Claudio Manoel says that Casseta & Planeta’s backstage wasn’t so peaceful: ‘There were punches’

There are more than 30 years of friendship and professional partnership, but not everything was flowers backstage at Casseta & Planeta. Warmer discussions were part of the routine of the seven members of the “fake journalism, real humor” group, which experienced its peak between the 1990s and 2000s. But, there were also physical fights between the comedians. “There were punches, yes. In the face and wherever else they hit”, said Claudio Manoel. “Most of the time, Madureira [Marcelo] was involved”.

Claudio recalled that, despite the fights, no one held a grudge or stopped talking to each other. “The atmosphere was zero. The fight happened and it didn’t take long to be forgotten”, he said. Manoel recalled a confusion during the rehearsal of a show in an interview on Maurício Meirelles’ YouTube channel.

“I don’t know what happened. I just saw Marcelo Madureira lying on the ground and Hubert explaining that he had punched him because he was annoying him. A while passed, everyone was already on stage and I said ‘what happened is behind us’. Bussunda interrupted and said to me: ‘all this because Brazil tied with Colombia?’ He didn’t even see the fight. He was watching the national team play backstage. Everyone laughed.”

Claudio Manoel also mentioned the difficulty of working with humor due to the issue of political correctness. The Casseta gang was banned from making jokes related to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in the United States. Today, he thanks Globo’s management: “We sent several jokes to production and Mário Lúcio Vaz, director of the station, called me and asked if we were crazy to make a joke with three thousand dead. He said that public opinion would be against us and that protected us a lot.

The limits of humor and the Leo Lins case were also discussed in the interview, and Claudio Manoel did not avoid the questions. “There are comedians who make jokes to displease the audience. Leo Lins is a bit like that, Madureira too. Irritation creates a funny element. This is the biggest niche of humor: people who appreciate humor knowing that it is humor. In general, people think that everything is irony. Leo asks himself: what can’t you joke about? Pedophilia, slavery. So that’s what I’m going to do.”