Stage and screen star Jay Laga’aia opens up on how to raise eight kids
He has been a familiar face for decades on stage and screen, in everything from Play School to the Star Wars movies but wait till you meet Jay Laga’aia’s eight kids.
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With eight kids to raise, Jay Laga’aia is no stranger to hard work and broken sleep, but as he gets older, the veteran performer, 60, feels grateful to be leading his orchestra by example – even if every instrument is played differently, with its own unique tuning.
Because that’s what parents do. They teach, they raise, they stand back and let them sing – not always in harmony, but sing all the same.
And while he and wife of 33 years, Sandra (or Sandie as she’s best known) – a deputy principal at Balmain High – have taught them well, he says they’ve lived hand to mouth for decades because they’ve invested in their kids and not “stuff”, and they’re now seeing the crop sprout from the seeds they’ve nurtured.
His words, not ours. And he has a way with them, as much off stage as he does on.
“I’ve done it eight times, but they’re different instruments – none are the same,” Laga’aia says of raising his all-singing, all-dancing brood.
“You have to play them differently.
“Some you can play once or twice and you know that they’re in tune – others, they’re a constant pain in your arse,” he laughs.
“Musos out there will know – one of my children is a mandolin, because there’s the old saying that a mandolin player spends half his time tuning his mandolin and the other half playing out a tune. That’s my daughter,” he laughs.
His orchestra is pretty unique. There’s Jeremy, 40, from a previous relationship. He works for New Zealand Customs. Matthew, who is 33 and runs Camperdown cafe Matty & Johns – he’s the artist in the family and “a wonderful writer”, according to his dad. Then there’s Iosefa – or Sefa – who is 25, and touring with Hamilton.
His eldest girl, Jessica – or Jessie – is 23, and left home two years ago to follow her dream to play representative netball with the Queensland Firebirds.
Nathaniel – or Tana – is 22 and currently playing Benny in Rent, which was showing in Melbourne while Laga’aia senior was there for his appearances in the local season of Grease before its opening in Sydney this weekend.
Georgia Rose, 18, is in her first year of a musical theatre degree at NIDA. Katie, 17, is in Year 12, and Isabella, 14 – Bella to mates – is in Year 9. Both are at Newtown High School of Performing Arts and perform regularly at School Spectacular, which Katie hosted last year with John Foreman. She also performs plays with the Australian Theatre for Young People at Dawes Point.
“So you sit there go, well, it’s inevitable,” he laughs, adding that life on stage wasn’t what he wanted for his offspring – the choice was theirs, and theirs alone.
“I’m so proud of them – but I’m also so fearful,” Laga’aia admits. “It’s an industry that is judged purely on face value.
“Nine times out of 10 – as I say to my kids and a lot of my students as well – you want to be … that person that when your name is mentioned in a negative light, no one believes it.
“And I feel like I’m in that position now. But that’s only because you have to be you.
“There has to be a sense of truth whether you’re on stage or not, you have to be genuine.
“If I can’t read you, then your audience can’t read you – and they’re the people that put food on our tables.
“So for me, it’s a wonderful celebration, their successes, because my wife and I are at the stage in our lives where we are actually watching some of the crop start to come to fruition – some of the seeds that were sown many years ago.
“I always say to people, I live from hand to mouth – I don’t have a lot of savings, purely because I’ve invested in my children.
“And in doing so, we reap what we sow – and it is not so much me riding their coat-tails, but just saying ‘this is your forever job, and I cannot stand in your way, I can only support you’.”
New Zealand born Laga’aia, who is of Samoan descent, has come a long way since he was in our loungerooms on Play School. And despite roles on Water Rats, Home and Away – and even two Star Wars films – he’s best known in recent years for his musical theatre presence.
From the life-changing Lion King, to playing Judas in New Zealand’s Jesus Christ Superstar 30 years ago, as well as being the Wizard of Oz in Wicked’s resurgence a decade ago, he’s given most shows a go.
When we spoke, he had left his native Sydney for a Melbourne hotel room. It was home while he joined fellow stage veterans Patti Newton and Marcia Hines as Vince Fontaine in Grease. While son Tana was there, touring with Rent, he felt at home more than he normally would. Baking for the cast and crew helped too – aided by borrowed baking pans from Newton.
“(We have) this beautiful young cast in Grease … and Patti, me and Marcia. When you combine our ages, it’s 210 – Patti’s nearly 80, Marcia’s 70 and I’m 60 – so that’s like 175 years of experience,” he tells Sydney Weekend.
“We’re affectionately known as Team OG, but I’ve affectionately coined ourselves The Golden Girls.
“The difference between (the new kids) and us at the moment – their stage of evolution, and our stage of evolution – is simple. When we go to the stage door, people call us by name (because they know us) – they call them by character.
