I need to do something that would take me off my, you know, my comfort zone. And so these two things, like, boosting boots, you're just deliberately having fun. And Doepthee, which was scary, but like, show up, listen to your colleague, connect to him, and do it. And that was great. Well, and also in these years between the Margaela and Secret Agent, you've got two times playing a journalist, Shining Girls on TV, and then also Civil War, which we mentioned. Alex Garland's film, I think you were originally approached about devs, but that was, instead, that wasn't possible. I was doing Sergio, this film that I just mentioned, because when I finished Narcos, also in the, and I had directed Madagela, back then you, again, like Netflix was like, very open to, yeah. Two ideas, and I was like, I want to do a film about this Brazilian diplomat, you know, this guy called a real character, a real hero, a guy called Sergio Vierge-Mell, who was supposed to be the next Secretary General in the UN, and he was killed in Iraq in a terrorist attack. And they, and Netflix was great, they gave us the money to make that movie. And so therefore, it couldn't be in devs. But I'm very glad that Alex Garland remembered me for his next project, which was Civil War. Totally. And then the last one that I'll mention before Secret Agent was also Mr. and Mrs. Smith, where you go to do some comedy, I do have people don't always, I think maybe they're still are thinking you're a Pablo Escobar, they don't realize you could be funny too. And then, as you mentioned, Dope Thief of Terrific as well. But then this year, in Can, came the Secret Agent, and I just want to, I'm going to set it up in case there may be people listening who have heard of the title and they haven't seen it yet, or whatever it is, just so that, and correct me if you think I'm framing it wrong at all. Armando, formerly a scientific researcher at a university, right? Now, in late '70s, Brazil, at the height of the military dictatorship, he's a widower at this point on the run from the regime, going by Marcelo, hiding out on the property of an elderly woman who houses fugitives in Hessey, Saturday, you pronounce it, yeah. Including Carnival, hoping to reunite with his young son and get out of the country. So that's character one and two, I guess, in a way. And then character three is the grown-up version of that son, Fernando. So after all these projects that we've talked about, been years since you've gotten to act in your own language in your own country, you go back to do that, playing this character who we've said is sort of a mix of you and clever at a time in Brazilian history when you were alive, but very, very young. I guess it all made for a very emotional shoot. Yeah. Yeah. But a very happy one. I was very happy. I was very, like, I hadn't worked in Portuguese for 12 years, which is insane. It's crazy. And again, I wanted to work with Clubber. It was a very personal project. I'm a producer in the film. It was a real-- there are films that you do and you're very happy doing it. And the film doesn't end up being good. And there are films that you do that it's very chaotic and crazy. And the film ends up being great. You know, I think that the films that don't reflect the processes of making them, which is interesting. But in this case, I was happy from day one to now. I love talking about it. I think it's a great film. I think it's an important film. I think it's a film that I feel-- that's the kind of film that I'm-- you know, if you see the films that I've been doing and, like, this makes so much sense. Political films and something to say with characters that are complex and-- So yeah, it was-- it was-- to be in his seep, to be speaking Portuguese again, you know, to be working with Clubber and working with such a diverse cast from actors from the Northeast of Brazil. So I'm non-act, or people who hadn't acted. Some of them, professional actors, who plays the-- who houses the refugees. You guys are also shortlisted for the best casting Oscar. I think it's obviously first and foremost great that you're the star of the movie. With the cast, it's an ensemble of people that just wonder where they've found all these people. That's amazing. It's an amazing cast. But what challenge are you the most here? What was-- I mean, you've done a lot of different kinds of things. You've done them very well. So I'm wondering what, if anything, was different? I think I'm more and more conscious of the fact that I'm kind of always playing a version of myself with every character that I play, even boozing boots. You know? It's me. It took me some time to fully understand that, like, and now I'm very aware of that. So the secret agent was, like you said, it's clever, but it was a lot myself there, like, Wagner. Many scenes, I would just-- with some scenes with the lady that just mentioned, I don't have time at the Sebashana, you could see that I'm in awe. You can say, I allow myself to be just