Wicked and Twisters: Hollywood blockbusters starring wāhine Māori - Spy

Keala Settle and Sasha Lane are starring in Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters of the year.

Two of this year’s biggest Hollywood hitmakers star wāhine Māori talent: Keala Settle and Sasha Lane.

Proud wāhine Māori actors Keala Settle and Sasha Lane are in two of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters of the year, Wicked and Twisters.

Settle, 28, was the breakout star of The Greatest Showman in 2017 and her live performance of the movie’s Academy Award-nominated song This is Me at the 2018 Oscars cemented her name as a voice and persona to watch.

In the highly anticipated Wicked, Settle stars alongside pop superstar Ariana Grande and multi-award-winning Broadway star Cynthia Erivo. (Readers may have seen Grande and Erivo attend the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics in their movie character’s signature colours of pink, for Grande’s Glinda the Good, and green for Erivo’s the Wicked Witch of the West).

Based on the 1995 book by Gregory Maguire – a retelling of L. Frank Baum’s classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – The Wicked stage show has been a global musical hit for decades.

In the movie adaptation, directed by Jon M. Chu, Settle stars as Miss Coddle – a new character created just for the film.

Hawaiʻi-raised Settle has Māori heritage, and a family still living here in New Zealand. She went to school in Utah and has been performing on Broadway since 2011.

This week on The Bright Side podcast the Tony award-nominated performer explained her background as having an English father and an “indigenous Māori” mother, and growing up she saw no one that looked like her.

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Settle embraces her Māori heritage. This week she shared the anniversary of Dalvanius Prime’s No 1 hit Poi E on her Instagram story.

When Settle was visiting Sydney in July, she was proud to watch the directing debut of actor Rachel House’s The Mountain.

She told her Instagram followers that it was the first time she had seen a Māori film in a cinema.

While shouting out to all involved in the film, Settle marvelled at how the te reo coming through the speakers made her wairua (spirit of the soul) flood over.

A few weeks later, Settle was again touched when receiving an engraved gift from House with the inscription, “Hoki ki tōu maunga kia purea ai e koe ki ngā hau o Tāwhirimātea. Return to your mountain...your ancestral lands, to your origins”.

Another star Spy’s had our eye on is Texan-raised Māori actor Sasha Lane, 28, who was included in our Matariki Rising Stars list in 2022.

Lane has just finished the publicity tour for Twisters, the storm-chasing US summer blockbuster that features rising Hollywood stars Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones.

Lane plays Lilly, a member of Powell’s character Tyler’s storm-chasing posse and the group’s drone operator.

Lane made her film debut at the Cannes Prix du Jury award-winning American Honey in 2016.

In 2022 Lane won global acclaim for her role as Bobbi in the Prime Video series Conversations with Friends.

Last year Lane starred alongside Tom Holland and Amanda Seyfried in the Apple TV+ series The Crowded Room.

Lane’s mother is from Taumarunui, and raised Lane and her brother in the US.

Since getting into show business, Lane has shown a huge interest in finding out more about her heritage.

A fern tattoo on her back represented her dream to visit Aotearoa. She visited in 2020 and while she was in Wellington an aunt gave Lane her first pounamu which, she told her more than 150,000 Instagram followers, had her melting.

Twisters in playing in New Zealand cinemas now. Wicked is scheduled to be released in November 2024.

Ricardo Simich is the Herald’s Spy Editor. Based in Auckland he covers all roads that lead to popular culture.