Rodrigo Santoro was shocked to discover that people like Jerônimo, his Machiavellian character in Good morning, Veronica, they really exist. In an interview with Omeletthe actor said he accessed social networks such as Twitter, Instagram and YouTube as a kind of “field research” to know where the line was between fiction and reality.
“I searched for references that could come close to this character, and I found”, he commented. “Which is still very sad, because it indicates that the series is not entirely fiction. I found profiles that came close to who Jerônimo is, and I was shocked, thinking: ‘I can’t believe this person exists and is doing this’. Of course there is a lot of license here, a detachment from reality, but you see that the character raises questions that are very true.”.
In the plot (spoilers the Good morning, Veronica next), Jerônimo is a multimillionaire agribusiness investor, who clandestinely operates a human trafficking scheme, “auctioning” young women captured by force, in addition to using them as surrogates for babies intended for couples incapable of conceiving. Santoro did not go into detail about the profiles he found on social media, but indicated that, for him, Jerônimo raises questions in which Good morning, Veronica hadn’t played yet.
“A violence and the way misogynistic abuse is in society, a product of so many years of patriarchy… this has been the theme of the series since the first season”, he commented. “But I think my character raises other questions besides that, such as the search for perfection. We live in a time where this is discussed a lot, and my character has a worldview based on this. He is a eugenicist”.
The term used by the actor, for those who don’t know, describes a set of beliefs based on the “improvement” of humanity through the multiplication or elimination of certain genetic traits. Used by the Nazis to justify the Holocaust within their search for “racial purity”, eugenics enters the context of Good morning, Veronica when we discover that Jerônimo and his mother, Diana (Maitê Proença), themselves generate the babies that they inseminate in the kidnapped women, thus seeking to perpetuate their genetic traits.
Even because of this element of the character, Santoro said that preparing to play Jerônimo also involved a lot of physical work: “I thought it was fundamental to the character that my body looked a certain way. Especially because, in the script, Jerônimo was described in a very specific way, so his appearance was clearly important to the plot. There was a lot of dieting, no ice cream for a long time! Also a lot of gymnastics, a lot of rigor in that sense”.
But record Good morning, Veronica in the shoes of a man that Santoro himself describes as capable “of the most vile type of violence” was also difficult from a psychological point of view. “The energy was heavy [no set], of course it was. The actor always lends himself, so there’s no way something won’t stick with you. After filming you have to go out and after filming get a massage, because your body is all hard. You have nightmares at night, all that”, he commented.
Good Morning, Veronica: The Final Hunt is now available for streaming via Netflix.