Andrucha Waddington on HBO Max ‘Ângela Diniz’ Series, ‘Magical’ Year for Brazil and Fernanda Torres’ ‘I’m Still Here’ Follow-Up ‘Os Corretores’
After directing one of Brazil’s most interesting genre works in Globoplay’s highly successful ER procedural “Under Pressure,” renowned multi-hyphenate Andrucha Waddington (“The House of Sand”) is turning his eye to another popular subgenre. In HBO Max’s “Ângela Diniz: Assassinada e Condenada” (“Ângela Diniz: Murdered and Convicted” in literal translation), the director bets on true crime to look at one of the country’s most infamous cases, the murder of a popular socialite in the ’70s at the hands of her boyfriend. See an exclusive image courtesy of Variety above.
“Ângela Diniz: Assassinada e Condenada” is produced by Waddington’s indie powerhouse Conspiração and will land on HBO Max in all territories where the streamer is available on Nov. 13.
The series, based on Rádio Novelo’s “Praia dos Ossos” podcast, reunites Waddington with “Under Pressure” and “The End” star Marjorie Estiano as the titular bon vivant. When we first meet Diniz, she has decided to divorce her wealthy husband, a shocking decision at a still conservative, sexist time. Her predilection for fun and romance was picked apart in newspapers’ high society columns. This infamy was weaponized by her boyfriend’s defense, who used the thesis of “legitimate defence of honor” to avoid a conviction, stirring a wild debate that drove a prominent feminist movement and lasted for decades until the abolition of the legal term in 2021.
Speaking with Variety from the Rio Film Festival, where the series had its world premiere at a packed screening at the festival’s heart of the Odeon Cinema, Waddington calls the project a “dream.” He is also grateful to “Praia dos Ossos” producers Branca Vianna and Flora Thomson-DeVeaux, who shared the podcast’s lengthy research material with the series’s creative team.
“It was something Conspiração believed deeply in,” adds Waddington, saying they acquired the rights to the story in 2019 before the podcast even aired. “We worked very hard to make it happen, and I had to be surrounded by women because it is the only way the story can be told. Our idea was to show what her life was like and how it became distorted in the media, so we could explore how society, despite having evolved tremendously, remains sexist.”
Renata Rezende, senior director of production content for Brazil at Warner Bros. Discovery, says that, more than revisiting a case, their intention with a project like it is to “propose a contemporary conversation about what has changed and what is still being replicated when a woman occupies a space of freedom.” “We believe stories like this help us reflect on the country and the way women are seen. It’s a work that provokes and ignites discussions that are still very relevant today.”
Commenting on his first foray into true crime, Waddington says what motivates him is “working on things I have not done before.” The director has worked on psychological thrillers, documentaries, musicals, comedies… What has he not done yet that he would like to do? “Science fiction. I think it’s a very interesting subgenre.”
The day before the premiere of “Ângela” at the Rio Film Festival, a restoration of Waddington’s feature debut “Twins” screened at the event with the presence of “I’m Still Here” mother-daughter duo Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres, also the director’s wife and long-time creative contributor. “The film is the same age as the festival, so it felt like traveling in time. It was very emotional to hear Ilda (Santiago, the festival’s executive director) talk about the film. Next year marks 40 years of me working with cinema, and it goes by so fast.”
“To premiere ‘Ângela Diniz’ at the Rio Film Festival has a beautiful symbolism to us,” adds Rezende of the festival. “Film festivals are spaces historically dedicated to cinema, and to see series occupying this space shows how the barriers between film and TV have become porous, especially when dealing with works of great aesthetic ambition and narrative strength. It’s a movement that we are deeply proud of, and it’s a key part of our strategy of strengthening local content with artistic quality and cultural relevancy.”
As for what’s next, Waddington has recently finished “Emergência 53,” a series about Brazil’s mobile emergency care service, and is preparing to shoot “Os Corretores” (‘The Realtors’ in literal translation), starring Torres, who also wrote the original screenplay.
“We don’t know yet what genre ‘Os Corretores’ will fall under because I believe we find the tone as we work on the project, but what I can say is that it is a hyperrealist film set in the world of real estate during the brief period where Brazil’s economy grew and then abruptly crashed,” says the director of the project.
As for Torres, Waddington had a VIP seat to the “I’m Still Here” phenomenon in his home country. When asked about the current momentum of Brazilian cinema, the director says it has been a “magical year.”
“I think Brazilian cinema is a phoenix; it is reborn all the time,” he adds. “We have had Cinema Novo, the Cinema de Retomada, and, now, after the [Bolsonaro] government fell, financing is back and we are seeing the results. We generate two million jobs and inject over R$70 billion (US$12.7 billion) into the national economy every year. We are an industry and have structured ourselves well.”
“One thing I think is important is regulating streamers,” he reiterates. “It’s the one key thing missing in Brazil. Everything else, every other exhibition stream is regulated, so it’s time to regulate streamers so we can incentivize and better national production.”
