(SUMMARY) Actress Alice Carvalhowho saw her career explode and all doors opened wide for her with the series “Cangaço Novo”, from 2023, comments on the return to banditry in the backlands, which covers the revolt over the injustices of life, with the premiere of the second season, now with her name, her face, her voice and her charisma duly recognized. She also recalls her participation in the film “The Secret Agent”, in which Wagner Moura’s character’s wife plays, and the current challenge, playing the football player Marta in the cinema.
Dinorah Vaqueiro is a very good name. Good to say, easy on the tongue, a combination of name and surname that almost becomes one thing, “dinorahvaqueiro”. As if it were a state of mind, a nomenclature of someone who has nothing to lose and will risk everything with strength, wickedness and energy. Guns too, because, you know, she’s a bank robber, after all. Anti-heroine from the backlands, fighting patriarchy and establishing her role as deputy leader of the gang by shooting.
Dinorah, role Alice Carvalhois the most striking character in one of the series most important Brazilian stories since this TV series thing became what everyone watches, everyone likes, recommends and talks about when they meet their friends.
The series is “Cangaço Novo”, Brazilian production of the channel streaming Prime Vídeo, which does not disclose audience figures, but, just because of what happened to the career of this 29-year-old actress, it was worth making. This is from the side of whoever is in front of the TV.
On the side of those behind, just see what will happen next week. Not only does a new season of this series of action, suspense and extreme care with every detail debut, from costumes to soundtrack, from art direction to actor preparation, but this time, like Netflix, a direct competitor of Prime Video, all seven episodes will air at the same time, 24/4.
The first season made many adults suffer with waiting a week between episodes, which always ended in an impossible moment of not wanting to know what came next.
In the epic final scene of the season, Ubaldo Vaqueiro, Allan Souza Lima’s character, the good guy from the city who returns to his homeland and reinvents himself as leader of a band of bank robbers alongside his sister, Dinorah, enters a church on fire, where all the accumulated money was kept and rescues the body of his adoptive father.
Around them, without any other resources, the gang and the rest of the family, in desperation, begin to pray a spontaneous Our Father. There is nothing more to be done, the fire is stronger. The camera moves away and the clear voice of Milton Nascimento sings “Tudo que Você Podia Ser”, recorded on the album “Clube da Esquina”, from 1972:
“I wanted to be better later/ You wanted to be the great hero of the roads/ Everything you wanted to be/ (…)
But it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter/ You still think and it’s better than nothing/ Everything you can be/ Or nothing.”
“I wasn’t prepared for that ending. We recorded the scene, but I didn’t know about the track until I saw it on air, it turned into a Greek tragedy when Milton came in”, recalls Alice, in an unhurried conversation, with no end time, held during a break between filming the biopic about Marta, our football goddess. More on that in a bit.
“We pick up the story a few hours after that church caught fire. But between recording that scene and what comes after, three years passed in which a lot happened in my life. So at the same time as it was like coming home, on the one hand, on the other I had to do the work of forgetting everything. Forgetting who I filmed with, ignoring what people said, posted, wrote, you have to forget the interviews, you know?”
“Dinorah is a character that from the first meeting was an invitation to take risks, right? Because it was a process in which I allowed myself, for the first time, as an actress, to fully enter”, she reflects. “When I went to the reunion with Dinorah, I couldn’t be held hostage by my carelessness of wanting to repeat the applause, I couldn’t stay in a known place because it’s nice, so far they liked it, I’m not going to take any chances. No. Dinorah demands that I take off the mask and show my ugly and my beautiful self.”
And look, there was a lot to forget. Alice amended the filming of “Cangaço Novo” with a move from Rio Grande do Norte to Rio de Janeiro, where she went, in principle, provisionally, while recording the scenes made in the studio of the soap opera “Guerreiros do Sol” (Globoplay)interestingly another cangaço story, but this one from the real cangaço, the one from the beginning of the last century, which had Lampião and Maria Bonita, Corisco and Dadá.
Or Josué and Rosa, the names of the protagonists of the series based on the true story. Alice played Rosa’s sister, Otília, a shy girl, who joins the bandit to protect Rosa, Isadora Cruz’s character. On her way, Otília lives a passionate and forbidden romance with Jânia, a society woman played by actress Alinne Moraes. And he enchants the cangaceiro Fabiano, the accordionist of Josué’s band, who teaches Otília how to play the instrument. “I went there to take accordion lessons”, says the actress.
