Wagner Moura has been picking up awards ever since The Secret Agent premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. At Cannes, he won the Best Actor award. He was nominated for a Critics Choice Award and Golden Globe. He won Best Actor awards from the Chicago Film Critics Association, Gotham, LA Film Critics and NY Film Critics among others. Even though he was snubbed for a SAG nomination, I genuinely believe he’s a major contender for the Best Actor Oscar for some reason. I haven’t even seen The Secret Agent yet, but I’ve loved Moura every time I’ve seen him in anything. Moura is Brazilian, but he’s now a naturalized American citizen, which I didn’t know. Well, Moura spoke to the Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, and he ended up speaking about Donald Trump’s invasion into Venezuela and American Special Forces kidnapping Nicolás Maduro last weekend.

Wagner Moura, our guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, is arguably the most successful and respected Brazilian actor in the world. He has been described by NPR as “superb,” by The Washington Post as a “powerhouse” and by the New York Times as “simply great.”

Moura’s credits include starring roles in two of Brazil’s biggest blockbusters of all time, 2007’s Elite Squad and 2010’s Elite Squad: The Enemy Within; the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar on one of Netflix’s first hit series, Narcos, on which he starred from 2015 through 2016, and which made him world-famous and brought him a Golden Globe Award nomination; characters in American films like 2024’s Civil War and TV shows such as the 2025 limited series Dope Thief; and, most recently, a part — or three different parts, in a sense — in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s acclaimed Brazilian film The Secret Agent.

Over the course of this conversation at the L.A. offices of The Hollywood Reporter, Moura, 49, reflected on why he grew up thinking it was unlikely that he would ever be able to have a screen acting career; how the controversial Elite Squad films led to his role on Narcos; and how the 2018-2022 Brazilian presidency of Jair Bolsonaro impacted his country and career, and inspired Mendonça Filho and him to make The Secret Agent (the first project in 12 years in which he has acted in his native language, Portuguese).

Moura, who is an American citizen, also offered his reaction to Saturday’s invasion of Venezuela and capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro by the U.S. military at the order of president Donald Trump: “It’s just unacceptable. This has nothing to do with supporting Maduro or his regime — I think he’s a dictator and Venezuela deserves better than Maduro. But the United States invading a country, bombarding a country, killing people in a country, and kidnapping its president? It’s a very, very dangerous precedent. It makes us think of old times of American imperialism, the Monroe Doctrine and the “big stick” thing. I’m sure you know that all the dictatorships in South America in the ’60s and the ’70s — the one that we are talking about in The Secret Agent, for example — were supported by the C.I.A. in the United States. So this cannot be accepted. And I’m not seeing a strong reaction from the international community.”

[From THR]

“It makes us think of old times of American imperialism, the Monroe Doctrine and the ‘big stick’ thing.” I think this is an extremely common perspective across Central America and South America. Many South Americans were alive when America meddled or threw our weight around during the Cold War or the “War on Drugs.” They remember which side America was on when any sort of organic democratic movement began. Moura is also right that the international community has been somewhat muted. I think that’s less about Trump being a dumbf–k and more about how many people hated Maduro. But yeah, Trump f–king sucks and I love that Moura is talking about that in an awards-season podcast. Moura is so goated.

Wagner Moura offers his reaction to the invasion of Venezuela and capture of Nicolás Maduro by the U.S. military at the order of president Donald Trump in the latest episode of THR's Awards Chatter podcast. Full discussion: https://t.co/6JMEfDHaja pic.twitter.com/X77IFpwq8J

— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) January 8, 2026

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.