‘They've meant so much to me': His TV show is a hit but this filmmaker still cries in the shower
Two years ago, Raiff, who would play the younger sibling, Hal, cast Riverdale's Lili Reinhart as his character's elder sister, Harper, and Mark Ruffalo as the co-dependent pair's damaged father, Michael. Eighteen months ago, Raiff's production wrapped in Los Angeles, ending a hectic 50-day shoot. Five months ago, the show, Hal & Harper, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, successfully selling to streaming services. Three weeks ago, Raiff cried in the shower because he was saying goodbye to the fictional family that had become all too real to him.
'I was crying because I was going to really miss Hal and Harper, and dad, too,' Raiff says. 'I've been with them for so long and they've meant so much to me. I'm bad at maths but I'm 28 now and they've been in my head and body for eight years now. That's a lot of life. It was hard to let go.'
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Zooming in from separate locations in New York, Raiff and Reinhart are a smiling mix of wonder and surprise. They know they're a part of something special with Hal & Harper but the experience of making the series was so demanding they're still getting used to the work leaving them and going out to the world.
'Cooper, to me, never ever lost sight of the vision he had,' Reinhart says. 'It changed along the way, because it had to, but the feeling of it and the intensity in Cooper's eyes every day never changed because he was trying to stay true to what was inside his heart. How do you paint the inside of your heart and stay true to it?
'Something, somehow was guiding him and he was very locked in. Trying to talk to Cooper about anything else was useless. There was no conversation outside the show,' she adds, then addresses Raiff directly. 'Your whole life was consumed by this show, which is why it is so effective. I've never seen firsthand a heart be embodied like this. That's why I had a lot of trust.'
Comprising eight roughly half-hour episodes, each written and directed by Raiff, Hal & Harper is an idiosyncratic gem of a series. In an era of neatly segmented shows, it's messy and ambitious and counterintuitive. It's very funny and very sad, often in such close proximity that you're not aware of one becoming the other. The comedy and the drama are their own storytelling siblings.
Twenty-two-year-old Hal and 24-year-old Harper Williams are still emotionally intertwined from the childhood loss that left them with a wounded father, Michael, who struggled to support them emotionally. As Hal floats through his university degree and Harper struggles with her first job, the pair lean on each other. It is, as Harper has realised, an unhealthy dynamic. And then their father delivers news that shakes all three of them: his girlfriend, Kate (Betty Gilpin), is pregnant.
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'There are so many people I love who have watched this show, and a lot stop at a certain place and say, 'I'm going to get there but I'm not there yet',' Raiff says. 'When they do – well, people can't talk to me about the finale, so they just send me a selfie of them crying. Even my own dad, I'm still trying to sit him down and talk to him.'
In many ways Hal & Harper brings the tenets of independent filmmaking to television, whether it's Raiff's ready use of natural light or a hectic production schedule in which the stripped-down crew and cast had to 'steal locations' (shoot without the relevant permits) when required. The call sheet, a production's daily schedule, was mostly 'a suggestion', jokes Reinhart.
'There is some sort of lightning-in-a-bottle magic to doing so much in a day. You're tired, your guard is down,' Raiff says. 'If there was a crying scene, it was very easy to cry. We had a scene that was meant to be funny but I started crying and someone said, 'I'm not sure that's the vibe.' And I said, 'That's my vibe right now!''
Lengthy sequences are told in montage form, set to Raiff's distinctive music choices, and there's also a bittersweet twist: in the extensive flashbacks to when Hal is aged seven and Harper nine, Raiff and Rinehart still play the characters. It is absurd but touching. The pair are oversized yet still too small for the circumstances they're struggling with. The influence the pair's uncertain childhood has on them as adults is made wrenchingly clear.
'My favourite day on set was the first time we played kids. I knew it was going to be emotional and funny but I didn't realise how much soul it would have. That's what Lili's eyes bring. Whatever she was doing as nine-year-old Harper is the most beautiful thing that's ever been put on camera.'
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Raiff isn't afraid to dig into the emotional muck of his characters. Ruffalo's Michael is still roiled and uncommunicative and, like his children, he wants to say the right things but he doubts they'll actually apply. When push comes to emotional shove, father, son and daughter all painfully struggle to make sense of what they're grappling with.
