“That’s, I guess, like my longest friendship,” he says.
“[Mum is] someone that I’ve been affected by and influenced by through all of my major life moments, and many of my core memories with her. She was very encouraging of me reading, writing and expressing myself creatively in that way with the written word. I owe a lot of that to her.”
You can feel her in Waititi’s older female characters.
Take heart-of-gold Aunt Bella from Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Jojo Rabbit’s rebel mum Rosie Betzler, and most recently, Amy Adams’ portrayal of grieving solo parent Chrissie in Waititi’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun. All are written with depth, care and complex layering.
“I think for a male writer, it’s a bit presumptuous to be able to declare ‘I can write women’, but I think that sometimes it’s a bit more like writing versions of myself that I also turn into women,” Waititi says.
“Maybe I’m just a woman inside, you know, that’s the voice that I know the best.”
It was chance that led Waititi to adapt Ishiguro’s hit book. He picked up a copy of Klara and the Sun at an airport bookstore.
“I thought the novel told a beautiful and simple story about a character who was an outsider, observing and then integrating into a family,” the director says from his LA home. He’s cooking an ossobuco amid what is likely a hectic press schedule.
In the book, Klara, an A.F. (Artificial Friend) played by Jenna Ortega, provides comfort to a sick teenage girl in a post-apocalyptic world. The premise resonated with Waititi, who wanted his next story to share a unique way of seeing the world, as well as conveying how humans see themselves.
Ortega, best known for Wednesday and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, says this version of the story is different – because of Waititi.
“Klara’s perception of things is so hopeful and optimistic, and it was wonderful for Taika to add his special brand of humour and colour to her.
“I also think Taika, visually, is very special and I like to work with people who are auteurs – and headstrong in their way.”
Jenna Ortega plays artificial friend Klara, who thrives on sunlight. Photo / Matt Grace
The novel’s themes are deep and dark. But having adapted the Nazi Germany-set novel Caging Skies into Jojo Rabbit, the film-maker had a proven track record for straddling the fine line between comedy and drama.
“I think the biggest challenge [for adapting books to film] is that they’re completely different mediums. Books can be more drawn out and take your time,” the 51-year-old says.
“A book takes days and days to read, and so it’s a very different engagement with the audience. With a film you’ve got to do it within an hour and a half to two hours, and you’ve also got to recognise there are times when the audience is bored, and they want things to keep moving.”
Waititi worked with Booker Prize-winner Ishiguro throughout the process of turning the book into a film.
“I’d come up with ideas, and he would say, ‘Oh, I’d thought about putting something like that in the book, but I’m glad you’ve come up with that for the film’,” Waititi has said.
Klara was shot in New Zealand, with the lush plains of Wānaka and its surrounds acting as the isolated setting for Klara’s new home. As the film’s name suggests, the sun was like another character the crew had to capture, and the sun in New Zealand was perfectly cast.
The film’s director of photography Michael Berlucchi says our natural light is “harsh, but beautiful. In the wheat fields, it had a consistent kind of golden bounce that comes back at the characters. It’s really something special”.
Ortega says New Zealand “is just one of the most beautiful places I’ve been – the culture, the colours of the fields, plus the air is fresh and the energy is loose”.
The rolling fields of Aotearoa play a big part in Klara and the Sun. Photo / Matt Grace
Waititi loves shooting here and says he wants to do it whenever he can, particularly because shooting outside is “becoming a novelty” with his work lately.
“All my favourite days on set were out in the fields walking around, because it’s just so beautiful to shoot outside, and it’s kind of weirdly happening less and less the more people use studios and the volumes that they use them. [On location] used to be the only way I would shoot.”
He’ll be back on home soil to make the most of a Kiwi Christmas. He and wife Rita Ora have a home overlooking Auckland’s Point Chevalier beach.
“I’ll be there for the whole summer and beyond,” he says with relief in his voice.
It will be a welcome break. His next projects involve another book adaptation (this time Percival Everett’s award-winning 2024 novel James), which is set in the US, as well as writing an animated version of Charlie vs. the Chocolate Factory (and voicing Willy Wonka), and writing and directing a new Star Wars film.
Taika Waititi directing Klara and the Sun with actor Jenna Ortega. Photo / Matt Grace
Audiences know Waititi as someone who enjoys pulling double, sometimes triple, duty – a writer, director and actor prone to placing himself front and centre in his films. Klara and the Sun almost went the same way, before a moment of personal growth offered itself up.
“I did film some stuff with myself in it, and then I chopped myself out, which was very mature of me as a film-maker because usually, I’d put myself in every scene if I could,” he says.
On the other side of the coin, he had plans for Sir Sam Neill to feature in the film. Plans that never came to fruition.
Waititi smiles at the mention of his close friend and collaborator, who died this year, aged 78.
Their film Hunt for the Wilderpeople is considered one of New Zealand’s best and Neill appeared in Waititi’s blockbuster US Marvel epics Thor: Ragnarok and Love and Thunder.
“When we were shooting [Klara]… there was another character that I ended up not putting in the film. I was talking to him about maybe doing that, but he wasn’t available,” Waititi says, adding they always planned to keep working together.
“I think we all kind of forget how many films he’s done over the years and what he’s in. Sometimes you’ll be watching something, and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, he’s in this.’ So, he’s sort of everywhere still.”
Taika Waititi, Sir Sam Neill and Julian Dennison on the set of Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
Watching Waititi work is like watching a dad take his kids to the park. He’s to-the-point, organised, but always kind and open to a cheeky laugh here and there.
On the set of a recent ad he directed for the Breast Cancer Foundation, there were high-fives the moment the camera stopped rolling. He then thanked each crew member individually before jetting off to collect his two daughters from school.
Waititi gets something special out of the younger actors he works with, especially New Zealand ones: Boy’s James Rolleston, Julian Dennison in Wilderpeople, Thomasin McKenzie in Jojo.
On Klara and the Sun, the story is no different.
“That fresh generation of actors is really exciting. I was so impressed by everyone,” Waititi says of his young Kiwi cast, which includes Thomasin’s sister Davida, Murdoch Kean and Josh Metcalfe.
For Waititi, it “was nice not having to stress about teaching people how to act”, and a timely reminder of having passion for the craft.
“I see a little bit of myself in them, just in their enthusiasm and their energy. And it’s something that you always have to remind yourself as you grow older and the more you work — just try and keep that enthusiasm and that excitement to go to work.”
Klara and the Sun is in cinemas on October 22.
Mitchell Hageman joined the Herald’s entertainment and lifestyle team in 2024. He previously worked as a multimedia journalist for Hawke’s Bay Today.