“Ângela Diniz: Assassinada e Condenada” is an original fictional series by HBO, produced by Conspiração and written by Elena Soárez, Pedro Perazzo and Thais Tavares. Waddington and Renata Brandão produce for Conspiração, while Mariano Cesar, Anouk Aaron and Vanessa Miranda executive produce for Warner Bros. Discovery.
“Ângela Diniz: Assassinada e Condenada” is produced by Waddington’s indie powerhouse Conspiração and will land on HBO Max in all territories where the streamer is available on Nov. 13.
The series, based on Rádio Novelo’s “Praia dos Ossos” podcast, reunites Waddington with “Under Pressure” and “The End” star Marjorie Estiano as the titular bon vivant. When we first meet Diniz, she has decided to divorce her wealthy husband, a shocking decision at a still conservative, sexist time. Her predilection for fun and romance was picked apart in newspapers’ high society columns. This infamy was weaponized by her boyfriend’s defense, who used the thesis of “legitimate defence of honor” to avoid a conviction, stirring a wild debate that drove a prominent feminist movement and lasted for decades until the abolition of the legal term in 2021.
Speaking with Variety from the Rio Film Festival, where the series had its world premiere at a packed screening at the festival’s heart of the Odeon Cinema, Waddington calls the project a “dream.” He is also grateful to “Praia dos Ossos” producers Branca Vianna and Flora Thomson-DeVeaux, who shared the podcast’s lengthy research material with the series’s creative team.
“It was something Conspiração believed deeply in,” adds Waddington, saying they acquired the rights to the story in 2019 before the podcast even aired. “We worked very hard to make it happen, and I had to be surrounded by women because it is the only way the story can be told. Our idea was to show what her life was like and how it became distorted in the media, so we could explore how society, despite having evolved tremendously, remains sexist.”
Renata Rezende, senior director of production content for Brazil at Warner Bros. Discovery, says that, more than revisiting a case, their intention with a project like it is to “propose a contemporary conversation about what has changed and what is still being replicated when a woman occupies a space of freedom.” “We believe stories like this help us reflect on the country and the way women are seen. It’s a work that provokes and ignites discussions that are still very relevant today.”
Commenting on his first foray into true crime, Waddington says what motivates him is “working on things I have not done before.” The director has worked on psychological thrillers, documentaries, musicals, comedies… What has he not done yet that he would like to do? “Science fiction. I think it’s a very interesting subgenre.”
The day before the premiere of “Ângela” at the Rio Film Festival, a restoration of Waddington’s feature debut “Twins” screened at the event with the presence of “I’m Still Here” mother-daughter duo Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres, also the director’s wife and long-time creative contributor. “The film is the same age as the festival, so it felt like traveling in time. It was very emotional to hear Ilda (Santiago, the festival’s executive director) talk about the film. Next year marks 40 years of me working with cinema, and it goes by so fast.”
“To premiere ‘Ângela Diniz’ at the Rio Film Festival has a beautiful symbolism to us,” adds Rezende of the festival. “Film festivals are spaces historically dedicated to cinema, and to see series occupying this space shows how the barriers between film and TV have become porous, especially when dealing with works of great aesthetic ambition and narrative strength. It’s a movement that we are deeply proud of, and it’s a key part of our strategy of strengthening local content with artistic quality and cultural relevancy.”
As for what’s next, Waddington has recently finished “Emergência 53,” a series about Brazil’s mobile emergency care service, and is preparing to shoot “Os Corretores” (‘The Realtors’ in literal translation), starring Torres, who also wrote the original screenplay.
“We don’t know yet what genre ‘Os Corretores’ will fall under because I believe we find the tone as we work on the project, but what I can say is that it is a hyperrealist film set in the world of real estate during the brief period where Brazil’s economy grew and then abruptly crashed,” says the director of the project.
As for Torres, Waddington had a VIP seat to the “I’m Still Here” phenomenon in his home country. When asked about the current momentum of Brazilian cinema, the director says it has been a “magical year.”
“I think Brazilian cinema is a phoenix; it is reborn all the time,” he adds. “We have had Cinema Novo, the Cinema de Retomada, and, now, after the [Bolsonaro] government fell, financing is back and we are seeing the results. We generate two million jobs and inject over R$70 billion (US$12.7 billion) into the national economy every year. We are an industry and have structured ourselves well.”
“One thing I think is important is regulating streamers,” he reiterates. “It’s the one key thing missing in Brazil. Everything else, every other exhibition stream is regulated, so it’s time to regulate streamers so we can incentivize and better national production.”
“Ângela Diniz: Assassinada e Condenada” is an original fictional series by HBO, produced by Conspiração and written by Elena Soárez, Pedro Perazzo and Thais Tavares. Waddington and Renata Brandão produce for Conspiração, while Mariano Cesar, Anouk Aaron and Vanessa Miranda executive produce for Warner Bros. Discovery.