Tonico Pereira: in crisis, actor sells goods and postpones replacement of prosthesis

From his professional life, until Tonico Pereira, 74, doesn’t have much to complain about. The actor just finished filming “O Velho Beetle”, a feature directed by Emiliano Ruschel, and also re-launched a short season of the monologue “O Judgamento de Sócrates”, at Teatro XP, in Rio de Janeiro, after two years away from the stage. Work is not lacking, but money in the account, which is good, nothing. “I’m practically broke,” he says.

Despite more than 50 years of career, lack of money is a recurring phenomenon in his life. Tonico, however, always turned around. He was once the owner of a fishmonger, a tavern, a car store, a screw store… Now he is trying to reinforce the cashier with a thrift store in Botafogo, in the south of Rio. It’s not making it.

“It’s not making a profit”, he summarizes. “We are victims of this situation, which is pandemic and governmental”, analyzes the actor, who says he is negatively surprised by certain attitudes in times of crisis. “The owners have increased the rent, this is crazy, there is no solidarity at all.”

To get out of the red, Tonico had to sell five of his old cars, in addition to being forced to save in another area. More intimate, so to speak. The financial crisis made the actor postpone the exchange of his penile prosthesis. The subject, approached like this, in an interview, could make many people angry. But Tonico talks about it in a good way.

He even showed these new details of his anatomy in a (nude) shoot taken by controversial photographer Terry Richardson, about eight years ago. Since then, maintenance has become increasingly difficult, and the biggest scare came now, when the doctor received the budget for the surgery: R$ 25,000 – not including hospitalization and the prosthesis itself.

“Hospitalization is very expensive, I had to postpone it”, says the artist, who defines himself as “the comorbidity itself”. It’s just that, in addition to the problem with the prosthesis, he has been visiting hospitals and doctors’ offices more often than he would like.

Pereira has overcome cancer four times, has COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), had three diverticulitis and dozens of pneumonias. In June, he was hospitalized to treat tracheobronchitis. “I don’t know where my energy to go on stage comes from. Sometimes I’m sick, I go on stage and I heal during the show”, he says. “I think this thing about you working on what you like.”