{"id":214743,"date":"2025-10-10T17:02:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T17:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/214743\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T17:02:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T17:02:22","slug":"wagner-moura-on-his-ai-fears-movie-the-secret-agent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/214743\/","title":{"rendered":"Wagner Moura On His AI Fears & Movie ‘The Secret Agent’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: Wagner Moura<\/a>, star of Kleber Mendon\u00e7a Filho<\/a>\u2019s acclaimed Cannes Film Festival award-winner,\u00a0The Secret Agent<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a0is scared of AI and how to deal with it. \u201cEspecially,\u201d he warns, \u201cthe idea that the truth as we know it, it\u2019s kind of over. That scares the s**t out of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe worries that when you see someone speaking in a video or a movie, and you hear their voice and see their face and \u201cit\u2019s not the person, and this is scary.\u201d Then he asks: \u201cWho can we trust?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBrazilian-born, Moura\u2019s concerned too, as we all are, about erroneous information that\u2019s put out on the darker parts of social media, which folk lap up as truth. \u201cThat\u2019s scary too,\u201d he sighs, exasperated. \u201cIt\u2019s as if we\u2019re living in different worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t(2nd L-R) Emilie Lesclaux, Kleber Mendon\u00e7a Filho, Wagner Moura, Maria Fernanda C\u00e2ndido, Gabriel Leone and Fred Burl attend the \u201cO Agente Secreto\u201d (L\u2019Agent Secret\/The Secret Agent) red carpet at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 18, 2025 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Andreas Rentz\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\n\tAs if needing momentary respite from talk of AI, Moura gets up from his desk. \u201cI have to brag,\u201d he boasts as he picks up his laptop, moves to a window and shows off the sweeping coastline views, then switches around to show the old Faro da Barra lighthouse out on the Point of Santo Ant\u00f4nio looking out to the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actor keeps an apartment in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, where he was born. \u201cLook at this place, man!\u201d he gloats as he beholds the magnificent scenery, while I look out of my own back window and watch our wild roses being battered by raging gusts of wind.<\/p>\n

\n\tInside the apartment, he points out photographs of Black Brazilians captured by famed French photographer Pierre Verg\u00e9r that are hung on the wall behind him. There are also monochrome prints that Verg\u00e9r shot in Africa.<\/p>\n

\n\tVerg\u00e9r, in his last decades, lived a life of simplicity in Vila Am\u00e9rica, a bairro of Salvador, and photographed his friends and neighbours. \u201cThis is the blackest city in the world outside Africa, right?\u201d, Moura says of Salvador.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd then it became like an Afro-Brazilian thing. It\u2019s very African, but of course it\u2019s very Brazilian at the same time. And there\u2019s an Afro-Brazilian religion here called Candombl\u00e9, [established by enslaved Africans in the 19th century].\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMoura\u2019s a huge fan of Verg\u00e9r\u2019s work and is fascinated by the photographer\u2019s interest in Afro-Brazilian culture. \u201cHe got so involved with Candombl\u00e9 and Afro-Brazilian culture that he himself, didn\u2019t even believe in God, became a very strong personality in this religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCandombl\u00e9 was prohibited at the beginning of the 20th century by the white colonizers and Portuguese, and also whatever was left of the Portuguese Empire. \u201cThey want everybody in the country to be Catholic. This was also like a movement of resistance of black culture in the country,\u201d says the star, rightly celebrated for his roles in\u00a0The Elite Squad,\u00a0Dope Thief,\u00a0Futuro Beach\u00a0and for his monstrously captivating portrait of notorious Colombian cocaine czar Pablo Escobar in\u00a0Narcos\u00a0on Netflix.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Narcos\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWagner Moura in Netflix\u2019s \u201cNarcos\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNetflix<\/p>\n

