This is my last criminal, announces Raphael Logam, who no longer wants to play bandits

Raphael Logam is tired of playing bad guys — and he doesn’t hide it from anyone. “Just looking bad and holding a gun is not for me, there has to be a purpose,” the actor says to F5.

However, he will have to deal with this label for a few more years, since the drug dealer Evandro, the role he plays in the series “Impuros” and which led him to compete for an Emmy twice, is still his biggest success and has just been renewed for a sixth season. The 5th season arrives on July 24th, on Disney+.

“I turned down jobs like that for five years, casting producers called me and it was always more of the same. Until Evandro’s proposal arrived, with a dramatic twist that put me on another level. When he dies, he’s dead for me. He will be my last criminal,” he says.

The drug dealer is one of the characters, with different natures, that Logam currently plays. At the same time that he gives life to the unscrupulous villain Hans in “Família É Tudo” (Globo), he can also be seen in the role of the hard-working prisoner Jesus Pedra in the Globoplay series “O Jogo Que Mudou a História”.

In the plot, he tries to change the crooked scheme of a penitentiary and doesn’t do very well—his honesty is to blame. “Jesus has character. Evandro lives in this world of the favela, but I don’t consider him a bad guy. Over time, he’ll be dominated,” he says.

None of them, in Logam’s opinion, compare to the current villain of the 7pm show. “Evandro is a small fry compared to Hans, in terms of evil. The drug dealer follows the law of the land, while Hans, a director of a large company, in a suit and tie, is a scoundrel. He is the first character I hate. I don’t want people like him around.”

The characters also have something in common with Logam: life in the favela. “Part of my family is from Rocinha and the rest is spread out. As a child, I would go up to the favela every day to be with my cousins, I felt free. On the asphalt I learned to have posture”, says the Rio native. To this day, his mother works as a maid. In the same house, she has done so for decades.

“Our dream as black people living in the favelas is to save our family, to make our mother stop working, because she has already sweated too much blood. She has a house in Rocinha, and spends time there with her sisters. We like it there, but we know the dangers, especially because of the actions against the people living in the favelas,” he says.

Despite the success, the productions that are in the pipeline, renewed and in prime time, the actor is reluctant to hear the phrase “the favela won”. For him, there is still a long way to go. “That doesn’t fit for me. I’m the one who is winning, the favela still goes through the same problems. I can only say that when the state is accountable to the people”, says the artist, who has been practicing capoeira for 36 years and has schools in both Rio and France, where he travels sporadically to give lectures. “I like being a reference”, he says proudly.

Capoeira is also the result of a project that Raphael Logam has been trying to get off the ground for 24 years. His master in the sport wrote a novel in 1971 that the actor wants to turn into a drama on Disney+, as the creator and protagonist. “It will be my biggest solo project to date, and my biggest dream too.”