After years of lobbying, the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences is finally awarding an Oscar for casting, starting this year. In December, the Academy announced its shortlist for the category, which included the work of casting directors from 10 films, one of which was Brazil’s official submission to the 2026 Academy Awards, The Secret Agent.
Written and directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and starring Wagner Moura, the movie is set in 1977 Brazil. Moura plays a technology expert fleeing from a mysterious past to his hometown, where he soon learns it’s not as safe as he was hoping. The movie also stars Gabriel Leone, Hermila Guedes, Alice Carvalho, Roney Villela, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Kaiony Venâncio and Udo Kier, among many others. The film is outstanding, as is the work of casting director Gabriel Domingues, who put together the stellar cast and is very close to earning an Oscar nod. He spoke to us from Brazil.
Key Insights:
- Gabriel Domingues cast The Secret Agent as a living ecosystem, blending marquee names, character actors and non-professionals to create a world that feels authentic, tense and deeply human.
- The casting process prioritized faces over fame, selecting performers for emotional texture — innocence, melancholy and lived experience — to evoke the spirit of 1970s Brazil.
- The Academy’s new casting Oscar marks a creative turning point, recognizing casting directors as architects of tone, realism and storytelling.
So how did you connect with the director in the first place?
I worked with Kleber as a casting assistant in his movie Aquarius in 2014. I was 24. It was my first job, and we did a very big casting in many cities in Brazil. Then my career happened, and I became a casting director. The last two years I did other projects with Emilie [Lesclaux, the film’s producer and Filho’s wife], and then she invited me to be part of the team of The Secret Agent.
There are so many talented actors in this film, giving strong, evocative performances. If you don’t mind, I’d like to highlight a few of them. Let’s start with the two hit men — Gabriel Leone, who plays Bobbi, and Roney Villela, who plays Augusto.
Actually, Gabriel is a very famous actor in Brazil. He’s a very known personality here. Kleber described this character with many details. Bobbi is a guy who is sort of an upper-class person who has some mystery and some violence. We thought about Gabriel, because he fits that type.
You know, we had this idea that we want to create this mosaic of actors and actresses who are in different stages of their careers. Gabriel is super interesting because he’s already in a position of being cast as the main character of projects. We invited him to this role, which is so specific, because it’s a supporting role, but Bobbi is also so important in the construction of the tension and the atmosphere of the movie. He was very excited to be working with Kleber, but he was also very interested in how the character should be created.
What about Roney?
He’s super experienced as well. I don’t know that we imagined we could get such experienced actors to play these characters, because they are in a very specific layer of the movie. We’ve got to be afraid of them. They are a little bit repulsive. So you’ve got to get a specific kind of actor to manage all of this. They need to be sinister, and to make you feel afraid that they’re going to kill Marcelo.
On the opposite end of that, since you were talking about experienced actors, let’s talk about Tânia Maria as Dona Sebastiana, who is incredible, but doesn’t look like an actor.
When I was invited to be part of the team of the movie as the casting director, Kleber told me, “I want to work with Tânia Maria, because she’s amazing. She did Bacurau, Kleber’s previous movie. She was an extra, but then everybody was so fascinated [with] her that Kleber gave her, I don’t know, two lines. Something like that. And then on the next movie, she already has this big part. She’s not a professional actress, but she’s an amazing human being. She’s absolutely fantastic as a person.
That’s the thing I like [most] about the whole casting of the movie, because we have these interesting persons existing on different stages of their careers, and with many different origins and everything else. She is a very good example of it. She’s so authentic and original, and it’s an expectation break.
Kleber works with Leonardo Lacca, the assistant director and also a coach of actors. He worked with the non-professional actors to make them [feel] comfortable on screen. Leon had to create this environment of a safe space for her to be herself.
There are so many people in this movie who are like Tânia. Naturalistic and real.
Kleber had this very specific idea [for] every role. That’s why it’s so good. It was also difficult, because we had to try to listen to Kleber’s imagination and his memories. Many of them were people Kleber already met in the ’70s, so he had these faces on his mind. He said we had to have that, and that’s why it was a challenge to find people who look like someone who could be in the ’70s. That’s not easy to define, but there are some physical characteristics that make it more possible.
Speaking of that, Kaiony Venâncio, the actor who plays Vilmar, the local killer, looks like he stepped out of the 1970s.
That was a headache, because it was very difficult to cast. We had many discussions on which actor and what characteristics the actor should have to play Vilmar. Kleber showed me a documentary about a famous Brazilian serial killer and said, “I want Vilmar to look like this guy.” He had these psychopathic eyes, and also has this melancholy, this sadness.
There are two actresses who shine in limited roles — Hermila Guedes as Cláudia, and Alice Carvalho, who only has one scene, but is stupendous as Armando’s wife.
Yes, she’s an amazing actress. That’s why we cast her, because she’s unforgettable. Once you look at her, you cannot forget, and that is this character, this role, Armando’s wife. She just has that one scene, but her presence as a memory, as almost a ghost that’s there, someone that Armando is always thinking about, that’s why we chose Alice Carvalho. She’s not something that you don’t notice.
The same thing with Hermila. She has some coolness, some lightness, some seductiveness, all that we imagine will fit this woman who is with Marcelo. She’s very mysterious, and Hermila is such an experienced actress; she’s a diva of Brazilian cinema.
I have to ask about the casting of Udo Kier as Hans, the Holocaust survivor. It was bittersweet seeing him, since he just died, but how did that happen?
Udo was also in Bacurau. He worked with Kleber before, and Kleber really wanted him to be in the movie. I think he created that one scene just for Udo.
You mentioned that Kleber wanted people with faces who could have been in the 1970s. I’m curious about the challenge of finding so many actors who fit that bill, especially for a cast this large, with so many speaking parts, some even just a couple of lines.
That’s what I was talking about. It’s hard to define what makes someone look like a potential role for the ’70s. Sometimes I feel that in the ’70s, people had more innocence in their eyes, or they’re more naive, or they’re more romantic. They have some kind of melancholy in their eyes that fits.
There is this young guy who lives in Dona Sebastian’s house, Clóvis. It was a difficult character to cast, because Kleber said it’s gotta be someone who’s from the countryside, who came to the city recently, and he’s not adapted to it. So he had to be someone with some kind of naiveness, some kind of purity. It was very interesting to find this guy. I think that helped create the ’70s atmosphere.
You are on a short list of the very first casting directors who will ever be nominated for an Academy Award. What was your reaction when you heard that your name was on this list?
I’m in Brazil right now, and the Oscars seem so far away. But on the other hand, I feel that the casting of this movie is very special, and I felt so happy when they used all the faces of the characters in the American movie poster. It makes sense with the way I think of casting — the faces and the diversity and the power of the appearance — it’s all there. That’s why I work in casting, and that’s what I tried to think [about] when I was doing The Secret Agent — the power of Brazilian faces.
Key Takeaways:
- Great casting blends stars, working actors and non-professionals to create a world that feels lived-in and real.
- Authenticity comes from faces, energy and life experience — not just résumés or screen time.
- The best casting builds atmosphere and tension, using each role to shape the film’s emotional truth.
