How Ju Massaoka went from almost being fired to Ana Maria Braga’s sweetheart at Mais Você

Reporter Ju Massaoka, 33, is used to taking Ana Maria Braga, 73, out of her comfort zone. She is responsible for the laughs that the presenter gives while doing little dances or trying to perform challenges that are booming on the internet in the Feed da Ana segment, from Mais Você (Globo). However, all of this almost didn’t happen.

In an interview with F5, Ju reveals that he had already decided to resign from the station and change countries. But the course of her life was completely changed after she received an opportunity to appear in the video.

“In 2019, I was trying to migrate from the technology area, where I worked, to the production of the house’s programs. I went through selection processes and it never worked. I decided that I wanted to end my career at Globo. I would get married at the beginning of the following year, and my husband is from Canada. But my boss at the time asked me to hold the shutdown”, she recalls. Shortly after, the pandemic came.

With that, all borders from Brazil to North American countries were closed. It was March 2020 and no one knew how long the proliferation of a hitherto unknown virus would last. Mais Você went off the air indefinitely, given the importance of putting a program on the program that tried to elucidate what was happening in the country and in the world.

Newly married (the ceremony took place in February of that year), Ju could not enjoy the beginning of the new phase and began to have to deal with the distance from her husband. “There was a crisis in my marriage, because we didn’t see each other for a year and eight months. After so long, we felt ‘strange’ when we met, the reunion was weird, we had to go to online couples therapy. In the end, we decided to remain firm, because the feeling still existed. It was a rollercoaster”, he says.

In parallel with this whirlwind of things in her personal life, the production of the morning show continued to hold meetings and agendas, even without knowing when and if it would return to the air, and it was in one of them that everything began to change for the journalist with the dream of become a reporter.

Months later, Mais Você became a feature in the final 15 minutes of the Meeting, then presented by Fátima Bernardes. In one of the editions, Ju ended up going to the front of the video in a first special report about the situation she herself was experiencing: people who could not see who they wanted because of the coronavirus.

“It got a huge audience, and what was meant to be a farewell became a start. They saw that I got along well on screen and wanted me to talk about internet news for a minute with Ana Maria live. Because of my relationship with her, what was supposed to be 60 seconds became two blocks. It was then that my life changed and I decided to stay at Globo”, he says.

Today, three years later, Ju Massaoka is one of the few people who manage to “change the key” of Ana Maria and make her have fun like a child during the painting. Although there is a video script that they must call and comment on the air, there is also a lot of improvisation. Live, both have already danced “Envolver” with the right to the danced step on the floor, had a ball fight and raced in the studio.

“I think it’s cool that she allows herself to be by my side, doing things that are not expected because of her size. When I was little, in Curitiba (PR), one of the opportunities to have fun was when my grandmother watched Ana and Louro’s riddles with me in Note e Anote (Record, 1993-1999). Look at the turns that life takes”, he celebrates.

LIPEDEMA

The fame built by Ju Massaoka made the Mais Você reporter, who was never afraid to expose herself, use this feature outside the spotlight. Diagnosed with lipedema, a condition in which localized accumulation of fat occurs, especially in the legs and ankles, she decided to show her body on social media and warn others about the causes and consequences of it.

“I decided to share after I saw that my networks gained a greater reach. I’ve always had health insurance, I go to all the doctors I can and I had never heard about this condition that causes chronic pain and tiredness. I wanted to warn. I’ve done crazy diets and had self-image problems, and now I accept myself more”, he says.

The initiative had a very positive return. “Many girls write to me, because they discovered with me what they had. It’s like a weight has been lifted from their shoulders. I’ve been building a support network”, she concludes.