{"id":560386,"date":"2026-03-24T04:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T04:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/560386\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T04:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T04:33:12","slug":"australian-actor-catherine-lagaaia-stars-in-trailer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/560386\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian actor Catherine Laga\u2019aia stars in trailer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Michael<\/p>\n

March 24, 2026 \u2014 12:30pm<\/p>\n

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In the trailer for the new Disney live-action adaptation of Moana, the teenage monarch-in-waiting \u2013 played by Australian actress Catherine Laga\u2019aia \u2013 faces her greatest peril and must stand up to be counted. \u201cI\u2019m not a princess,\u201d she declares. \u201cI\u2019m the daughter of the chief and the leader of my people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 16-year-old fictional heroine may not be cut from the classic cloth of Disney princesses, but the declaration she makes sounds almost like a statement of identity. So, is this heresy in the Magic Kingdom? Or just the making of a modern woman in a modern world, albeit one born in the fictional Polynesian island village of Motunui?<\/p>\n

\"CatherinaCatherina Laga\u2019aia as Moana.Disney<\/p>\n

\u201cMoana fits beautifully into the canon of Disney and also has many elements of it that are quite distinct from some other Disney films,\u201d the film\u2019s director Thomas Kail said. \u201cSo much of this is about being two things and finding identity, and what we see in ourselves and what others see in us.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that moment, she has to stand for herself and say, well, I\u2019m actually something a little different than you think, and I think that\u2019s one of the reasons why we\u2019re still talking about Moana,\u201d Kail added. \u201cHer power and her ferocity are certainly those leading characteristics for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a little over two minutes, the trailer is our first proper glimpse of the live-action world based on the much-loved animated film. It is also our first proper glimpse of Laga\u2019aia \u2013 the 19-year-old daughter of actor Jay Laga\u2019aia \u2013 in a film role which is set to transform her professional career. As first movie gigs go, it\u2019s not exactly small.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Kail described Catherine as the real deal. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for somehow quite a long time, I guess, almost 25, 26 years now, and I\u2019ve had many people in a little rehearsal room where world had a chance to experience their virtuosity, their energy, their talent, and Catherine has that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything she does after this, this is high-altitude training, anything she could be asked to do in a motion picture, she is being asked to do in her very first, including act opposite Mr Dwayne Johnson,\u201d Kail added. \u201cShe\u2019s unfailing, and she\u2019s unblinking, and she just rose to meet each moment. The trailer was a chance to give a little sample of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kail, 49, is primarily a Broadway director whose credits include Lin-Manuel Miranda\u2019s musicals In the Heights and Hamilton (which won him the 2016 Tony Award for best direction of a musical) and the television series Fosse\/Verdon. Kail also directed Grease: Live for US television, and is working on a screen adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof for Amazon MGM Studios.<\/p>\n

He might be uniquely qualified to answer one of pop culture\u2019s great conundrums: do you stick the \u201ccanon\u201d, and risk failing to elevate or evolve the work, or do you gamble with the audience\u2019s fragile sensibilities by changing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s certainly one of the large and existential questions about this kind of endeavour,\u201d Kail said. \u201cI\u2019m here because I love the original film and the characters and the architecture of that story. And I also know that because of the existence of our film and telling the story with flesh and blood and putting human beings in it, that it is inherently a completely different kind of experience.<\/p>\n

\"DwayneDwayne Johnson as Maui in Moana.Disney<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to trust all of the things that work and also be unafraid to try out some [new things],\u201d he said. \u201cWe tried to be as courageous as we could in that regard, and also trust the material.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trailer, Kail said, is designed to \u201cgive the audience a sense of the spirit of the film, of its adventure, of its humour. One of the things we were really excited about \u2026 is to show how epic it is. This is a big story. If you do a musical, you don\u2019t often expect it to also have a lava monster, a singing crab, and animals on the ocean. This one really gives you everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Editor’s pick\"Robert<\/a><\/p>\n

The fact that the director of the film has a media schedule to accompany the release of the trailer is confirmation we\u2019re living in a new world. One where even the trailer gets its own junket. What\u2019s next? The trailer gets a trailer? That\u2019s a tour rider we\u2019re still trying to wrap our heads around.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou make things, and you know at a certain point that you walk away, and you say, oh, I wish. I\u2019m only as good as that day lets me be,\u201d Kail said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a joyous collaboration because we made the movie, and then we try to go make this [trailer] and put out something that will, as you say, have its own life. It gets out there first to hopefully lead the way. That\u2019s certainly new for me. There are not as many trailers on Broadway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moana will be released in cinemas in Australia on July 8.<\/p>\n

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"MichaelMichael Idato<\/a> is the culture editor-at-large of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 24, 2026 \u2014 12:30pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":["post-560386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}