\n\tThe fact that Moura and I are allowed to have an open conversation involving politics and culture,\u00a0\u00a0in a way goes to the heart of what Oscar and BAFTA contender,\u00a0The Secret Agent\u00a0is about, it being set in Recife, Brazil, at the height of military dictatorship in 1970s Brazil and the curtailing of freedoms and free speech that came with it. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe film, a political fable, is about Marcel, a widower, a quiet man seeking refuge in a safe place, and a place of safety to raise his young son, while paranoia reigns around him. It\u2019s also compellingly wild, whacky, and absurdly outlandish \u2013 a leg, severed from its owner by a shark, goes on the rampage in Recife.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWagner Moura in \u2018The Secret Agent\u2019. Neon<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd there are equally dangerous, thuggish government figures out there up to no good as well. The film was rapturously received at Cannes, winning Filho Best Director and Moura Best Actor. The\u00a0Neon release has been lauded at festivals in Telluride, New York, Zurich, and at other festivals. It plays the BFI London Film Festival next week on October 14, 15, and 18.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeon opens the film in New York on November 26 and\u00a0\u00a0December 5 in Los Angeles. MUBI releases the picture next year on February 20 in the U.K. and Ireland. It\u2019s been on wide release in Brazil since early September. <\/p>\n

\n\tMoura says that he began having conversations with director Filho several years before production on\u00a0The Secret Agent\u00a0began.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey\u2019d met when Moura went to Cannes with Sergio Machado\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0Cidabe Baixa\u00a0(Lower City), with a screenplay by Karim A\u00efnouz, about passion and obsession. The movie played in Un Certain Regard in 2005. Filho was there as a film critic and he and Moura connected through their cultural backgrounds. When Moura returned home, he ravenously sought out the series of short films that Filho had already made up until that point. \u201dI went, wow, that critic made these!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHis admiration was cemented when he watched Filho\u2019s 2012 directorial debut feature, Neighbouring Sounds, a searing study of paranoia and menace.<\/p>\n

\n\tMoura considers\u00a0Neighbouring Sounds\u00a0\u201cone of the greatest Brazilian films ever.\u201d It\u2019s \u201cso political, and at the same time so humane\u2026And then I became kind of obsessed to work with him\u201d and, importantly,\u00a0\u00a0their friendship was forged because of a shared passion for politics \u2013 and a loathing for Jair Bolsonaro, then president of Brazil.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actor\u2019s hope then was to work with Filho sooner rather than later, but their schedules kept clashing. When the filmmaker invited him to be in\u00a0Bacurau\u00a0[2019 Cannes Jury prize winner], Maura was engaged in directing\u00a0Marighella,\u00a0which Filho visited during filming.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey were linked through what they went through under Bolsonaro \u201cbecause we were both very vocal against it and we both suffered a lot of the consequences \u2026\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tMarighella\u00a0was shown in Berlin in 2019, but was censored in Brazil. \u201dIt\u2019s not like censorship the way we used to know during the dictatorship; this was more like how he infiltrated all the means that I had,\u201d Moura protests. For instance, Bolsonaro\u2019s flunkies penetrated the government agency that handled film distribution. \u201cHe just made it impossible to release the movie, so I had to fight a government in order to release a film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMoura made similar comments when he was on the road promoting his work in Alex Garland\u2019s\u00a0Civil War\u00a0film and people were keen to discuss actual civil wars. \u201cBrazil is a very young democracy, but Brazilians know what a dictatorship is. We know how bad that shit is. Americans don\u2019t,\u201d he proffers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAmericans take democracy for granted. I think this is changing right now, but the thing that made me a little scared about the state of American democracy was that I felt that people really felt that democracy was a given. And it\u2019s not. You have to fight for it every single day,\u201d Moura contends.<\/p>\n

