Wagner Moura on political theatre, the pull of Pablo Escobar, and the threat of ICE
After a big year following his award-winning turn in The Secret Agent, Wagner Moura’s star is firmly in the ascendant. James Mottram looks at the outspoken Brazilian actor’s slow-burn career as he prepares to lead a modern-day sequel to Ibsen’s An Enemy Of The People
You might say that 2025 was finally the year the world woke up to Wagner Moura. Starring in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, the oft-surreal portrait of state corruption in a sweltering 1970s Brazil, it was a head-spinning moment. Claiming Moura the Best Actor prize at Cannes, it sent him right into the heart of awards season. A Golden Globe win followed. And then came an Oscar nomination, making Moura the first ever Brazilian male actor to receive such an accolade.
This is the absolute definition of an overnight success some 30 years in the making. After taking acting classes in his teens, Moura began working in professional theatre in 1996. Despite a brief detour into journalism as a showbiz reporter in the early 2000s, he first came to attention in 2007’s Elite Squad, a stark look at Brazilian police brutality that won the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear. It felt like the first step for Moura using his work to express his beliefs. As he told Time magazine last year, ‘I’m very vocal. I say things. I’m not afraid. I never was afraid to say what I believe because that’s how I am.’ Gaining career traction in Netflix drama Narcos, in which he played Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar opposite Pedro Pascal, he also featured in Alex Garland’s equally incendiary 2024 film Civil War.
Audiences will now have the chance to see Moura up close in Edinburgh when he stars in A Trial: After An Enemy Of The People. Created by Brazilian director Christiane Jatahy, the piece takes on Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 iconic play which told the story of Thomas Stockmann, a man facing shame and exile after exposing a water pollution scandal in his home town. Relocating the story to modern-day Brazil, Jatahy’s reworking combines filmed footage and, uniquely, audience participation. With no lawyers or judges present, each night 11 audience members, who register in advance, will be randomly selected as the jury to preside over the case, shaping the ending of this politically driven show in which Moura stars as Stockmann.
Its provocative nature looks entirely suited to Moura, as he returns to the stage after a long absence. An outspoken critic of both the Brazilian political scene and Trump’s administration, he told El País recently: ‘We’re in a very ugly time; even I am afraid of running into ICE. I’m saying that because I react in a very explosive way when there is a situation of injustice or authoritarianism before me.’
Looking further ahead, Moura has already wrapped Flesh Of The Gods, alongside Kristen Stewart, the new film from director Panos Cosmatos who made the utterly bonkers Nicolas Cage thriller Mandy. This promises to be just as wild, with Moura and Stewart playing a 1980s couple in Los Angeles who join a hedonistic group, indulging in excess and violence. Far removed from Moura’s own quiet life, living with his wife and three sons, it sounds like another masterstroke for this talented rabble rouser.
A Trial: After An Enemy Of The People, Lyceum Theatre, 7–10 August, 7.30pm; 8 August, 3pm.