{"id":531375,"date":"2026-07-17T22:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T22:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/531375\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T22:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T22:53:10","slug":"why-moana-live-action-star-rena-owen-kept-her-own-accent-in-disney-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/531375\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Moana live action star Rena Owen kept her own accent in Disney film"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite being set in a (mythical) Pacific island and inspired by stories from the region, New Zealand audiences will have noticed most of the characters speak with an American accent in the film.<\/p>\n

American director Thomas Kail (Hamilton) told the Herald they considered multiple accent options for the characters, but ultimately the decision to go with an American accent came down to the fact that Motunui, where the story is set, is not a real place.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe NZ Herald talks to Catherine Laga’aia and Thomas Kail in Sydney. Photo \/ Disney<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are creating an island that is fictional and can draw from different places.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s certainly other islands that people are going back and forth from. So we tried to build that story, both choreographically and also with sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

But one actor who kept something resembling their own accent was Owen, who plays Gramma Tala. Kail explains that decision was due to the character\u2019s back story.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that Gramma Tala now lives here, but she also came from somewhere,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Owen says that, much like fellow New Zealand actor Rachel House, who voiced Gramma Tala in the animated version of the film, the way she felt when embodying the character dictated the accent she used.<\/p>\n

\u201cGramma Tala came to each of us, rather than me or Rachel [House] imposing ourselves on to who Gramma Tala is.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just had to organically follow the character. Grandma Tala is first and foremost a spiritual, a wairua character.\u201d<\/p>\n

Owen says they rehearsed different voices, but the final accent was rooted in her childhood memories from Moerewa in the Bay of Islands.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an older voice, and I thought of my grandmother and my aunties \u2013 their generations \u2013 how they spoke. The Whina Cooper generation is a very different voice to how contemporary Kiwis would speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

Owen played Cooper in the biopic of the M\u0101ori leader, released in 2022.<\/p>\n

\"JohnJohn Tui and Rena Owen as Chief Tui and Gramma Tala. Photo \/ Disney<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Tui, who plays Moana\u2019s father Chief Tui, says he came in with a clear idea of his character\u2019s accent, loosely based on how it was voiced in the animated films by Owen\u2019s Once Were Warriors co-star Temuera Morrison.<\/p>\n

But Tui says he quickly realised Disney had other ideas for the live-action version<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came in with a Kiwi accent; I felt, because he was more of a chief, to make him more royal, maybe a bit Shakespeare.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d already had a preconceived idea of how I was going to play him, so I showed up wanting to Shakespeare the socks off everybody, right? But when we got into the room, they were like, \u2018Yeah, we\u2019re gonna try it this way\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tui says over his career, he\u2019s learned that, as an actor, you\u2019ve got to be able to take direction and push aside your personal vision for a character.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it wasn\u2019t a choice I made; it was a direction that I had to take, and I did my best as an actor to fulfil that.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou go with what the employer wants, and if they want it like this and are signing the invoice, I\u2019m going to give them what they want,\u201d he says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Tui, who is from South Auckland, says he wanted his performance to inspire others from the South Pacific to strive for greatness.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m seeing my face up there, and it inspires other Polynesians from other areas in Auckland and all around the South Pacific; it\u2019s our faces up there. We\u2019re doing these accents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CatherineCatherine Laga’aia and Frankie Adams attend the Moana World Premiere in LA. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Adams, however, says she relished the opportunity to take on an American accent as Moana\u2019s mother Sina.<\/p>\n

\u201cI enjoy doing accents \u2013 I always have, so it doesn\u2019t take me away from the character. I think it helps me become the character more.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, Katie\u2019s [Catherine Laga\u2019aia] doing an accent, so we had to find a middle ground there where we felt like a family, and each generation had their own sort of sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kail, the director, says he was excited to make both visual and audio changes to the film from the animated version, ultimately knowing that if the audience want the original look and sound of Moana, it\u2019s still there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what you want to do is try to be brave, and know that the original movie exists and will always exist. So that will always be there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to make something that can stand on its own, that can be a companion to that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite being set in a (mythical) Pacific island and inspired by stories from the region, New Zealand audiences…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[47791,262243,432,9218,12510,2398,22771,593,99278,1364,4223,78,20558,4960,41654,111,139,69,25813,5429,262242,213,2737,5436,11555,165,3608,4276,80],"class_list":["post-531375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-accent","tag-accents","tag-action","tag-before","tag-blockbuster","tag-disney","tag-excited","tag-film","tag-filming","tag-her","tag-hollywood","tag-in","tag-kept","tag-live","tag-moana","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-owen","tag-own","tag-rena","tag-sports","tag-star","tag-stars","tag-started","tag-their","tag-were","tag-why","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}