\n\tFilho himself had also suffered under the dictatorship and political forces tried to destabilisize the release of his\u00a0\u00a02016 film\u00a0Aquarius. \u201cIt\u2019s crazy because it brings me right to Ibsen\u2019s\u00a0An Enemy of the People,\u201d Moura states, referring to a stage production he\u2019s involved in now, of the classic play, which is about \u201cthe consequences of telling the truth, of fighting for what you believe. How far would you go?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough Moura knew exactly what\u00a0The Secret Agent\u00a0was going to be about, Filho wouldn\u2019t show him the script until he deemed it ready. Filho warned the actor that if he read the screenplay and didn\u2019t like it, then he was to consider himself\u00a0\u201ca\u00a0f***ing idiot. \u201dMoura smiles and says that when he was eventually allowed to read it: \u201cI was like, \u2019This is great.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tClearly, Moura\u2019s an ardent admirer of Filho\u2019s work, both as a critic and as a filmmaker and marvels over the man\u2019s deep knowledge of film culture. \u201cYou can see, for example, that he loves American films from the 1970s, that he likes anamorphic lenses, he likes zooms and things like that. You can see all that. But he managed to make all that very unique and very Brazilian and he creates these moods\u2026And you feel that, \u2018Oh my God, I think that\u2019s something terrible is about to happen here.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0He creates this sensation of fear and of that, you don\u2019t know exactly where it comes from. And at the same time, one of the things that I love about all of his films, is that he creates a sense of familiarity\u2026You feel that, \u2018Oh, I belong to this, I know this, I know this place, I know these people \u2026and every single character that appears in the film is a human being, is someone that has a story. And so I could read all that before I started really working with him. When I read the script, I could see all those references and all those things that I admired in these previous films.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKleber Mendon\u00e7a Filho, Wagner Moura at Deadline Studio at the 78th Cannes Film Festival at Deadline Studio on May 19, 2025 in Cannes, France.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Secret Agent\u00a0opens in stark simplicity. There\u2019s a body on a gas station forecourt. Dead. Flies and wild dogs swarm. Cops come. They ignore the rotting corpse and head to Marcelo, played by Moura, as he stands by his yellow\u00a0Volkswagen Beetle.<\/p>\n

\n\tActually, Moura owns a 1964 vintage Beetle. It\u2019s blue.<\/p>\n

\n\tI wonder about the significance of the car in the film being yellow. Moura\u2019s not sure but later on he wonders if it\u2019s something to do with the yellow diamond at the center of the Brazilian national flag. \u201cBrazil is yellow. It\u2019s our national team\u2019s jersey. And when everybody goes to the street, the people wear yellow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn any event, the yellow pops out of Evgenia Alexandrova\u2019s cinematography.\u00a0Also, I sense that the car signals that Marcelo\u2019s a humble man. Size doesn\u2019t matter. The vehicle informs a lot about who he is.<\/p>\n

\n\tMoura suggests that Filho\u2019s also exploring manhood, not so much in the macho sense, but in its connection to values. Certainly, there were such values in Rodelas, a countryside town located in the Bahia region from where his family hails. Moura remembers how his grandfather and his father comported themselves. \u201cThere was a code of how a man should behave. Integrity. I think of course it was a very macho environment, but it is something that of course everybody should relate to men and women, everybody to act with integrity and everything,\u201d he insists.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBut back then, and this film takes place in the seventies, and I have three sons for example. And it\u2019s really something today to teach them what it is to be a man and how to be,\u201d Moura says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJust behave with empathy and integrity and stick with your values when things are not going well,\u201d he says, getting to the heart of what\u00a0\u00a0The Secret Agent\u00a0is about.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen everybody else, including the government, especially the government, or everybody around you is saying the opposite of what you believe, how to stick with what you think is right?\u201d he asks out loud.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd speaking of Filho\u2019s understanding of the history of movies; standing up for what you believe in, once upon a time, represented what American movies in their golden age \u2013 the John Ford years, let\u2019s say, \u2013 and, therefore its citizens, stood for. Americans stood for\u00a0something, in a way that some observers believe many don\u2019t anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMoura nods in agreement when I note that\u00a0The Secret Agent\u00a0is a powerful repudiation of both Brazilian and U.S. contemporary political culture.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWagner Moura, center, in a menacing scene from \u2018The Secret Agent.\u2019 Neon<\/p>\n