'We're really good at talk therapy and I have friends who are very emotionally intelligent but that's very different, that processing trauma through your body,' Raiff says. 'Talking about your feelings is easier than actually feeling them.'
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News.com.au
21 hours ago
- News.com.au
‘No one would even look at me': What really happened on Shallow Hal set according to explosive Gwyneth Paltrow book
New details about Gwyneth Paltrow's controversial role wearing a fat suit for Shallow Hal and crew accounts of her behavior on set are revealed in a bombshell new book about the star. Below is an edited extract from the upcoming book Gwyneth by Amy Odell. EXTRACT: A macrobiotic diet and so-called clean eating were among the first health fads that seemed to stick to Gwyneth Paltrow and her evolving persona. 'That was the beginning of people thinking I was a crackpot. Like, What do you mean food can affect your health, you f***ing psycho?' she later said. By the time she was doing interviews to promote Shallow Hal, she was espousing the kinds of health theories that would define her next career. The media generally quoted her without any fact-checking: 'I used to drink vodka tonics all the time … but I found that my kidneys got really hard because of it, and I noticed that my liver wouldn't drop down in my yoga back bends.' ('I don't think you could say there's some physiological explanation for what she's talking about,' said infectious disease expert Dr. Amesh Adalja.) Gwyneth's Ashtanga yoga routine involved getting up at 4am six days a week for an hour and forty-five minutes of practice. 'I never skip it unless I'm ill,' she said. She'd bring two yoga instructors with her on location shoots. While all of this was going on, she was spending her working hours in a fat suit. By the time Gwyneth showed up on the set of the Farrelly brothers' Shallow Hal in 2000 with her strange diet requests and intensive workout schedule, she was ready to cultivate the irreverent side of her personality, the fun-loving mischief maker. But the people around her were still seeing elitist Gwyneth. Before filming began, 120-pound Gwyneth slipped into a rubbery, twenty-five-pound fat suit. It came in six pieces — one that zipped over her torso, one that slipped over her legs like shorts, two calf pieces, and two gloves — plus a face that was essentially glued to hers, and was meant to make her look like she weighed 350 pounds. She planned to walk around downtown Charlotte, North Carolina (where the movie was filming) without an entourage or full camera crew, to experience what her high school yearbook had called her 'worst fear' — obesity. None of the pedestrians knew that a major movie was in their midst. They mostly ignored her, or skirted around her body like an obstacle dropped in their path. Barry Teague, a line producer, had been instructed to stay close, but to keep enough of a distance so that she felt like she was alone. Teague, who weighed 325 pounds himself, felt pained as he watched the scene play out before him. She moved more slowly than everyone else and blocked most of the width of the sidewalk. Pedestrians couldn't step off the curb to pass by because cars were parked, so they had to squeeze around her single file on the other side. Teague watched two attractive, middle-aged men hurry around her like she was a trash can, without saying 'excuse me' or regarding her at all. A pair of teenage girls gawked as she passed, then giggled to each other as she walked away. She did the walk a few times. Teague watched her stop at a hot dog stand and noticed how impatient the crowd behind her got, seemingly for no other reason than her being fat. After twenty minutes of walking around town this time, she called it quits. The exercise seemed too distressing for her to finish. Teague said, 'It was difficult to watch.' Before Gwyneth got to Charlotte, she had done a test run in New York. The crew dressed her in the fat suit in a room at the Tribeca Grand hotel and sent her to the bar to see if anyone could recognize her. 'No one would even look at me,' she recalled. 'If I was walking by a table, you know how naturally you just glance up. 'But people would see that I was heavy in their peripheral vision and not look, because I think they assume that's the polite thing to do. It was incredibly isolating and really lonely and sad … I didn't expect it to feel so upsetting,' she said. 'I thought the whole thing would be funny, and then as soon as I put it on, I thought, well, you know, this isn't all funny.' Gwyneth had a sign made for her trailer that read 'Kate,' seemingly as a decoy, even though the only people coming near it were crew who knew she was inside. She wasn't chummy. She didn't rush to make conversation, and she let her attention drift if the topic did not interest her. She seemed out of her element. 'Sometimes she felt like she was maybe more talented or more in-demand than other people, and you could see that,' said Teague. 