looking at this lady and be like, oh, my gosh, she's so wonderful. So sometimes the camera's on me, and I'm like, as Wagner, I'm like, oh, my god, it's so funny. It's so great and so cool. So there was something happening, I think, that something happened in the secret agent, because I usually, as a political person, and like a Latino man, I react to injustice in a very explosive way, usually. And you can see this in films that I've done, you know, especially Les Gradegas, like it's like-- and in this case, I couldn't-- this character couldn't be like that. And it's the character that I've played that suffered the biggest amount of injustices. Like, he had his wife died. Do you want to take his son from him? They took his job. They've persecuted him. Do you want to kill him? And he goes on being very stoic and keeping everything internally, all the emotions within himself. And I don't think I have ever done-- maybe in Sergio, but I don't think I have ever done something like that, you know, which I couldn't really react physically or even like with words to anything. It's just-- everything was just like within myself. And that was different. I don't-- I wouldn't say that there was a challenge, like-- but it was interesting to go through that-- as myself, as far-- because for me, it was always like that. It was like, what would I do if I was there, you know, me, for-- how would I react to these things? Sometimes we don't know how we react to things. And just-- so that's why I also love acting with some-- for me, it's about the moment with the action, and then go, I don't like many-- I don't like sometimes actors and director they like to, hey, so we should do this, and then we do that, and then-- and when I do this, you do that. I don't like that. I like, let's just see what happens. You know, let's just go and-- and some actors are just amazing to work with. And I just think, you know, Brian Tarihari, who was my partner in Doe, please, and it's just a joy. Yeah. And most of the-- and all of the actors of the Secretaries. Sure. Last couple of minutes are just sort of big picture. I wonder what you think when I throw out something at you about random stuff. I mean, first of all, with Secret Agent, 20 years after you are at Cannes and Meek Clevver, you're back at Cannes with the premiere of this movie, and you both win awards. You win Best Director. You win Best Actor. Movie kind of explodes there, just when you think about that full circle moment, just what-- as the first of these kind of quick brief things, what's your-- it's kind of unbelievable. It is. It is. It makes you think of something magical or hidden, and it makes you think about destiny and these things, you know. It was very-- it was very magical. Next thing, what is the impact? Obviously, people all around the world are watching it and enjoying it as a movie. But you guys made it to say something about not just the Brazil of the 70s in the film, but about Brazil of today where fortunately things are there better than they were when you were thinking about making this, but like, what is the impact you hope it will have in Brazil? It's interesting, because the film, or actually any art form, is always a-- the encounter of what an artist wants to say with a very specific audience in that particular time that sees that thing. You know, I think that had we released this film under Bolsonaro, it would have another film. It would have-- it had been another film, the same film, but with another meaning. Yes. You know, when I released-- when I released a Madagela under Bolsonaro, it had a very different meaning. Now Brazil is a democratic country, you know, that laughs culture, that-- finally, but there was a very interesting thing that I want to point out, because the secret agent is a film about memory as well, and the lack of memory. And Brazil has a problem with memory because we had the thing-- we always had things like-- in the end of the dictatorship, we had this thing called the Amnesty Law that basically forgave all tortures and killers that did the applicable things to civilians. So if we hadn't had that law, Bolsonaro would never had been elected, for example, you know, because we wouldn't know people wouldn't forget. And right now, Brazil, for the first time, sent to jail military people and a former president that attempted against democracy in the country. And we are releasing this film right now in this very particular moment. And there is one character in the film, which is the woman who is a researcher in the future. And she's one of the youngest characters of the film. It's a woman. And it's a young woman that cares about memory. And what she offers my character in the end of the film on the table is a piece of memory. That dude is not capable of dealing with that. But my dream and my hope and what I can see at this moment right now is that young Brazilians will be able to deal with our memory, you know, and cherish our memory from this point once. And