This episode of Papo Preto welcomes Heloisa Jorge, an Angolan actress, naturalized Brazilian, with an extensive career on television, who is currently on air in the soap opera ‘Mar do Sertão’, on Rede Globo. She tells how real life is confused with that of her characters, especially about the crossings in her experiences as a black woman.
Heloisa has been based in Brazil since she was 12 years old, studied performing arts in Salvador, at the Federal University of Bahia, and then moved to Rio de Janeiro when she started working on television. Regarding the representation of black people in the audiovisual sector, she celebrates advances, but says that she does not believe they are in the ideal place yet.
“I think what we went through is still very little seen. We didn’t see ourselves on television, in magazines, we saw things and didn’t identify, and we’re talking about Brazil, a country that has a majority of the black population” , it says from 06:36 of the above file. “But we walked a lot.”
She says that there is no point in thinking about representation by having a group of black actors and actresses tell a story if the person writing the story does not understand the experience of those people”. At some point it will go wrong because the person who wrote it does not understand reality of the black person in Brazil” (from 11:52 of the file above).
The actress, who currently lives the character Dagmar in the 6 pm soap opera, says she dreams of the moment when it is no longer necessary to say that we have X black and black actors in the soap opera. Let this be natural.
Papo Preto is a podcast produced by Alma Preta, a journalism agency with social themes, in partnership with the UOL Plurala collaborative project between the UOL, collective and independent vehicles. New episodes air every Wednesday.
Podcasts are audio programs that can be listened to anytime, anywhere — on your computer, smartphone or other device with an internet connection. You can listen to Papo Preto on the UOL YouTube channel and on the podcast platforms Spotify, Google Podcast, Deezer, Apple Podcast and CastBox.