\n\tMoura\u2019s grandfather had a small holding in Rodelas. \u201cHe farmed to survive. He had a couple of goats and would plant what they ate,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0However, the actor\u2019s father was a sergeant in the Brazilian air force and he was transferred to Salvador, where Maura was born, but he was mostly raised in his family\u2019s hometown.<\/p>\n

\n\tMoura speaks of his grandfather\u2019s and father\u2019s calmness and he brings that sensibility to his acting in\u00a0The Secret Agent. His performance, one feels, is at a level that others might want to aim for. Yes, the calmness is external, but look close into his eyes and there\u2019s the hint of the fear that Marcelo must not betray. It seems effortless. But, then so was Fred Astaire\u2019s dancing. A career of working in the theater, on television and on the big screen has gone into creating the dual roles he plays in The Secret Agent. The art of effortlessness doesn\u2019t just happen.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m not going to give away spoilers here about the dual parts. Best to go into the film not knowing. Let it unfold.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDid Filho give Moura direction about acting calm, I ask the actor? \u201cYeah. He did give me,\u201d he responds, \u201dbecause my personal reaction would be more heated. I think that I\u2019m more like an explosive person and maybe that transfers to the way I act. Sometimes my tendency would be to go like: \u201cWhat the f*** is this?\u201d Especially when something is very unfair. My tendency is to break s**t down and to go to the confrontation. And I think that Marcelo has more of Kleber\u2019s temperature. He is more stoic and more like, \u2018Let\u2019s see how this is going to unfold?\u2019 But he didn\u2019t need to say a lot to me because I quickly understood what temperature that character should have. And I understood also that he wrote that character based on what we were going through, but especially what he was going through himself. So it has a lot of him in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso, Moura observes, the way the scenes were written informed him of everything that Marcelo was experiencing internally \u201cand that he was someone that was trying to hide, of course. So he had to be a very discreet presence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWagner Moura, in green shirt, in \u2018The Secret Agent.\u2019 Neon<\/p>\n

\n\tPlus, there\u2019s a child involved. Marcelo\u2019s son has to be protected. \u201cI cannot go crazy. I have to breathe and keep going and keep going and fighting and going through this. And to take that kid out of that town.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt is primal. \u201dI think the fact that he\u2019s a father, it informs a lot of who that character is too,\u201d he suggests.<\/p>\n

\n\tI remember the frenzied cheers that accompanied the announcement by competition juror Hong Sangsoo of Moura\u2019s name as Best Actor. Moura hadn\u2019t been able to return to Cannes for the closing ceremony due to filming commitments. Later, jury chair, Juliette Binoche presented Moura with his trophy at a surprise reception in Paris.<\/p>\n

\n\tBrazilian photojournalists on either side, both women, hugged me in an eruption of ebullience in the Lumi\u00e8re. Don\u2019t quite know why they chose me. I didn\u2019t complain. It was a sweet moment and it was sad that Moura wasn\u2019t able to be there.<\/p>\n