'You could hear her eyes rolling sometimes.' When she finished a scene with an actor she didn't like who had a bit part in the film, she walked away poking a finger in her mouth, miming throwing up. During some scenes, Gwyneth wore a short skirt but chose not to wear anything underneath. One of the camera operators went over to her dresser, Cookie Lopez. 'Cookie, she's flashing us. You might want to tell her to sit differently.' Lopez looked at him and said, 'There's nothing I can do.' He said, 'You don't want to tell her so she can change what she's doing?' Lopez replied, 'If she likes doing that, I can't get her to stop.' Another day, the crew watched her riding around set on one of the electric scooters they used to get around, wearing only the bikini that was her costume for an upcoming scene. Though she never liked her legs, she struck one crew member as 'very, very comfortable in her own skin.' Compared to other Farrelly brothers film stars, Gwyneth was remote. ReneÌ�e Zellweger joined the Me, Myself & Irene cast and crew at a skating party. Jim Carrey, who starred in Me, Myself & Irene and Dumb and Dumber, threw the Irene crew a dance party on a boat. Gwyneth ordered an ice cream cart for the set and had her assistant push it around saying, 'It's from Gwyneth, it's from Gwyneth.' The crew was surprised — not that the gesture was comparatively small but that Gwyneth had done anything at all. When a technician died suddenly during filming, cast and crew contributed to a fund for his widow and children. The person in charge of collecting the money was telling colleagues one day how much they had amassed; Gwyneth overheard and asked them what they were talking about. One crew member signaled another not to tell her, sensing that Gwyneth wasn't someone who should be requested to donate. Later, someone overheard Luke Wilson, who had visited the set, tell her, 'The world doesn't revolve around you.' Even by the relatively permissive standards of 2002, Shallow Hal generated controversy for using fatness as a punch line. Gwyneth told friends and some of the crew that she felt like the film could bring attention to what would later be widely termed fat-shaming, which she experienced for the first time in her life in the fat suit. But that's not exactly where the discourse landed. 'If you're overweight and you see this movie, you're going to be disturbed. To be honest, I was uncomfortable throughout the whole movie,' singer and talk show host Carnie Wilson told USA Today. 'It made me feel like I was a big joke, and that crushes my heart.' Advocacy groups agreed. 'It's making horrible fun of fat people, and that is still acceptable in our culture,' said Miriam Berg, president of the nonprofit group Council on Size & Weight Discrimination. 'Would it be acceptable to make the same kind of joke about a person in a wheelchair or a person of colour? No.' Sandie Sabo, spokeswoman for the five-thousand-member National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, told The New York Times, 'If Gwyneth Paltrow had decided to make a movie about the African American experience, and she portrayed herself in blackface makeup, and yet her quote-unquote inner beauty was perceived as white, I don't think people would put up with that … Maybe that will help people understand.' Despite the backlash, the film fared fairly well in reviews and opened third at the box office, with first-weekend ticket sales of US$23.3 million. It would go on to gross $141 million worldwide on a US$40 million budget. Gwyneth did her best to respond to the controversy, but her well-intentioned innocence sometimes floundered on the spot. Matt Lauer asked her on the US Today show if the film made fun of fat people. 'No. I wouldn't have done it if that was the intention. You know, and I, I was concerned, I thought, 'Well is this going to be — is this going to be making fun of, of heavier people?' 'But it really doesn't. I mean — and actually the film is really — it ends up being a love letter to, to people who are overweight. 'It's like finally a film for people who are overweight, and, and,and it's — it's really a love letter,'she said. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, she said, 'I got a real sense of what it would be like to be that overweight, and every pretty girl should be forced to do that.' Gwyneth had never seen the movie as mocking fat people and was disappointed that it hadn't ended up being her Charlie's Angels, though it was commercially successful. (Angels earned around $120 million more on the same budget.) But the backlash didn't seem to bother her all that much. She simply moved on to her next project.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘We're the same people': How a Kiwi legend and Hollywood superstar bonded over history