“But I look at these guys as my kids, and so I’m forever baking stuff.
“I’m baking banana muffins, chocolate muffins, making soups and stuff and bringing it in – knowing full well I need pans and things – so I asked Patti if she had any muffin pans because the 50,000 muffin pans that I bought over the many years are in my garage at home.
“And she brought me a whole bunch of stuff, which is great, because then you make a whole bunch of stuff for not only cast, but crew and musicians.
“And they love it.”
That’s why he has a box of utensils he takes when his life is on tour. It’s those little things – being able to cook for yourself – that make you feel at home, and that’s a feeling his kids, as performers too, finally understand.
“The great thing is that they realise now – that some of the craziness their father has is purely because he’s been in this industry,” Laga’aia says.
“
My sons will always go ‘dad, why do you have a box outside that’s got all these cooking utensils, sugar cubes and plastic spoons and these two jugs …’ – and my son who (was in Melbourne with Rent) – he said ‘I get it now Dad’ – because they don’t have all that stuff in a hotel room.
“I’ve got to lead by example, because my kids now turn up to watch me perform, and it means something to them, because they’re now doing the same thing.”
Laga’aia does eight shows a week – and speaks to Sydney Weekend from his muffin-filled dressing room in Her Majesty’s Theatre between a matinee and evening show.
And while the passionate performer says there are times he’d rather be at home with the Laga’aia family dog Bailey, “just doing dishes and mucking around”, he likes to live by example. Not only for himself and his own children, but also for all the other kids from diverse backgrounds.
“Our job is to be on stage to give other people permission to dream the dream – our jobs are basically to make people forget their lives for three hours, to take them on a journey, an adventure,” he says.
“Most athletes – they have their heats at one time, and then they run the finals at night or specific times – I think it’s like most things … you gear up, and then you conserve your energy when you need to.
“But the older I get, the more I realise I’m just grateful to be working … I’ve got a lot of my friends who are learning that phrase, ‘would you like fries with that?’ so I’m lucky.
“I look at my guitar – and I keep saying to my kids – that guitar has fed this family.”
Music – particularly the humble guitar – is a special part of their family.
“All my boys play musical instruments and we have a rule of thumb that when they get to a certain level of proficiency, I take them to the Guitar Factory in Gladesville and we choose a guitar for them,” he says.
“And that’s a coming of age, a bonding, as far as I’m concerned.
“My son Sefa is in Spain – they just finished Hamilton in Abu Dhabi, and he went for a holiday – as you do – I said ‘well your mother and I went for a holiday in Parramatta’,” he jokes.
“And then he’ll come back and they’ll go to Singapore and then he does the Sydney season.
“Nobody tells you that there’s a stage in your life when you will look at your child and go, I can now push you out into the stream and not worry about you.
“And I’ve had that three times now where I’ve looked at my children and gone, ‘I can now concentrate on these other idiots, may the force be with you,” he laughs.
“When I saw my son in Hamilton for the first time, I cried … I cried because I looked at him and I couldn’t be more proud of him.
“And I looked at him, and I thought ‘I would never have made those decisions’ – but those decisions were right, as far as a character is concerned.
“As my father always said to me, don’t tell me how good you are, let other people tell me how good you are – and the amount of people that came up to me and were so complimentary of him, was crazy. So now I understand – and my dad wasn’t crazy.
“Just because you blow your own trumpet doesn’t make you an orchestra.
“But when you get a symphony of people come up and say, ‘I cried too’ – that’s what I wish for myself, so I can only afford him that.”
When he was a kid, Laga’aia didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life – it wasn’t until a theatrical group came to visit his school that it dawned on him. It was either that, or be an All Black, he laughs.
“When you realise you can’t be an All Black, you go, OK, what can I do? And you turn that passion that you have into a job,” he says.
“I’m a huge advocate for early learning, so whenever I’m touring or in a different part of the country, I go and say hello to some of the kindergartens or teach at some of the high schools … for free.
“Because I remember when I was at school, a touring group came to school, and I looked and saw a brown face there, and I thought to myself, ‘wait, you can do this for a living?’
“When I grew up, they used to call it showing off. But, now – look at who is the highest earning actor in the world at the moment? The Rock – Samoan. They talk about Jason Momoa – Samoan.
“We’re in great company.
“So for me, it is always a thing of being able to support anybody who has a dream.
“The first theatre gig I did, which was Sweet Charity, I just answered an ad in the paper.”
Following his dream had its own complications though, because of his Polynesian descent.
“I think it’s a difficult thing as a Polynesian, because most Polynesians get a proper job so you can earn a good living and buy a house on a quarter acre – well, that dream is well and truly gone thanks to the powers that be,” he says.
“It’s like parenting – I can’t parent like my parents used to parent because that era is gone.
