Meet Pedro Ottoni, who makes videos about life in the favela and used humor to get on TV

If you’ve watched “Back to 15”, “The Mother-in-Law Who Gave Birth to You” or “Double Father”, you’ll already know Pedro Ottoni, a young actor who has been gaining space in national comedy productions. He will debut on the 12th as Pê, the protagonist of the series “Toda Família Tem”, on Prime Video.

Raised in the Mandela community in Manguinhos, in the North Zone of Rio, he uses his reality as a theme and makes humorous videos about his simple daily life for more than 1 million followers on Tik Tok, Instagram and YouTube. Just like Fefe Schneider and Bibi Tato, Pedro, then a theater student, began posting videos at the age of 17 to attract TV and film directors and producers — he now intends to take his social media legion to streaming.

“At 16 or 17 years old, at the height of adolescence, you are anxious for things to happen as quickly as possible. And that’s when I created the YouTube channel, so that it would be easier for casting producers to find me”, he told the F5. It seems that the strategy has worked.

Pedro understands that he can offer what the market demands today: “I started to see that we are in a generation where the internet, audiovisual work and theater need to talk to each other. It is important to have actors who are also active on social media. I was lucky enough to have already started doing that.” Working on social media, says the actor, allows him to be more selective in the roles he chooses.

“I never allowed myself to do work that I didn’t believe in.” Because of the content, Pedro draws attention to roles that generally feature young people from the outskirts of the city, such as in “Vale Night” and in the series that will premiere soon. He says that he gives his opinions to the team so that reality is not portrayed in a stereotypical way.

“We want people who live in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro to watch this series and think: ‘Oh, how cool, they’re showing what it’s really like'”, he says about “Toda Família Tem”, which has as its protagonist Pê, a boy who moves with his parents to his grandmother’s house in a community in Rio.

“I remember my mother and grandmother watching soap operas and series about people in the favela and saying: ‘I don’t know why they think our house doesn’t have plaster’. We have multiple people in the favela and it’s very bad when they put us in a single archetype”, he added.

“Toda Família Tem” features Duda Pimenta, Sérgio Loroza, Pedro Novaes, Zezé Motta and Anderson Muller in the cast and has a script by Renata di Carmo, Pedro Ottoni, Guilherme Temponi, Maria Shu, Junior Figueiredo and Vinnicius Morais.