Eight years have passed, but the emotion still rises in Temuera Morrison's voice when he recalls the defining compliment his fellow actor Jason Momoa paid him. In 2017, the two stars were on the vast Gold Coast set of Hollywood superhero blockbuster Aquaman. Momoa, the rising Hollywood success story, had the title role of the heroic undersea warrior, while Morrison, the New Zealand veteran with an eclectic CV, was playing his human father. Aquaman 's script may have crafted a father-and-son bond for the duo onscreen, but one day Morrison learnt just how deep their connection ran in real life. Momoa, an indigenous Hawaiian, had his then two young children, daughter Lola and son Nakoa-Wolf, visit him on set. What Momoa chose to share with them was how important Morrison, a fellow Polynesian actor via his Māori heritage, had been to him long before they met. 'I heard him tell his kids, 'See that guy there' – and he's pointing at me – 'I saw his movie Once Were Warriors and that's what excited me to become an actor and get into this business',' Morrison says, referring to his breakthrough role in the 1994 New Zealand classic. 'Just quietly, that made me very proud.' Fast forward to today and Morrison is again working with Momoa, but the stakes are very different. An epic nine-episode historic drama set on the Hawaiian Islands in the late 18th century, Apple TV+'s Chief of War is a bloody, impassioned epic about the unification of rival Indigenous kingdoms into a single nation. Deeply versed in the island chain's history and with Olelo Hawai'i as the principal language spoken, it's Momoa's long-held passion project. It's where the chips he accumulated for Aquaman and Fast X, Dune and The Minecraft Movie get pushed all in. Momoa co-created the series, has a starring role, directed the finale, and according to an admiring Morrison, did plenty more. 'He's a 100-miles-an-hour and a hundred things going on. Not many people can do that,' Morrison says. 'When Jason directed his episode, he had multiple cameras going. He had actors and stunties and muskets firing, all on top of a real volcano erupting. That's a whole lot of energy. He's been preparing himself for this project. He's learnt everything technical, and he's learnt quickly. But he doesn't give himself credit.' It's late summer in Hawaii, the day before the red-carpet launch of Chief of War, and while he's fighting a chest infection, Morrison is full of enthusiasm for Momoa, the show, and what it will mean for Hawaiian culture. Morrison, one of the most commanding 64-year-olds you can encounter, knows what he wants to do after his interview schedule – it involves 'a couple of schooners' – but right now, he's got praise to share. Loading 'This was totally different to Aquaman,' Morrison says. 'There was a sense of pride in being Polynesian. A sense of connection. Here we are: Hawaiian and Māori together, speaking your language. This was something culturally significant. This was something Jason had always wanted to make. Something about his people.' As with Shogun, the hit Disney+ series set in 17th century feudal Japan, Chief of War is immersed in a deeply traditional culture just starting to have contact with the outside world. But here there is no European character to serve as the audience's proxy. You're thrown – quite literally, in the first scene – into the deep end, with the stunning landscapes and historically accurate production design setting up a paradise beset by conflict. Momoa stars as Ka'iana, a Maui chief living in exile, with his wife, Kupuohi (Te Ao o Hinepehinga), and brothers, who is recalled to his home island by Morrison's ambitious king, Kahekili. The dynamic between the two is fraught, setting in motion events that speak not only to personal power but also to spiritual conviction and national survival – the destructive colonial powers, bearing gunpowder, silver and disease, are edging closer to the Hawaiian Islands. Morrison comes from a family of performers and singers, appearing on New Zealand screens since the late 1980s and taking up Hollywood roles after Once Were Warriors ′ international acclaim. He's played bounty hunter Jango Fett and his son Boba in various Star Wars releases, from the movie prequels to the 2021 series The Book of Boba Fett, but he demurred when Momoa first came calling, worried he would let his friend down. 'You need Cliff Curtis,' Morrison told Momoa, citing his New Zealand friend and Once Were Warriors co-star, who had just featured in Avatar: The Way of Water. But Momoa already had another role in mind for Curtis, rival chief Keoua, so he kept pressing Morrison, who then replied that he was worried he was taking a role from a Hawaiian actor. 'Jason's words to me were, 'Bro, we're the same people'. That did it. He was right. We have 'aroha' for love, they say 'aloha',' Morrison says. 'I could tell from the excitement in his voice that he wanted me onboard his waka [canoe]. He's got this ability to sell you anything. I heard he pitched Chief of War over the phone to Apple TV+ and they took it on.' Loading Once he said yes, Morrison was at ease playing Kahekili. He knew how to carry himself like an absolute leader, and understood the warrior ethic through his own Māori lineage. The challenge was learning Olelo Hawai'i. Chief of War was too important, to Momoa and every other native Hawaiian, for outside actors to simply recite the lines phonetically. The cast had to be able to talk to each other. This gig came with historic responsibility. 