Alex Nader: actor plays journalist who collapses live after reporting misfortunes daily

There is a term in English that has become popular since the pandemic and is used to characterize the feeling of those who can no longer bear access to sad news and misfortunes in general: “News fatigue” [cansaço de notícias, em tradução livre]. It affects the general population, but what about journalists — the messengers of this apocalypse? How do they feel?

Actor Alex Nader thought about addressing precisely this point of view in the play “O Âncora”, in a short season at Teatro Poeira, in Rio. He plays a television news presenter who has a breakdown and freaks out live, saturated by cruelly repetitive news. The direction is shared with Leandro Muniz.

“I thought he would be a perfect character to tell a story, driven by the last years of government, by what happened to culture and because of the attacks on journalism”, he says, in an interview with F5. Nader says he had William Bonner as his “inspiring muse”. “He’s been in our homes for almost 30 years, every day, with the same face and expression. I keep wondering ‘doesn’t this guy have a life? Doesn’t he have pain? Doesn’t he have suffering?’.”

The actor’s career is busy and in addition to being a journalist with burnout, he plays a police officer in the series “Amar É Para os Fortes”, which airs on Prime Video in the second half of November. In the attraction, more buckshot.

The plot tells the story of two families who are transformed after the death of a boy during a police operation. He plays Borges, a police officer who pursues a resident who records the action.

He doesn’t really explain why, but his recent career is marked by roles linked to violence and psychological discomfort – so much so that before Borges, he played a Bope police officer in “Arcanjo Renegado” (Globoplay). Only he and Marcelo Melo were actors. The rest of the “skull” team was made up of real police officers.

“It’s very delicate being in the shoes of a police officer on the scene,” he says, adding that living with these professionals for a while helped him understand what goes on among men in uniform.

“They don’t realize that they are part of a mechanism that replicates and reproduces structural racism, because those who are persecuted in our society are black people”, says Nader, who has been married for 14 years to actress Aline Borges, Zuleica, from Pantanal.

The wedding started in the most traditional way possible. Closed. Restricted to two. But, years later, they decided to open up their relationship and today they live as a non-monogamous couple.

“I am very much in love with Aline, she is the woman of my life. But we accept and respect our feelings and desires. So we are free so that, if a situation arises, we feel good with someone else. We allow ourselves to live” , he states.