Luciane Buchanan is navigating the Hollywood casting vortex
From tech CEO in The Night Agent to Hawaiian queen in Jason Momoa’s historical epic Chief of War, the New Zealand-Tongan actor is finding roles worthy of her powers.
Congratulations are in order: Luciane Buchanan – commitment-phobe, financial illiterate, a person who has spent the past four years living out of a suitcase – is officially a homeowner. No one is more surprised than she is. “It wasn’t on my bingo card for 2025,” the 32-year-old admits, chestnut eyes wide. But when the actor heard of plans to sell the Herne Bay, Auckland home that has been in her family for half a century, she was moved to tears.
“I really owe that space for my creativity,” she admits. A place where she listened to her raconteur aunts as they unspooled their latest yarn or play-acted with her pack of cousins as a child.
So Buchanan spent two weeks wrangling her finances – “there’s a thing called a mortgage,” she says cheerily – and won the auction, bidding online in secret while on holiday in Mexico City. The actor, who exploded with charisma in Netflix’s political thriller The Night Agent, has no intention of moving back to New Zealand just yet, but knowing that the family home is staying in the family is, she admits, very special.
Most of the time acting takes Buchanan far from home, as it did on The Night Agent, filmed in Vancouver and New York. Sometimes, however, work brings her right back to where she started. Take August’s Chief Of War, AppleTV+’s historical epic about the birth of the Kingdom of Hawaii, spearheaded by Jason Momoa as, Momoa-ishly, a ruthless but responsible warrior. For the series, Buchanan found herself on set in Hawaii and New Zealand with crew members she had worked with as a 17-year-old in her first production, the television movie Billy. (After that role it was off to the races; no drama school, no theatre troupes, purely practical learning on set. “I’m a fake actress,” Buchanan jokes.) “A show like this is once in a lifetime,” she declares.
Producer Momoa and creator Thomas Pa’a Sibbett combed the world for actors of Polynesian descent to find their Ka‘ahumanu, first Queen of the unified Kingdom of Hawaii.
A woman who, as she says in the show, was born a chieftain’s daughter in a cave and raised in the darkness where she could be free. The audition process was drawn out: self-tape, long wait, callback, long wait, chemistry read with Momoa over Zoom. For the latter, Buchanan was urgently dispatched to the Los Angeles suburb of Crenshaw to buy “this cheap synthetic wig”, because her bobbed hair wasn’t exactly conveying “ancient Hawaiian queen”, she says archly. When the audition ended, Momoa looked her in the eyes and said, “Congrats.” The role was hers. “Thank you to the wig,” Buchanan laughs. “Without the wig, I wouldn’t be here.”
Ka‘ahumanu is, Buchanan says, a formidable character, and deeply complex. As Queen she helped unite Hawaii and was a skilful diplomat, but she also embraced Christianity and the encroachment of Western culture. (“You will break the world,” a prophet foresees, in episode two.) “I’ve never read, nonfiction or fiction, about a person like this, let alone a woman,” says Buchanan. Such a role is a gift for an actor, but also its own challenge. “Some people love her and some people don’t,” Buchanan explains. “That is so interesting to me as an actor, because I’m in no place to judge what she did. My job is to play her in this time frame at this point in her life. And to believe whatever decision she is making is for her people.”
Costumes helped shape the character; as the favourite wife of King Kamehameha, Ka‘ahumanu hoarded all the prized outfits. “We had little names for them, we were like, ‘This is the Miu Miu, this is the Prada,’” Buchanan jokes. “Every time I was in them, I felt like this chieftess and I held myself differently.” Learning Ōlelo Hawai‘i, the indigenous language spoken for most of the series, was also empowering. Today, it is estimated that less than five per cent of Hawaiians can speak Ōlelo Hawai‘i. “There’s a lot of language trauma and a generation that don’t speak it,” Buchanan explains. “That was something I could connect with too, because my language was taken away from me.” As a child, Buchanan’s family spoke English instead of Tongan at home – “We’ve gotta fit into the Western world and life will be easier,” her mum thought at the time – which fractured her relationship to the native tongue of her mother and grandmother.
Buchanan channelled her shame around language insecurity into writing Mother Tongue, her 2024 short film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. And by throwing herself into mastering Ōlelo Hawai‘i for Chief Of War. “The first time I had a big scene, it took me over a month to learn, because I had so much dialogue,” Buchanan admits. Looking back, speaking Ōlelo Hawai‘i and standing in that power is one of her favourite moments from production. “It’s such an honour,” she says. “One of our language coaches, his daughter came to set … She was asking her dad, ‘Wait, she doesn’t speak Hawaiian?’” Buchanan beams. “I was like, this is the best compliment I’ve ever gotten from a nine-year-old. It goes beyond my ego as an actor of ‘I did a good job’. There’s a whole generation of kids who grew up with this language who are going to have a show where that’s reflected. That’s such a rarity.”
These moments matter – it’s why Momoa has put the weight of his considerable star power behind a project that would not have been made without him. “The passion was amazing,” stresses Buchanan. “But also, there were times where he was like, ‘Wow! I thought I was the star! Everyone’s turning up!’ And we’re like, ‘We’re trying our best!’” she remembers, laughing. “You can’t be the only one that’s amazing or else it’ll flop!”
Buchanan is hoping for a second season, so she can return to Hawaii and New Zealand and continue the arc of Ka‘ahumanu’s story. After that, perhaps something completely different. “I do want to do things that are for the culture. I want to be a part of it, whether in front of the camera or behind, or, you know, doing the coffees. I don’t care,” Buchanan declares. “But also, I’m interested in projects where we don’t talk about my culture.”
The worst thing, she says, would be to find herself trapped in a casting vortex: “I don’t want to get stuck in a box, that’s the brown girl doing the brown things. Or not even being considered for things that are culturally significant.” When she first started acting, Buchanan was repeatedly told by casting agents in New Zealand that she “doesn’t look Polynesian enough”. Buchanan leans forward, pride radiating from her. “Well, now I’m [in] Chief of War, girl.”
Chief of War streams on AppleTV+ from August 1.
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