- Interviews
Alice Braga: ‘If a door opens I always want to go in’
Queen of the South, where she has the main role and she was ready to finally see the release of The New Mutants three years after she filmed it in Boston when all the theaters in the world closed shop. Still, she is managing to have something to celebrate. Finally, the Josh Boone stand-alone installment of the X-Men franchise is out, even if in some places the only way to see it is in a drive-in theater, and recently she was part of a virtual panel in the DC FanDome to introduce The Suicide Squad, James Gunn’s return to blockbusters, where she plays Sol Soria. And on September 14, HBO will present We Are Who We Are, the debut of Luca Guadagnino as a showrunner in a TV show where Braga has one of the key adult roles. As for Eduardo e Monica, the Brazilian film directed by René Sampaio where she is the leading actress, it will have to wait until 2021. We spoke with the 37-year old native of São Paulo about her presence in so many markets and we also discussed why Dr. Reyes’ superpower could be really practical during a pandemic.
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mso-themecolor:text1′ lang=’EN’>How is it to finally have this movie come out with everything that is going on in the world right now?
I mean I am really excited for fans to finally watch it, we had so many delays. But I feel like the film is coming in the right time for itself. I think it’s such a hard time in the world, people have been locked in and there is so much hard stuff happening that you give this as a gift to the fans finally to watch, especially now that people are eager for creative art, films, and books.
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mso-themecolor:text1′ lang=’EN’>How did you deal with your own anxiety?
New Mutants, it was something that I never dealt with before over such a long time. (laughs) But it was beautiful because the best part of this film specifically is the fanbase, the fans kept excited, they wanted to have a theater release. They never gave up on us. So this was helpful. But definitely to have anxiety to this is huge because when you do something as an actress, you do it for the fans, you do it wanting to share the experience.
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mso-themecolor:text1′ lang=’EN’>You had several experiences with huge movies and Science-Fiction. What is it with fantasy that attracts you?
I really love imagining something that is not the real deal and that comes with me since I was a kid, that’s kind of what put me into being an actress. I love being on set, I love working with a lot of people together to create an imaginary life. So I think this type of genre was what came to me in a way, in a beautiful coincidence, that there were auditions that were opening up for that and the doors that were opening for me were kind of going in that direction. But definitely I think for me it comes from also a side of me that it’s kind of being a kid, for you being an actor, running from a crazy predator wanting to kill you or suddenly you are the last woman alive like in I Am Legend. Or being able to bring to life José Saramago’s novel, who is one of my favorite writers of all time, in Blindness, which is such a metaphor for what we are living in today with this pandemic. So I think it’s my personal imaginary mind that I think led me to these types of films. And the fan base for this stuff, they are so amazing, they are the best fans because they are so connected to the subject and they are loyal.
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mso-themecolor:text1′ lang=’EN’>Were you a fan of the X-Men?
My mom lived in this world and I think I loved it because of her, but yeah, it definitely was. I always liked it because I feel that the X-Men always reflected a little bit of society, I always thought that it was a beautiful metaphor of dealing with different acceptance of who you are, of the different so-called normal.
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mso-themecolor:text1′ lang=’EN’>What can you tell us about Dr. Reyes?
But I do think she is a strong character because she has a plan and she has a focus about agenda, she is a doctor and she is a scientist, she’s really focused on what she believes. And she’s guiding them, these New Mutants to understand their role as mutants and their powers and how to control the powers. So I think mainly she wants to become a mentor, which is a very interesting character, it was a nice challenge.
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mso-themecolor:text1′ lang=’EN’>If you could have one superpower, which one would you like to have?
So now with COVID-19 happening, she could put a force field around herself and just walk around with a bubble around her. (laughs) Or, if someone is not wearing a mask, she could put a bubble around them, so they would be wearing a bubble mask. (laughs) But me personally, Alice, if we weren’t in a pandemic, I think I would love to transport myself, for the sake of being able to be working and then pop off at home to give my mom a hug. I think that would be cool.
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mso-themecolor:text1′ lang=’EN’>You are one of the big Latino stars in Hollywood. Why is it important for you to keep working in Brazil at the same time that you are here?
So I didn’t grow up in the US. It’s different when you come to the country when you are five or something, so I think that is why Brazil is so present in my life. And also because I want to give it back in a way, meaning I love working in our films. I have many Brazilian directors that I still want to work with. I still want to participate in an industry that I deeply admire and love. And also to be able to help other directors to make their film happening. Now we have a terrible government that is destroying any type of investment in our film industry. So it’s a very harsh time for culture in Brazil right now. I had a production company but now I am opening a new one because I really want to invest in our films and in shows, but also to open doors for co-productions in Latin America, maybe doing a production with Argentina or a Brazilian production with Chile because sometimes it feels like a different world, but we are Latinos.
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mso-themecolor:text1′ lang=’EN’>You had to stop filming font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black;
mso-themecolor:text1′ lang=’EN’>How was it?
And then we had to shut down and we are still shut down. We haven’t gone back yet, I am just waiting for the call to jump in the car and go. And it was heartbreaking because we were just excited about Season Five, and taking it off and stopping brings you anxiety because you just want to do it and supposedly it should have aired already. We should have gone to air in June. But I think the right time will come. It’s just a weird time.
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mso-themecolor:text1′ lang=’EN’>We saw your experiences in post-apocalyptic stories. When this happened you must have been like oh, I know this…
We were laughing about it, but I mean it’s crazy. And how similar it is, I mean one of the producers from Elysium wrote us, like how crazy is it that we are talking about this? All of us, me, Wagner, Matt Damon, we all exchanged emails about this because of that, it was like, this is heartbreaking and it’s just cracking down how the world needs to make gigantic changes because this is the consequences of how we are living our lives. What we called normal before wasn’t normal, so it’s very interesting to me. The parallels with this and Blindness are impressive Whoever didn’t watch
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mso-themecolor:text1′ lang=’EN’>You have done another superhero film, The Suicide Squad. Do they call you or do you look for these kinds of films?
normal’>Suicide Squad it was very specific, I mean the character came up, I was actually about to shoot another TV show that I am releasing in September which is We Are Who We Are by Luca Guadagnino and it was like at the same time, and oh my God, let’s try to figure it out, so I talked to James and we made it work and it was very special for me because I am a big James Gunn fan. So it was just a happy coincidence and I loved it. I always say that if a door opens I always want to go in, because you always experience something and that’s just great.
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mso-themecolor:text1′ lang=’EN’>And Luca Guadagnino is another door. What did you find when you went there?
It was a great experience. I think it was an honor to work with him. He is a brilliant director and it’s a different type of show. It talks about these young kids and I am really curious to see how people are going to react to it. He is a very artsy director and that experience was really nice, a very free kind of director for actors. He completely takes you out of your comfort zone so it was a great experience. HBO is doing really cool stuff, so it was nice to get involved with that.