Alana Cabral Talks Teen Pregnancy in Soap opera: ‘Import

Summary
Actress Alana Cabral highlights the importance of addressing teenage pregnancy in the soap opera “Três Graças” as a way to encourage debates on women’s rights and awareness, criticizing the invalidation of the female body and the lack of social protection for young mothers.

Actress Alana Cabral, 18, is experiencing one of the best moments of her career. Protagonist of Three Graces (Globo), she had the opportunity to spark important debates through her character: Joélly, daughter of Gerluce (Sophie Charlotte) and granddaughter of Lígia (Dira Paes), who faces harassment and other challenges of teenage pregnancy.

Throughout the chapters, the character had to deal with lack of parental support, judgment from classmates and even the suggestion from the baby’s father, Raul, played by actor Paulo Mendes, to “not have the child.” For Alana Cabral, being a spokesperson on such relevant issues is an honor, but it also shows how much still remains to be done when it comes to women’s rights in society.

“These are debates that we should not actually be having in 2025. If we think about it, if the Senate was majority female, these debates would not exist. Our bodies would not be invalidated in this way. We would have the protection and support necessary for a teenage pregnancy. It is not fair for a pregnant girl to have her emotions sacrificed to this extent just because she is not heard,” she said in an exclusive interview with Earth.

The actress also recognizes that the text by Aguinaldo Silva, author of the series, addresses these themes in a subtle way, allowing the viewer to form their own opinion: “I think it is very important to debate, and Aguinaldo takes it lightly. He, Virgílio and Zé are exceptional, because they address important and necessary subjects without ‘mimimi’. It’s simple: ‘It’s there, it exists, it’s Brazil, discuss it'”.

In the plot, Joélly does not receive adequate instruction about love life or teenage pregnancy, which Alana believes triggers a series of problems. In the last chapters, in addition to Raul’s abortion suggestion, the character even promised to hand over the baby to a drug dealer.

“A girl’s body should be decided by her, but we need to explain the importance of this decision. Many girls don’t understand their rights. There is no way to discuss teenage pregnancy, paternal absence or abortion when they don’t even know what their rights are. So we urgently need to introduce these topics to the future generation of the country. As a future generation, I am very happy to be the spokesperson for these discussions and allow people to understand form their own opinions. But we must understand that when it comes to other people’s bodies, He has no opinion.

Character building

At just 18 years old, Alana Cabral has never experienced teenage pregnancy. To build Joélly, she participated in workshops and conferences promoted by Globo. As part of these activities, he had contact with several women from Brasilândia, São Paulo, who became pregnant as teenagers.

“It opened up a lot of horizons for me on the topic of teenage pregnancy, because a lot of girls were 14, 13, 15 years old and didn’t realize the gravity of being a pregnant girl. And that’s what I tried to bring to Joélly: the mind of a 15-year-old girl all the time. All her reactions are justifiable when you remember that she’s 15. A lot of people say: ‘Wow, my God, Joélly, I can’t believe she did that.’ But if you think about it and put yourself in her shoes, you can say, ‘Wow, when I was 15, I think I would do the same thing.