here's where cinema can really make a difference because it's you guys are coming a year after I'm still here, which is also about memory. Exactly. And it has really made the world, it's had that effect in Brazil and it's made the world say, oh my god, Brazil's very serious doing great stuff with film as well. I guess the last question is, well, last two if I can. And the last one we're talking, I'm sitting here across from probably the most well-known South American born actor living in America, right? So I feel like I have to ask you, what do you make of the shit of the last 48 hours, which is when just so people know when we're recording, it's going to post a little later. Like, America is basically declared war on Venezuela, it's, it's just unacceptable, you know, and, and, and, and let me point out like first, the first thing is like this is has nothing to do with supporting Maduro, his regime. I think he's a detector. I think he's Venezuela deserves better than Maduro, but the United States invading a country, bombarding a country, killing people in a country and kidnapping its president. It's a very, very dangerous president, you know, and it's, it's happening in, in, in South America, in Latin America. It makes us think of old times of American imperialism in, in, in Monroe, the doctrine and the big stick thing, or, or, you know, I, I'm sure you know that all the detectorships in South America in the '60s, the one that we are talking about in the secret agent, for example, in the '60s and the '70s, they were all supported by the CIA and the United States. So this cannot be accepted, and I, and I'm not seeing a strong reaction from the international community, you know, I'm not seeing a strong reaction for, this has nothing to do with, oh, it's Iran, it's Russia, it's the, it's, it's, the international community has just condemned this attack, as an attack to a sovereign country that has its issues. I myself think it is a dictatorship, and I think the Maduro is, but we cannot, we cannot accept this. And they're talking already about doing it and watch out, Columbia, watch out, Cuba, all this stuff. So anyway, but it is, yeah, it is, it is dentures is, it is dentures, it's very, I'm very concerned about that. The last question on a happier note is, this is a pretty amazing moment for you personally. I will say you were the first South American to win the best actor prize it can, the first Latino to win the New York Film Critics Circle best actor prize. You're nominated for best actor, critics choice and Golden Globe Awards, first Brazilian ever nominated in the category that you're nominated in at the Golden Globes, SAG and Academy Awards. You can, you won't say it, but I'll say it, let's look in forward to that. But what is this moment like for you to be kind of, you've experienced a lot of success and you've received nominations and things in the past, but I feel like this has got to be different and just wondering how you're feeling, what you, I know you're also already on to other things, you're working on other things, but just what's this moment like to be you? It's great, it's a wonderful moment from my life, I don't like the word career, it's my life, it's a great moment for Brazilian cinema, it's because also under Bolsonaro we were, there was this cultural war where he very effectively managed to transform artists into the enemies of the people in Brazil, that's not my chance that I was playing this play in Brazil a month ago, the anatomy of the people and the adaptation of that, and it's beautiful to see Brazilians engaged right now in saying like these artists, like what happened to them still here last year, Walter Salis, Fernando, to his Brazilian cinema, no country develops without the notion of culture, without seeing, we have to see ourselves in our production, and I think it's beautiful that we are living this moment, so it means a lot for me personally, for my life, for what I've been building in my career, I like to look back at the things that I've done, and I see some coherence, and I like that, and I can't deny that I feel proud of that, but I feel very happy with Brazil, with this being my Brazilian film, receiving all these attention. That's great, as you know, thought terrific in this, and so many other things, and excited you're going to direct again, and anyway, thank you so much for coming in and doing this. Thank you, man. You're very nice to talk to you. It's always great to talk to you. You too. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Awards Chatter. We really appreciate it, and would really appreciate you taking just a minute more to subscribe to the podcast, and to leave us a rating and review on your podcast app. And to follow us on Twitter and Instagram, where our handle is at Awards Chatter. On those platforms, we announce upcoming guests, and provide details about special live recordings of the podcast that you can attend. Until next time, thanks again for tuning in.