Narcos' Pablo Escobar actor Wagner Moura says 'I think drugs should be legalised'

The Pablo Escobar actor talks Latin America, Brazilian cinema, and his ‘very kitsch’ band
Grey zone: Wagner Moura as Pablo Escobar in Narcos Season 2
Juan Pablo Gutierrez/Netflix
Ellen E. Jones9 September 2016

As the star of the hit Netflix series Narcos, Brazilian actor Wagner Moura isn’t just the man with the moustache. In the recently launched second series he perfects a chiaroscuro portrayal of Pablo Escobar, the drug lord and great anti-hero of Colombian history, which has helped defined the entire tone of the series.

It’s a responsibility he takes seriously. “We wanted to show not the bad guy, and not the Robin Hood, but the grey zone in between. That was something that I myself was personally very involved with,” he says.

A few episodes into series two and it becomes clear to the viewer how Moura’s performance has filtered through to the rest of the show. In order to catch Escobar, the DEA agents (played by Boyd Holbrook and Game of Thrones’s Pedro Pascal) must start to become something like him.

“Everything is very relative, very grey,” says Moura. “We never wanted Narcos to be a regular American cop show, where American super-cool cops go to a poor country and save poor people from the bad guys, y’know? I mean, that would be a flop for us.”

This week’s announcement of a third and fourth series in the works proves that Narcos is no flop, but nor did the first series pass entirely without criticism, which Moura has heard, responded to and in some cases even made a virtue of. Remember those non-specific Spanish-language accents, which initially irritated viewers hoping for a more authentic taste of Seventies Medellín “Paisas”? Those now play more like an intentional celebration of pan-Latin unity.

“Latin America is very complex. To understand what that is you have to be there for a while, so the American writers wanted the Latin people involved in Narcos to give as much input as we could concerning that period. Even though I’m not Colombian, I’m Brazilian — I think that was something that I could be helpful with.”

As for the view, expressed in some parts of the Colombian press, that television should not dredge up this dark episode from the country’s past, Moura is sympathetic but unrepentant.

When a rich kid dies from overdoses, it’s a tragedy. In Brazil, when a favela kid dies, it doesn’t even make it onto the newspapers

&#13; <p>Wagner Moura</p>&#13;

“You can understand that they are kind of sick of drug dealer stories. Colombia became a very modern, interesting, cultural country and all people would talk about is the drug trade. But on the other hand, it’s part of their history. You can’t deny that… It was very important for me as a Latin American person to discover how the drug trade began. So it can be healthy, in a way, and I think this is one of the functions of art.”

Moura was already a well-established stage and screen actor in Brazil before Narcos. He had also had some international exposure, appearing alongside Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in the 2013 sci-fi Elysium and starring in Elite Squad, one of Brazil’s biggest ever box-office hits and the winner of the Golden Bear at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival.

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It’s his performance as Escobar in Narcos, however, that has elevated him into the level of unofficial cultural ambassador for Latin America in the West, and there’s one pertinent issue he’s particularly exercised about.

“I think drugs should be legalised. The war on drugs, which is an American policy, takes place here and not in the US, you know what I mean? Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru; these are the countries where young people from poor neighbourhoods are being killed… When a rich kid dies from overdoses, it’s a tragedy. In Brazil, when a favela kid dies, it doesn’t even make it onto the newspapers.”

A former student of journalism at Brazil’s Federal University of Bahia, Moura stays informed about what’s going on in the world — and not just what audiences are saying about Narcos but everything else besides. On his home country’s recent hosting of the Olympics, he says: “The worst thing that happened was the Ryan Lochte thing which was not Brazil’s fault, actually, so… great!”

Daniel Daza/Netflix

On the recent impeachment of Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff: “Very similar to the coup d’etat that we had back in ’64, without the use of the military force”. On Sixties Brazilian cinema: “Films like City of God or even Elite Squad couldn’t exist if Glauber Rocha and the other guys of the Cinema Novo hadn’t made their films, so check them out.”

Now that Moura’s Narcos role is winding up (no spoiler alert necessary; Escobar’s death in 1993 is a matter of historical record) he is free to further explore these varied interests. Next up is his directorial debut, a feature-length biopic about the Brazilian Marxist revolutionary Carlos Marighella who, like Moura, hails from the city of Salvador in the Bahia region. “He’s a controversial figure because he took guns in order to resist, he was robbing banks and going after military targets… But there was no dialogue [possible] with the dictatorship so that’s what they decided to do and I respect that. I respect every kind of resistance against a bigger economic and military power.”

Any time off between making his film and debating revolutionary ethics is spent with his young family (Moura has three sons with his wife, journalist and photographer Sandra Delgado) or singing lead vocals with his band, Sua Mãe. That’s Portuguese for the universal playground insult “Your Mum” but since this band was formed 24 years ago, with some old friends from his university days, such childishness can be excused.

Six years ago, to mark the band’s 18th birthday, Sua Mãe recorded their only album, The Very Best of The Greatest Hits. “It’s a mix of the British rock of the Eighties, like The Cure,” explains Moura. “That’s mixed with — which I think is very interesting — a very kitsch kind of Brazilian music. So, yeah, you can check it out on YouTube if you want.”

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An ever-curious man such as Moura should have no trouble moving on from an old project, however successful, yet even post-Escobar Moura hopes to remain involved in the show in some capacity: “I would love to direct an episode in season three or four and I have expressed that desire.

“Narcos is a very important thing in my life. It’s something that I dedicated a lot to and I learned so much about Latin America and about myself, because y’know, Brazil is so isolated in South America. I felt for the first time I was part of something bigger.”

Follow Ellen E Jones on Twitter: @MsEllenEJones

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