Taika Waititi on trans hysteria, his Star Wars movie and making more Thor films with Chris Hemsworth
Oscar-winning Kiwi director Taika Waititi has opened up about the close relationship he shares with Thor star Chris Hemsworth.
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Taika Waititi genuinely can’t understand why transgender issues and gender identity are so polarising and controversial at the moment.
“It’s a huge topic right now, it seems to all a lot of people are talking about,” the Kiwi writer-director-actor muses over Zoom call with the Auckland Harbour glittering in the background.
“And it needs to be talked about for people who feel they have been marginalised and felt like they’ve been in the shadows and are not being seen. So, I’d like to talk about it in that way … To complain about seeing someone is ludicrous – all they are asking for is to be seen and included. That’s it. So just do it, just include them, then you can f--- off and do something else.”
The issue is front of mind for Waititi, director and star of two Australia-shot Thor films with Chris Hemsworth and an Oscar-winning screenwriter for WWII comedy-drama Jojo Rabbit, thanks to his latest film, Next Goal Wins.
Based (sometimes very loosely) on real events – and adapted from the 2014 documentary of the same name – it tells the story of the American Samoa national soccer team, which was one of the world’s worst having never scored a goal, and infamously lost 31-0 to Australia in the biggest international defeat in the sport’s history.
In addition to the redemption story of their first win with the help of imported Dutch-American coach Thomas Rongen – played by Michael Fassbender and milked to comic effect by Waititi – one of the more remarkable aspects of the team was that it included Jaiyah Saelua, the first transgender player to compete in a World Cup qualifier game. Saelua, and the actor who plays her, Kaimana, are both fa’afafine, people who are assigned male at birth and identify as non-binary in traditional Samoan culture.
Waititi, while not wanting to make Saelua’s story the central aspect of the film, saw it as an opportunity to approach an oddly controversial topic in a fresh and even comedic way that reflected long-accepted aspects of his own culture.
“What I think is great about the film and it not being made by Americans but by Polynesians and for Polynesians, is that we are normalising something that has already been normalised, for many thousands of years,” he says.
“It’s part of this culture and we’re not over-explaining it in a way where it that is all the film would be about if it was a real American film. It just is and I think that is what the world needs to learn around this phenomenon. If you just accept it, you can get on with your life.”
Waititi was adamant that he cast a fa’afafine in the role of Saelua – “we couldn’t have done it any other way” – and says that finding Kaimana for her acting debut was little short of miraculous.
“I don’t know what we would have done if we hadn’t found Kaimana, who ticked all the boxes and not only identified as fa’afafine but was also a soccer player, was Samoan AND could act. That was pretty special.”
Waititi, a passionate advocate for First Nations cultures, shot Next Goal Wins in Hawaii way back in 2019 – it was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic – with a mostly Polynesian cast and crew, who went to great lengths to make sure it authentically represented their culture.
By then, Waititi had already been working on the film for four years, during which time his star had shone ever more brightly in Hollywood, thanks to his indie hits What We Do In the Shadows and Hunt For the Wilderpeople and his stunning, critically and commercially beloved third Thor film for Marvel, Ragnarok.
Waititi, who is married to singer Rita Ora, splits his time between Los Angeles, New Zealand, where his two children from his first marriage live, and wherever he happens to be filming at the time. He says that making Next Goal Wins on Oahu felt like “a bit of medicine after being in Hollywood for a long time” and had a similar, no-frills, all-hands-to-the-pump energy to his early breakthrough films.
“I missed home – and I missed brown people,” he says. “I missed being around Polynesia and being around the islands, and I missed being around my culture, and my friends and stuff. It was great to be around people I love and do a film in my style. Even my early films were, like, 25 days with a lot of energy and a very small and a great family feel where everyone’s working together and picking up the gear and helping each other.”
Waititi took his work home with him for his next project, with a TV series of much-loved 1981 kids film Time Bandits, co-written with his longtime friend and collaborator Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords fame and his co-writer of Next Goal Wins, Iain Morris shot in Wellington earlier this year. And along with his long-rumoured remakes of anime classic Akira and cult sci-fi classic Flash Gordon, there’s also the tantalising prospect of what IMDB lists as Untitled Taika Waititi Star Wars Film – if he ever finishes it, that is.
He first visited that galaxy far, far away as a director on The Mandalorian, (he also provided the voice for droid IG-12) and as a long-time fan of the franchise, he’s determined to make his feature film entry a worthy addition, while staying true to his own vision and voice.
“It’s been three years and I am still writing it,” he sighs. “I don’t know what else to tell you. I am trying to get this idea down and every time I think I am close to it, I get the feeling like it’s been done. These Star Wars movies are hard to make, man. I’m not going to rush it.
“I just like things to happen when they happen. Jojo Rabbit I wrote in 2011 and happened when it needed to happen, right when the world was full of Nazis again. And this film is happening when it needs to happen when this conversation is happening around the trans community. Star Wars will happen when my Star Wars needs to happen.”
As to whether he will make another Thor movie with Chris Hemsworth (whose brother Luke makes a cameo in Next Goal Wins as a boofheaded Aussie sports commentator), Waititi says he’s game, but acknowledges it won’t happen any time soon. The last film, last year’s Love and Thunder, was considerably less loved commercially and critically than Ragnarok for its over-the-top goofiness and Hemsworth has since said that the crew had so much fun that “it just became a too silly”.
But Waititi hasn’t completely shut the door on returning to the MCU.
“I want to keep working with Chris – I’m not sure where he is at with Thor – but I’d keep making Thor films with Chris until we die,” Waititi says. “We’re like an old married couple, me and Chris.”
Next Goal Wins opens January 1.
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Originally published as Taika Waititi on trans hysteria, his Star Wars movie and making more Thor films with Chris Hemsworth
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