Now shining in prime time as Luana Shine in Terra e Paixão, Valéria Barcellos got emotional as she recalled a life-changing episode from her childhood, growing up in the countryside of Rio Grande do Sul.
“I remember I was a child, going through the trash... I came from a very poor family... And I found a notebook cover with Taís Araújo on it. I saw that person on the cover, and I had never seen such a beautiful Black woman in my life who wasn’t a maid or anything like that. I thought and asked myself, ‘Do they allow this? I thought it wasn’t allowed, that it wasn’t possible. I kept that notebook for many years. But then, some time later, a flood hit my house, and I lost the notebook."
Years later, in Porto Alegre during the pandemic, while battling cancer, Valéria dreamed of that moment. “I dreamed I was on a TV show hosted by Taís, and I was her stage assistant. There were a lot of beautiful Black people on stage. When I woke up, I realized I had never thought about Black and trans people being in prominent places unless they were in subservient roles,” she said on the podcast No Camarim, POD!.
As a Black and transgender woman, Valéria, now 42, recognizes that she is living the dream she always had—occupying the same spaces that Taís Araújo, back in her modeling days, once did alongside Reynaldo Gianecchini. “It’s important to normalize our presence in these spaces. Being in a prime-time soap opera as a trans person like me... we have to highlight that so people don’t forget we’re here, and that it doesn’t go unnoticed.”
Credits: Extra.globo
https://extra.globo.com/famosos/noticia/2023/10/atriz-trans-de-terra-e-paixao-diz-que-capa-de-caderno-com-tais-araujo-mudou-sua-vida-sera-que-deixam.ghtml