Vanessa Giácomo says she asked the Globo director for help and was cast as the protagonist in ‘Cabocla’

After some small appearances in Globo soap operas, Vanessa Giácomo, 41, won her first big role in the remake of “Cabocla”, in 2004. She played none other than the protagonist Zuca, played by Glória Pires in the first version shown 25 years earlier . Currently, the plot is being rerun on the Special Edition track, on the network’s afternoons, and marked Vanessa’s debut as a protagonist, when she was just 21 years old.

Vanessa said that she left Volta Redonda to pursue an acting career in Rio de Janeiro, but she had a deadline set by her father to establish herself in the profession, as he covered the costs of her life outside the home. “It wasn’t long before this deadline ended, so I asked my mother to call Mário Lúcio Vaz (1933–2019) to set up a meeting with a Globo director. It went very well, and I went to talk to him”, recalled the actress.

The actress continued: “I only had a videobook and my courage. He tried to understand what I was doing there, because he didn’t even consider the issue of testing. But he ended up suggesting my name to the director of the soap opera, Ricardo Waddington” , he said. Vanessa said she didn’t even know that the author of the plot, Benedito Ruy Barbosa, was looking for a newcomer to play the protagonist — a face still unknown on TV. “The tests were already happening, but they hadn’t chosen Zuca yet”, he added in an interview with Desfoque Podcast.

“I went on the last day of the audition. I went in to audition for Zuca. I didn’t know it was for the protagonist, nor that Glória Pires had played the role before. I didn’t know anything, not even the name of the soap opera. Thank God I didn’t I didn’t know any of this, because I would have been much more nervous”, she commented. Giácomo said that he made his recording on a Friday and, the following Monday, received the news that it had been approved.

She, who no longer has a fixed contract with Globo since last year, also told what she heard from Vaz: “You took a path in this test that no one else did. I don’t want you to change anything, because you demonstrated purity. The text was breezy, but you didn’t go for sensuality but for something very pure. It’s Zuca that we want. Benedito is crazy, he said it’s you.” It was only then that Vanessa discovered that she would be the protagonist of the plot.