“So I have to be able to be in a situation where you support your children’s crazy ideas. I had to fight mine.
“But then I realised – why am I making it so hard for my kids? If this is their forever job, then who am I to stand in their way.
“As a parent, I’m hugely disappointed that they’re in the arts – because I know just how difficult it is – and they don’t write for my colour.”
Laga’aia says he does not take credit for the successes of his children, and people ask him why.
“Because if you said my children were beautiful human beings or they had lovely manners, my wife and I would take that every single day – but they chose to do this.
“Just like if my children were drug addicts, I wouldn’t take the credit for that either.
“So as far as I’m concerned, they chose this.”
And while they were born into Dad’s acting pedigree, he insists their performance ability didn’t come from drama lessons.
“It’s like I don’t become religious because I go to church – because church is just a gathering place for us all to worship,” he says.
“It’s the same thing – like my daughter has just started at NIDA – and it’s like the lights just go on – because I’m in a room full of like-minded people who are just as batty as I am.
“So all of a sudden, the rule, the theatrical rule of ‘yes, and …’ comes into effect.
“You go to a drama school, or a school that you are wanting to do – whether it be medical or plumbing or whatever – and you find other people who ask the same crazy questions as you do, and you go, ‘I found my people’.
“I think what my wife and I have done is be able to give them an opportunity not only for drama – but soccer, piano lessons, singing lessons … just everything.
“And my daughter works at Kmart – it’s all of that stuff that teaches you.
“When people ask me what makes a good actor, I say you have to be a good human being. Because if the vessel is sound, you can carry anything. But if you’ve got holes in it, then you are you are destined to fail.
“At the end of the day, if you don’t fit in, it’s because you were meant to stand out.”
Raising eight kids has always had its challenges, he reasons – but you’ve got to allow them to do things – with rules in place, of course.
“So they go ‘dad, I want to play soccer’ – so is that because your friend is playing soccer? and they go ‘no, I want to play soccer’,” he says.
“Okay, then here’s the rule – if you want to play soccer, I will pay for the season, but this is not about getting the T-shirt or the shoes you’ll never wear again – it’s about turning up to practice – it’s about going to the game.
“And I record them saying that – and if they ever don’t want to go, I replay the recording.
“I’m not investing in you if this is a whim.
“I have a simple rule in life – my job is to make sure my children could survive when I leave.
“It’s not about leaving monuments, it’s not about leaving anything else. It’s simply about making sure that at the end of the day, the human beings I leave on this earth are glorious human beings.
“They always say you don’t shout at a bud because it’s not a flower – and I had to hold back a lot of shouting … but now they’ve started to blossom, and you go, ‘okay, I can only add my voice and praise to what you’re doing and support’ – because I think there are a lot of parents out there that allow their children to do certain things that they don’t agree with, knowing full well, they wait for them to fail so they can say I told you so.
“I was one of those – to the point where I felt wait, my parents used to do that to me all the time – they set me up for failure.
“So as a father, as an artist, and a creator, producer, a writer – I realised that you don’t have to have permission … I’m gonna give you an opportunity, a smorgasbord of opportunities here.
“You could sample one or you could sample them all. But you’ve got to sample something.”
Important for any performer – and human – is the ability to navigate rejection and failure as well as celebrate success, even when it’s fleeting, Laga’aia explains.
“What I try to instil in my kids is that failure is part and parcel of success,” he says.
“And if you alienate failure, you’ll always fail. If you embrace failure, knowing full well that the trick to success is simply going, ‘I failed, what happened there? Oh, that’s right. I didn’t warm the oven before I put the cake in’.
“And you’ll get to that point where your success rate becomes 80 per cent, and 20 per cent is about the gods.
“And then you bring that down to 5 per cent.”
When people ask if he still gets nervous after so many years, the answer is no – because the key to great stage presence is preparation.
“I say, no, I don’t get nervous – I only get nervous if they say ‘five minutes’, and I don’t know the words to the second verse,” he explains.
“I’ve got to make sure that I’ve prepared to go on – and that’s something you instil in your children – if you make a mistake, you’ve got to learn from that mistake.
“I love teaching and I’m always having conversations with people, or just simply saying to them, ‘what do you want to do? Because if you want to be famous, rob a bank’ – because what we do as a job, 95 per cent of it is unpaid.
“And if you choose this life, then you need to understand that everybody sings a little, everybody dances a little, everybody acts a little.
“I live by two sayings: Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission; and choose a job you truly enjoy and you’ll never work a day in your life.
“If you’re tired, if you’re constantly complaining – get out – this is not for you.
“But there are no shortcuts. You have to have repetition, you have to get embarrassed.
“If you can’t tell me what you want to be out loud, you will never become it.”
Previews of Grease start tomorrow at the Capitol Theatre.
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