Rodrigo Santoro wasn’t completely bored in the early months of the pandemic, when film sets were closed. For nine months he had the company of a Portuguese navigator Fernão de Magalhães, who died 500 years ago, to distract himself.
Shortly before the start of the quarantine, at the end of the shooting of his last feature film “7 Prisoners”, Santoro had been invited to take part in “Without Limits”. With the interruption of the industry due to illness, the filming of the series was incessantly postponed, which gave the actor the opportunity to fully immerse himself in the biography of the character.
He speaks of Fernão de Magalhães with a certain passion not in a tone of admiration, but as a friend who feels an intimate connection with the other. “I was literally locked in with him during quarantine,” says Santoro.
“I used to remember only that he was a navigator. But then I decided to explore the intimacy of this man and I read a lot. I read everything on the internet from discussions about philosophers to reconstructions of expeditions like two biographies and a lot about the context of the time. I wanted to get inside the head of a 15thcentury man.”
Santoro has done so much research that he even uncovered details from the Portuguese’s childhood through nondigitized documents and conversations with a historian preparing a book on Fernão de Magalhães, who felt neglected by the king.
“It comes from resentment, from hurt pride and growing up feeling abandoned and needs to prove to the world and to himself that he’s worth it.”
The Spanish production “Without Limits” tells the story of the first circumnavigation of the world in 1519 in the service of the Spaniards. Led by Fernão de Magalhães, who failed to gain the patronage of the Portuguese king, and by Juan Sebastián Elcano Álvaro Morte, from “La Casa de Papel” the company discovered and proved a new way for the spice trade that this was the case The earth is round.
As a Brazilian, Santoro was careful not to romanticize the era of the great voyages, as the exploration of America and countless horrors emanated from them. For the actor, working on Without Borders was interesting because he could see how little has changed in the structure of Brazilian society since then.
“Colonization doesn’t end when the Portuguese leave. The mentality implanted here is so strong that they leave and we continue to colonize each other.”
“Unfortunately, we are still witnessing the fruits of this colonial violence. It is one of the issues that help us understand the current situation in the country. We just saw tragedy with the deaths of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips. hopeless. It is necessary to have hope, but it is difficult, very difficult,” he continues in the conversation, which took place days after the murder of the Brazilian indigenous and the British journalist was confirmed.
But Santoro seems eager to return to the series, a job he compares to major Hollywood productions, with their grandiose seascapes, unsettling action and meticulous artistic direction. Tomb Raider is directed by Briton Simon West.
Santoro fought a bitter battle with him and the producers, defending that Fernão de Magalhães should speak Portuguese at times. They didn’t want to default, but they were convinced.
So the actor had to get out of his comfort zone with a double dose — he not only had to learn to speak European Portuguese, but also Spanish, since the Spanish he knew was loaded with a Latin American accent. “They pulled my rug, but it was necessary to respect history,” he says.