Alice Carvalho didn’t even realize she was sitting on an anthill, such was her euphoria when she received the draft contract on her phone in December 2020 for the lead role in “Cangaço novo,” a Prime Video series that premiered in 2020 MidAugust and received the highest rating in Patrícia Kogut’s review. At this point, a moment of slight recovery from the Covid19 pandemic, the young woman returned from the beach in Natal, the city where she lived, and the friend who accompanied her even became afraid. Alice burst into tears. He hardly spoke.
“I had never received a tenth of this fee in my life,” recalls the 27yearold from Rio Grande do Norte, who was not eaten by ants. — I could structure myself as a grown woman, with a job that would be taken seriously by the world and, above all, by myself. I would give up a million things to reach R$600 at the end of the month. All I could think about was that my life was about to change forever.
That’s exactly what actually happened. In “Cangaço novo,” Alice amazes the audience with Dinorah Vaqueiro, the only woman in a gang of bank robbers from the fictional Cratará, a town in the hinterland of Ceará. Merciless with the local “macho goats” (and with her own brother Ubaldo, a São Paulo native who joins the gang, played by Allan Souza Lima), she is a success on social media. On The Dinorah Vaqueiro version of Barbie is also in circulation.
“Alice saw this work as the greatest opportunity of her life,” says Aly Muritiba, director of the series along with Fábio Mendonça. — She showed a shine and blood in her eyes that we don’t always find out there.
This quality earned him three major commissions after the series was finished recording. The first was the film “Angela”, a biopic of Ângela Diniz, which has been in cinemas since the 7th. In Hugo Prata’s film she plays Lili, the socialite’s (Isis Valverde) maid in the house where she was murdered in Búzios. He then wrote and directed the band BayanaSystem’s visual album Navio, which is currently in postproduction.
The third season, which is still ongoing, gave the actress her longest season in Rio. Since March she has been recording “Guerreiros do sol”, an exclusive Globoplay soap opera set between the 1920s and 1930s and scheduled to premiere in 2024. It follows Otília, a simple woman who has a romantic relationship with the feminist Activist Jânia, played by Alinne Moraes.
— When Alice arrived in Rio with her suitcase and her bag, I remembered myself when I came to work for the first time — recalls Alinne, born in Sorocaba (SP). — She is always here at home with my family, we go out together, we go to shows, parties, lunches. She is my friend, partner.
Regional success
Alice was born in Natal and grew up in Parnamirim, on the outskirts of the capital. She is the daughter of a single mother who became pregnant at 16 and is now the manager of the actress’ “legal entity”. Her grandmother, a seamstress and hairdresser, and her grandfather, a cartographer and professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, played a key role in the girl’s upbringing. It was this trio who decided to expose this “very naughty” child to the arts through theater classes at school, church and workshops:
— When I was 12 or 13 years old, I also fell in love with dramaturgy and started writing to act.
The game became serious and at just 16 years old he performed his first show: “Do amor”. The production began with money that he wished his relatives on their birthdays, and it went so well that it was staged at the Teatro Alberto Maranhão in Natal.
— It was a comedy and there was a line on the corner. I, a tomboy, filled the theater… recalls Alice, who a year later wrote a book based on the show, which was also another success and was even adopted as a teaching material in the state. — It was children’s literature, while I was actually the children’s literature (laughs).
It was a series of plays, independent series for the web (Aly Muritiba actually saw her for the first time in “Septo,” a web series she wrote, produced and starred in) and a small involvement in “Segunda.” . Chamada”, on TV Globo, that Alice survived artistically. With the pandemic, he believed the dream was over.
“I remember losing ground at the time and thinking it was over for me,” says the young woman, the first to say on March 21, 2020, the day Governor João Dória ordered a quarantine in São Paulo “Cangaço novo” test detected COVID19. — I started writing commercial scripts again and picked up some bells and whistles that had nothing to do with what I had been doing for a while. I was very unmotivated by the job of an actress.
Homesickness
Living in a hotel in Rio with two huge suitcases and a lot of things stored in her mother’s house, Alice Carvalho has led a circus existence since she agreed to play Dinorah Vaqueiro. The Prime Video series took eight months to shoot in the Paraíba hinterland. She then moved to other states such as Bahia and Pernambuco until she landed in Rio to work on Globoplay’s “Guerreiros do sol”. Do you miss your homeland?
— Wow, don’t even say that word, my eyes are starting to water. It is the feeling I have experienced the most. I miss my Terreiro, my grandparents, my mother… (I live in a) total gypsy way, Mambembe. I handed over my apartment in Natal, which I could only rent after “Cangaço”. But I never lived there (laughs) says Alice, who doesn’t yet know where her final zip code will be from now on.
The absence of her roots helps in the composition of Otília, a “figure also steeped in nostalgia”:
“I use it as an engine to get up and record every morning.
And it hasn’t been an easy routine: lately it’s been six days of recording and one day off. The rhythm is completely different from the projects I was used to, but participating in a soap opera (even if it is a series intended for streaming) reminds me of my most basic training:
—Watching soap operas and great actresses was my first introduction to the art of acting. Every day I learn something about my body and my mindset on stage. Whenever I come “home” I write down a lot of things. I’m already on my third notebook.
Regardless of what you have seen on television, your greatest references are artists from the Northeast: Titina Medeiros, Quitéria Kelly and Enio Cavalcante, the latter a colleague of “Cangaço novo” (the bandit Jeremias) and “Guerreiros do sol”. She has no doubt that there is now greater regional representation in castings starting with her own flight. The experience on the set of “Angela” is also a sign of this for her. While he initially took lessons to soften his accent, director Hugo Prata changed his mind once he began preparation.
— He said: “We can forget about that. The people of the Northeast have long been scattered across different parts of Brazil, carrying this country in their arms. Let’s say you with your accent.” And I’ve seen the same thing in some series he says, before remembering the actress Quitéria Kelly as coordinator Neide from “Malhação” (2019), a native of Rio Grande do Norte, who didn’t have to hide the way she spoke. — We started seeing each other and we won’t stop. Audiovisual will be a vehicle for this profound change.
With information from O Globo