\n\tMoura confirms that he and Filho have a plan to collaborate again, and soon.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOh yeah,\u201d he beams. \u201cI foresaw that when I saw\u00a0Neighbouring Sound, I think I found my soulmate and we were very happy during the shooting of\u00a0The Secret Agent. I\u2019ve been in films where everything was great, everything was happy, and the film is bad. And the opposite, like a chaotic [experience], where you\u2019re sad that everything was going crazy, and the film was great,\u201d he shrugs.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn this case, everything\u00a0was\u00a0great. I was so happy, to be finally working with Kleber and to be working in Portuguese,\u201d for the first time in 12 years. \u201dHow did that happen?\u201d he exclaims.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019d been away shooting films and television dramas in Spanish and then in English. This time, he was happy to be in Filho\u2019s city and to be in Brazil. \u201cWe\u2019ve become very, very good friends. And of course, we want to work again. Of course we do,\u201d he says as he reveals that they are working on a project.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen I push him about it, he protests that it is for Filho to talk about when he\u2019s ready.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe kept running into each other during the Telluride Film Festival, as you do up in the mountains in Colorado.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring an interview with Norwegian thespian, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, who stars with Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd in Joachim Trier\u2019s stunning\u00a0Sentimental Value, she spoke of studying in Brazil for a year and that she learned Portuguese by watching the telenovelas, as the Brazilian soap operas are called,\u00a0\u00a0that Moura starred in.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWagner Moura and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. Baz Bamigboye\/Deadline <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBaz Bamigboye\/Deadline<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIsn\u2019t that crazy? I was like, what?\u201d he cries. \u201cAnd she speaks very well,\u201d he declares admiringly of Lilleaas\u2019s prowess with the Portuguese language.<\/p>\n

\n\tMoura starred in 156 episodes of\u00a0Once in a Blue Moon and shot 167\u00a0episodes of\u00a0\u00a0Paraiso Tropical\u00a0and he considers both were great learning experiences for him alongside his stage work.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAn actor has to learn so many things. First, if you have a main part in a soap opera here in Brazil, you record 20, 22 scenes per day. And you have to memorize all those lines and you have to show up. Some of those things are going to be okay. Some of those things are going to be not that great. And you have to learn not to suffer. And you have to learn how to find the scene that you\u2019re going, \u2018Oh, this has potential\u2019, and go for that one. So it\u2019s a very interesting environment and the response is right away\u2026And these soap operas in Brazil, they\u2019re huge. So the interaction with the audience is crazy because sometimes they think that you are the character. It\u2019s a crazy thing. And I learned a lot. I don\u2019t want to do it again because it\u2019s just insane,\u201d he gulps.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn any case, he jokes that he\u2019s \u201ctoo old\u201d to go soapy with telenovelas again. But they were a great opportunity, he says. They are, he recognizes, \u201cpart of Brazilian cultures, which are soccer, samba, and soap operas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn\u00a0Paraiso Tropical, his character, a \u201cvery bad, ambiguous businessman\u201d starts to have a relationship with a prostitute. \u201cAnd that relationship became like a thing in Brazil. People were crazy,\u201d he smiles. To this day, people come up to him and quote phrases his character used to utter.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe has several films in pre- and post-production status. They include\u00a011817,\u00a0which he and Greta Lee (Past Lives, The Morning Show) shot for director Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk, the\u00a0Transporter\u00a0films), at Shepperton Studios over four months wrapping in June. It\u2019s about a family \u201cthat gets trapped in a house.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRight now, he\u2019s in the middle of performing\u00a0An Enemy of the People\u00a0in Salvador and Rio, a play that couldn\u2019t be, as discussed earlier, more relevant to our times. And that\u2019s definitely the case with\u00a0The Secret Agent.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd, as a student of the great classics of English-speaking theater, Moura\u2019s open to the idea of one day making his debut on the London stage. And, that, my friends, will be the cause of much celebration if he could ever be enticed to perform at, say, the National Theatre, the Royal Court or the Almeida or the Donmar or in the commercial West End. Many Brazilians reside in London. I can picture the excited hugging from theatregoers that will ensue when Moura enters stage left.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn fact, the campaign to bring Moura to a theater in London starts here and now.\u00a0And\u00a0An Enemy of the People\u00a0would be a great way to start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Wagner Moura, star of Kleber Mendon\u00e7a Filho\u2019s acclaimed Cannes Film Festival award-winner,\u00a0The Secret Agent,\u00a0\u00a0is scared of AI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[112399,121899,74265,236,88,121900,121901,121902,121903],"class_list":["post-214743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-artificial-intellegence","tag-awards-feature","tag-breaking-baz","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-international-oscar","tag-kleber-mendonu00e7a-filho","tag-the-secret-agent","tag-wagner-moura"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}