'I still remember my first day on set where the boom operator, who holds a big microphone above us actors, looks at me and she says, 'You're playing my ancestor',' Morrison says. 'I didn't know how to respond, but I knew that if I didn't get it right she would probably bang me on the head with her microphone.' Starting with the scripts co-written by Momoa and fellow creator Thomas Pa'aa Sibbett, Chief of War has a comprehensive level of anthropological detail. The costume department was in pre-production for eight months, re-creating the feathers of extinct birds for the individual Ahu'ula (cape) and Mahiole (helmet) worn by each chief. Historically accurate weapons, for male and female warriors, were duplicated. Morrison himself started the day at 3am, having Kahekili's extensive facial tattoos drawn on. 'We had all of Polynesia involved: we had Samoan actors, we had Tongan actors, Tahitian actors, a few Māori actors, and, of course many Hawaiian actors. The whole cast came together with a responsibility to do the best we could,' Morrison says. 'That reconnected us as Polynesians. It brought us together in a very close-knit way. A lot of love shared. It was quite wonderful.' Loading Some challenges for Morrison required a veteran actor's cunning. Momoa is almost two metres tall, and Morrison, who's quick to joke about his lack of height, is not. When the two shared a scene walking along a path, Morrison stood on the track's edge, to add a few centimetres. Whenever a scene took place on volcanic rocks, Morrison would check with the cinematographer if his 'soft feet' were in the shot. If not, he could wear padding. But these cheeky workarounds never got in the way of the show's mission. From Momoa on down, everyone involved with Chief of War was committed to showing audiences the Hawaii that existed for 1000 years before its annexation by the United States in 1898. 'Hopefully, Hawaiians will feel a sense of pride and a sense of reclaiming their identity, in having their culture reflected back to them,' Morrison says. 'We've been doing that for a little while in New Zealand, but we've all got a lot to learn about Hawaii.'
The Age
3 days ago
- The Age
‘We're the same people': How a Kiwi legend and Hollywood superstar bonded over history
Eight years have passed, but the emotion still rises in Temuera Morrison's voice when he recalls the defining compliment his fellow actor Jason Momoa paid him. In 2017, the two stars were on the vast Gold Coast set of Hollywood superhero blockbuster Aquaman. Momoa, the rising Hollywood success story, had the title role of the heroic undersea warrior, while Morrison, the New Zealand veteran with an eclectic CV, was playing his human father. Aquaman 's script may have crafted a father-and-son bond for the duo onscreen, but one day Morrison learnt just how deep their connection ran in real life. Momoa, an indigenous Hawaiian, had his then two young children, daughter Lola and son Nakoa-Wolf, visit him on set. What Momoa chose to share with them was how important Morrison, a fellow Polynesian actor via his Māori heritage, had been to him long before they met. 'I heard him tell his kids, 'See that guy there' – and he's pointing at me – 'I saw his movie Once Were Warriors and that's what excited me to become an actor and get into this business',' Morrison says, referring to his breakthrough role in the 1994 New Zealand classic. 'Just quietly, that made me very proud.' Fast forward to today and Morrison is again working with Momoa, but the stakes are very different. An epic nine-episode historic drama set on the Hawaiian Islands in the late 18th century, Apple TV+'s Chief of War is a bloody, impassioned epic about the unification of rival Indigenous kingdoms into a single nation. Deeply versed in the island chain's history and with Olelo Hawai'i as the principal language spoken, it's Momoa's long-held passion project. It's where the chips he accumulated for Aquaman and Fast X, Dune and The Minecraft Movie get pushed all in. Momoa co-created the series, has a starring role, directed the finale, and according to an admiring Morrison, did plenty more. 'He's a 100-miles-an-hour and a hundred things going on. Not many people can do that,' Morrison says. 'When Jason directed his episode, he had multiple cameras going. He had actors and stunties and muskets firing, all on top of a real volcano erupting. That's a whole lot of energy. He's been preparing himself for this project. He's learnt everything technical, and he's learnt quickly. But he doesn't give himself credit.' It's late summer in Hawaii, the day before the red-carpet launch of Chief of War, and while he's fighting a chest infection, Morrison is full of enthusiasm for Momoa, the show, and what it will mean for Hawaiian culture. Morrison, one of the most commanding 64-year-olds you can encounter, knows what he wants to do after his interview schedule – it involves 'a couple of schooners' – but right now, he's got praise to share. Loading 'This was totally different to Aquaman,' Morrison says. 