Writer/director Taika Waititi has a very clear reason for why he always casts himself in his movies. “In all honesty, and this is gonna sound very arrogant, but I really think I’m real awesome,” he tells Consequence with a laugh. “I like watching myself in the edit. I know a lot of people [who say], ‘Oh, I hate watching myself,’ but I actually really get a kick out of it. I’m like, ‘Ah man, this guy’s so funny.’ That’s just probably a lot about me, you know? I’m probably my own biggest fan.”
And thus, Waititi has a small role in Next Goal Wins, the new Searchlight Pictures film based on the acclaimed documentary of the same name. Both projects tell the story of the American Samoa football team, the ultimate underdog after a humiliating World Cup performance in 2001 that haunted them for years to come. Until, that is, a new coach (played by Michael Fassbender in the adaptation) was able to get them ready again for the global stage.
Waititi first got interested in the story of American Samoa football in 2015, when he watched the original documentary by Mike Brett and Steve Jamison, “which I absolutely loved.” At the time, he wasn’t looking for a new project, but then he met the real-life Jaiyah, a transgender player featured in the documentary, as well as the directors, “and it just got me sort of thinking, well, maybe I could do this thing.”
While he assumed that adapting the documentary wouldn’t be an option after he took on Thor: Ragnarok, after Jojo Rabbit he found himself with an opening in his schedule, and the film went into production in November 2019. After production wrapped, though, there were a few issues delaying its completion — not just a global pandemic, but also the later need to reshoot a small but key role, originally played by Armie Hammer.
Waititi looks at all reshoots as an advantage, though. “I always try and work pickups into my schedules, just because when you’re editing you realize, ‘Ah, maybe I should change this bit.’ Or maybe like, ‘Yeah, we need to have a little moment here between these characters. And then I’ve managed to put them in the pickups or additional photography. It’s just vital, and I’ve always done it and I always will.”
Continues Waititi, “it’s just been instilled in me. I’ve done it ever since my short films. You try your hardest to get things when you’re shooting and you think your script is great, but you just never know if it’s going to make perfect sense. And then sometimes you’re there like, ‘God, I wish I had a shot of someone picking up that cup. And then the scene would make complete sense.’ Most additional photography is just people getting shots of a map being opened, or a wallet being snatched out of a pocket. Just tiny little things.”
While Waititi always planned to play a character in the film, he didn’t know who exactly it would be — after “all the other roles were taken I just thought, ‘Oh, there was this idea for a priest, maybe I’ll do that.’ I partly wanted it just because I like playing priests, because I find religion funny and [I thought] ‘Oh, it’s been a while since I played a priest, so I’ll do that again.’ And then I didn’t even have any ideas for that character, so I just made him basically the same priest from Hunt for the Wilderpeople. I originally thought they were cousins or brothers, but I think they’re the same priest.”
Thus, we confirm the existence of the Hunt for the Wilderpeople Cinematic Universe (HFTWCU) or, as Waititi suggests, “The Taika-verse timeline.” (If you’re curious, the Priest’s appearance in Wilderpeople takes place after the events of Next Goal Wins.)
Waititi notes that he began as an actor at the age of six, only becoming a filmmaker “at the fresh age of 29 years old. And I decided, really, to become a filmmaker because I was so bored with the roles that were being offered to me to audition for, so I thought, ‘If I become a filmmaker, I could put myself in anything I make and then play any role I want to play.'”
It’s a strategy that eventually paid off, though as he says, “really, when you think about it, it actually took even longer than if I just kept auditioning. I went the really long roundabout way of becoming an actor.”
Being an actor on projects he’s not directing, like Free Guy or The Suicide Squad, is something he likes because “directing is so hard and it takes so long and it’s so stressful and you’re just always anxious and you can’t sleep and imposter syndrome is all around you, coursing through your body. With acting, all you have to do is turn up, swan onto the set in your little costume and little bit of makeup on and then say some words you remembered — or didn’t remember, if you’re most actors. And then you get to go home and then you get to go onto another movie. You get to do like five of those a year, and they’re like, ‘Oh God, he tortured himself for that role. Oh God, how torturous, he didn’t eat ice cream for a month.’ It’s like, come on, gimme a break.”
As he adds, “I’m really happy when actors become directors, because then they know, and then they come up to me and say ‘I’m so sorry. I have no idea how hard this was and I had no idea how annoying actors are.'”
Taika Waititi and cast behind the scenes of Next Goal Wins, courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Yes, Waititi might be an actor, but that doesn’t mean he has much patience for “actor speak,” as some might call it. “I don’t know if I know how to speak actor, because I grew up with friends and all we would say to each other was ‘That was shit, do it better.’ And I can’t really say that to famous people because they get offended. They’re very sensitive people, actors in Hollywood,” he says.
He’s not afraid to mock the kinds of “actor speak” a director might have to invoke, like “‘Remember, your character was hurt or was heartbroken as a child — take that with you. Have you ever been heartbroken? Why don’t you use that? I hate actor speak, so if I can avoid it, I do. I can make it up, but also again, I just wanna demystify everything and make life easy for everyone when I’m directing. I’m like, ‘Faster, just do it faster,’ and that tends to take care of everything.”
“Do it faster” is actually a deliberate strategy, he says, because “when you do it faster, you’re forgetting about all the crap that’s in your head that you were thinking about last night, like, ‘My character’s got a nervous itch all the time.’ All these stupid tricks that actors use to make themselves look like interesting actors. But if you make someone do it super fast, they’re just concentrating on that and they forget all of the crap. And then you start getting a bit more a a more real version of the person and it becomes more authentic.”
It is, he says, the “more polite” version of “‘That was shit, do it better.’ I do a lot of notes around my characters and around moments, those sort of deeper thoughts on things like, you know, this character here represents the mother and this character here represents this and life and death and all these things. It’s just that if you’re an actor, you should go and think about that stuff for your character by yourself. Don’t share it with me. It’s not my business. It’s your character. So if you believe that somehow you represent fire in this movie, cool. I just want to see you do good acting.”
When it comes to all the projects he’s currently balancing, Waititi says he’s “pretty good at staying focused.” However, he acknowledges that “I wish I loved writing as much as I used to. It’s just hard to type and know that there’s 80 more pages you’ve gotta fill up. That’s a hard thing, I think, nowadays. I used to have a lot of patience when I had no job, but now I’ve got a lot of jobs and not much time. So that’s the hardest part.”
However, he says, “I love having a lot of different projects going on and dipping in and out of them, because each one gives me a different sort of excitement, and each one is also very different from the last.” In our conversation, he only mentioned a few of the various projects he’s currently involved with, such as the upcoming adaptation of Charles Yu’s novel Interior Chinatown for Hulu — “that’ll be coming out next year and that’s gonna be amazing” and a new version of Time Bandits for Apple TV+, “another show that I’m making with Jermaine [Clement], which means me and Jermaine get to work together again.”
If Waititi had to pick one role to focus on… it’s a tough question for him to answer, “because acting is so much less stress. But directing, I’m just more in control of everything. It’s such stress to make a film… But I think probably directing, because I think I have a bit more fun. Also, I just love building worlds and creating these scenes. And in a way, I get to act by showing people how I would do it. Being around actors makes me feel like I’m an actor.”
And of course, he can cast himself if he needs to.
Next Goal Wins kicks off in theaters nationwide on Friday, November 17th.