TV Guide
17 January 2003
WHALE OF A TALE
Child actors come and go, but Keisha Castle-Hughes, star of the movie Whale Rider, gives the impression she’s going to be around for a long time to come.
The first thing that strikes you about Keisha Castle-Hughes is how well she conducts an interview.
A fair few young soap stars could take lessons from this 12-year-old as she effortlessly reels off anecdotes about her experiences as the star of New Zealand’s latest feature film.
Although she had always dreamed of being an actor, Whale Rider was her first real acting experience – but you would think she had been doing it for years.
“I just thought it was going to be fun”, says Keisha of her old view of the acting game. “Ever since I was little I was a real show-off and all I ever saw was people having fun and prancing around in these glamorous dresses and things like that. I didn’t realise it was actually very hard work”.
Listening to Keisha you can understand what the filmmakers saw in her when looking for a young girl who could carry off the demanding role of Pai.
There was a lot riding on the shoulders of this young girl who is central to the entire story. Koro (Rawiri Paratene), the kaumatua of a small impoverished Maori community, longs for a grandson who will, like the ancestral Whale Rider of the title, grow to lead his people to better times.
He gets a granddaughter, Pai, instead – and instantly rejects the notion that she might be the anointed.
That’s the cue for an increasingly hostile battle of wills between the blinkered, tradition-bound Koro and the granddaughter who only wants his love. As Koro seeks another leader among the boys of the community, Pai hovers on the edge – earning her grandfather’s wrath in the process.
Working up such a cold relationship on screen didn’t prove easy for the veteran actor and the newcomer and director Niki Caro made sure they didn’t get too close off-camera.
“He was so much fun,” says Keisha of Rawiri, but because on screen we couldn’t have a proper relationship, we couldn’t bond because it would show up on screen. But after wards when it was all over and I could talk to him properly, he was so nice. He said himself it was hard for him to yell at me.”
Rawiri described the story as a wonderful dilemma about leadership and the inability of some people to read the signs. Keisha sees it that way, too.
“He (Koro) wasn’t looking for the leader, he was looking for a leader that he wanted. But she had to show him he couldn’t have what he wanted, he had to have what he needed. When I see the film I go, ‘she’s there, she’s right there, can’t you see it?”
The story builds to a heart-wrenching climax on the isolated community’s beach when Pail’s destiny is revealed.
“My family all saw it a couple of weeks ago and they didn’t know what to expect, says Keisha of the story. “And they were all so overwhelmed by it. They were bawling their eyes out. “It really hits you right there,” she says, thumping her heart.
Keisha says she had no idea what she was letting herself in for when she got the role. She knows now – and will never be able to see films, or acting, in the same light again.
“I was I guess finding emotions that I’d never had to look into before.
There was never any reason to go to those places I had to go. It was hard. “Niki helped me so much because she let me try and do it on my own”. That wasn’t all Keisha had to learn. How to use a taiaha and deliver a karanga also came into it. There were hard lessons in both cases, particularly when she got whacked on the head while practising the taiaha. She also saw a lot of the secrets of the film industry.
“Now when I watch films it’s frustrating because I’ll never see a film as a film – especially our film. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to see it as Whale Rider because I’ll be thinking, ‘oh yes, I remember that day’ or ‘I remember who’s just around the corner’. So I can’t image what it’s like a for a normal audience to watch it.”
But if in the Hollywood tradition then Whale Rider resurrected for Keisha an acting dream she had almost given up on.
“I kind of waited for it to come to me and I didn’t go out there and grab it with two hands,” she says. “Then this came and it was like someone was giving me a wake-up call, saying not to give up on your dreams.
“I don’t expect any more of my dreams to come true because as long as this one is fulfilled I don’t think anything could make me happier.”
Story: Keith Sharp