She had already worked hard on bodybuilding and had a Muay Thai teacher to work with just her during the preparation for “Cangaço Novo”, even during the pandemic, when other humans were our biggest enemy. “I also had nutritional guidance, because I needed to gain a lot of muscle mass, but I managed to do that remotely.”
Alice is one for meetings, she likes people around her. A full house is what she knows as home, having been raised among 10 children, siblings and cousins, all cared for by her grandparents in the city of Parnamirim, metropolitan region of Natal, capital of Rio Grande do Norte.
In addition to her work as an actress, she has a long and fruitful history with the group BaianaSystem, with whom she has collaborated for eight years. He works as a multi-artist, directs music videos, visually designs shows, participates in presentations and even composes with the Russo Passapusso group. One of these collaborations, called “Línguas e Léguas”, ended up on the soundtrack of the second season of “Cangaço Novo”.
“After the new cangaço and the old cangaço I made ‘Renascer'”, says the actress, and I confess that it took me a few seconds to realize that it was the name of a remake of the soap opera she was referring to, which aired on TV Globo in 2024and not a way of saying that it was as if she had been born again.
Joaninha, her character in the soap opera, was a humble, religious girl, a good wife for Tião Galinha, played by Irandhir Santos. She faced harassment from her boss, the farmer Egídio, a character by Vladimir Brichta. In the final third of the plot, Joaninha learned to play the fiddle. “And off I went to fiddle lessons”, says Alice.
In the middle of filming the soap opera, one of those life missions came up that you kind of go on without thinking too much about and only later do you understand whether you were supposed to go or not. “It was to do ‘The Secret Agent’. The production had some setbacks during filming and they needed to cast an actress quickly to do that scene with that degree of indignation, but with some elegance, that new fire. And then Wagner said: “Hey, let’s call Alicinha”. It worked out.”
Wagner Moura, the protagonist of the film, as well as the director, Kleber Mendonça Filhothey knew the actress because of Dinorah. At the launch of “The Secret Agent”, here in São Paulo, Alice was on the presentation and defense committee for the film, which toured several national and international festivals, won several awards, achieved excellent box office sales — it is still showing in cinemas, despite having already reached streaming, a rare thing — and reached the Oscars with four nominations, including best film and actor.
Alice, just like when she watched the final scene of the last episode of the first season of “Cangaço Novo”, got a beautiful and immense scare when she saw “The Secret Agent” for the first time, at the world premiere of the feature film, at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2025.
And now, while a crowd of people prepares to marathon the almost six hours of Dinorah Vaqueiro’s new adventures, Alice Carvalho only has eyes for football.
She was crowned with yet another mission — interpreting Marta, the football player who drove the biggest recent change in the sport. Marta did so much for Brazilian women’s football and for the sports public in general, who opened their minds to accept, then support and finally idolize a female player. Even the broadcasts of the matches on TV are a reflection of the barriers broken down by this phenomenal athlete, who is still active at age 40.
“I always knew that my destiny was in contact. Either I was going to be an athlete, in a contact sport, or I was going to do contact theater”, says Alice. “I played futsal, handball, it was a lot of sport. But at one point I had to choose, and the theater spoke louder. Experiencing this reunion with the courts has been beautiful.”
And there went Alice to take football lessons? “I was, I was, I’m still having it. It’s a regimented life, like an athlete. Eight hours of sleep, you can’t go out at night on Friday, you have to eat right, at the right time”, he says. “But it’s very lucky to be able to play a character as enlightened as her while she’s active. Marta is very present in the process, we talk a lot, she teaches me all the time. Not only how to play, but she’s really a mentor, an ethical and moral guide.”
The interpreter’s greatest pride was having won a place in a very select WhatsApp group formed by the athlete, in which Marta transmits a prayer every morning.
I ask if we will see Marta in the Brazilian team at the 2027 World Cup in Braziland Alice tells me she wishes so. “What this woman is playing with, my daughter, is not easy to describe. Boy, when she enters the field, the weight of her shirt seems to change, the atmosphere changes, people stop to see this woman. She is a queen. But she refuses the crown.”
I know what it’s like. Like when Dinorah Vaqueiro enters the plot. No article before the name, to honor the interpreter’s way of speaking.