'There was a sense of pride in being Polynesian. A sense of connection. Here we are: Hawaiian and Māori together, speaking your language. This was something culturally significant. This was something Jason had always wanted to make. Something about his people.' As with Shogun, the hit Disney+ series set in 17th century feudal Japan, Chief of War is immersed in a deeply traditional culture just starting to have contact with the outside world. But here there is no European character to serve as the audience's proxy. You're thrown – quite literally, in the first scene – into the deep end, with the stunning landscapes and historically accurate production design setting up a paradise beset by conflict. Momoa stars as Ka'iana, a Maui chief living in exile, with his wife, Kupuohi (Te Ao o Hinepehinga), and brothers, who is recalled to his home island by Morrison's ambitious king, Kahekili. The dynamic between the two is fraught, setting in motion events that speak not only to personal power but also to spiritual conviction and national survival – the destructive colonial powers, bearing gunpowder, silver and disease, are edging closer to the Hawaiian Islands. Morrison comes from a family of performers and singers, appearing on New Zealand screens since the late 1980s and taking up Hollywood roles after Once Were Warriors ′ international acclaim. He's played bounty hunter Jango Fett and his son Boba in various Star Wars releases, from the movie prequels to the 2021 series The Book of Boba Fett, but he demurred when Momoa first came calling, worried he would let his friend down. 'You need Cliff Curtis,' Morrison told Momoa, citing his New Zealand friend and Once Were Warriors co-star, who had just featured in Avatar: The Way of Water. But Momoa already had another role in mind for Curtis, rival chief Keoua, so he kept pressing Morrison, who then replied that he was worried he was taking a role from a Hawaiian actor. 'Jason's words to me were, 'Bro, we're the same people'. That did it. He was right. We have 'aroha' for love, they say 'aloha',' Morrison says. 'I could tell from the excitement in his voice that he wanted me onboard his waka [canoe]. He's got this ability to sell you anything. I heard he pitched Chief of War over the phone to Apple TV+ and they took it on.' Loading Once he said yes, Morrison was at ease playing Kahekili. He knew how to carry himself like an absolute leader, and understood the warrior ethic through his own Māori lineage. The challenge was learning Olelo Hawai'i. Chief of War was too important, to Momoa and every other native Hawaiian, for outside actors to simply recite the lines phonetically. The cast had to be able to talk to each other. This gig came with historic responsibility. 'I still remember my first day on set where the boom operator, who holds a big microphone above us actors, looks at me and she says, 'You're playing my ancestor',' Morrison says. 'I didn't know how to respond, but I knew that if I didn't get it right she would probably bang me on the head with her microphone.' Starting with the scripts co-written by Momoa and fellow creator Thomas Pa'aa Sibbett, Chief of War has a comprehensive level of anthropological detail. The costume department was in pre-production for eight months, re-creating the feathers of extinct birds for the individual Ahu'ula (cape) and Mahiole (helmet) worn by each chief. Historically accurate weapons, for male and female warriors, were duplicated. Morrison himself started the day at 3am, having Kahekili's extensive facial tattoos drawn on. 'We had all of Polynesia involved: we had Samoan actors, we had Tongan actors, Tahitian actors, a few Māori actors, and, of course many Hawaiian actors. The whole cast came together with a responsibility to do the best we could,' Morrison says. 'That reconnected us as Polynesians. It brought us together in a very close-knit way. A lot of love shared. It was quite wonderful.' Loading Some challenges for Morrison required a veteran actor's cunning. Momoa is almost two metres tall, and Morrison, who's quick to joke about his lack of height, is not. When the two shared a scene walking along a path, Morrison stood on the track's edge, to add a few centimetres. Whenever a scene took place on volcanic rocks, Morrison would check with the cinematographer if his 'soft feet' were in the shot. If not, he could wear padding. But these cheeky workarounds never got in the way of the show's mission. From Momoa on down, everyone involved with Chief of War was committed to showing audiences the Hawaii that existed for 1000 years before its annexation by the United States in 1898. 'Hopefully, Hawaiians will feel a sense of pride and a sense of reclaiming their identity, in having their culture reflected back to them,' Morrison says. 'We've been doing that for a little while in New Zealand, but we've all got a lot to learn about Hawaii.'
