A feature film on the remarkable life of Dame Whina Cooper makes its free-to-air debut tomorrow to mark Waitangi Day, portraying a woman of passion, on and off the marae. In this story, originally published in Canvas last year before the film's nationwide release, Joanna Wane talks to Vinnie Bennett and James Rolleston about playing two of the men she loved
The first time Vinnie Bennett met his Whina co-star, Miriama McDowell, was on a park bench in Kingsland. She'd messaged him suggesting a pre-shoot rendezvous and turned up armed with pages of questions to help break the ice. "If you could have dinner with anyone, alive or dead," she asked him, "who would it be?"
Immediately, Bennett thought of his father. "He passed when I was 3 months old, so I've only ever seen photographs," he says. "I was so young, there's kind of no one really to miss, but you can still feel the absence at the same time."
As far as bonding sessions go, it seems to have done the trick. Dressed in disguise, the pair snuck into a media screening of the movie last month. They were busted by producer Matthew Metcalfe the minute they came through the door.
Last year, Bennett walked the red carpet (dressed by Valentino) at the Los Angeles premiere of Fast & Furious 9 and was interviewed by Entertainment Tonight about playing a young Vin Diesel. That was a blast, but as a Māori man he's both humble and proud to be part of Whina, a New Zealand film that speaks powerfully to his own people. "It's usually hard, watching myself [on screen], but I loved it," he says. "It's a beautiful story."
Whina, which opened in cinemas nationwide on Thursday, isn't only a memorial to one of our most significant Māori leaders — etched in history as the 80-year-old land-rights activist, hunched with arthritis, who led the 1975 hīkoi from Northland to Parliament. It's also a love story about a fiercely passionate woman who walked her own path, at considerable personal cost.
McDowell is one of three actors who portray Dame Whina Cooper throughout her life, bookended by rising star Tioreore Ngātai-Melbourne and a rheumy-eyed Rena Owen, whose performance has already been widely acclaimed. Bennett plays Cooper's second husband, William Cooper, the man who steals — and then breaks — her heart.
In the weeks leading up to the shoot, Bennett spent time in the library finding out as much information as he could on William Cooper. A land consolidation officer and one of Sir Āpirana Ngata's right-hand men, he was the Māori representative on the 1927 Royal Commission into land confiscations.
Their romantic entanglement caused a bitter rift within her Hokianga community and shook her deep Catholic faith. When her first husband, Richard Gilbert, died from cancer, she was already pregnant with Cooper's child. "They got caught up in a love drama, like lots of us do," says Bennett, who appreciated McDowell's experience as an intimacy co-ordinator when it came to navigating the lovers' more intense scenes together.
"When you think of such important figures, you forget about the personal hurdles they've had to jump over. With Whina, there's the obvious pushback against some of the Pākehā ways that were suppressing Māori culture. But then there's also things like getting pregnant to someone else while she was still married to her first husband and being essentially exiled out of her own community. She fought battles upon battles, as a lover and as a wife, too."
Bennett, 29, knew a little about the Te Rōpū Matakite o Aotearoa hīkoi but, like so many New Zealanders of his generation, he learnt nothing about Cooper at school. She was buried in the Hokianga after her death in 1994 at the age of 98. Filming on location in Panguru, her ancestral whenua, was an emotional experience for the crew.
"It's such a beautiful place," says Bennett. "Whina had a big part to play in the whole resurgence of Māori culture and to see the environment she grew up in… it made a big impression that a woman from a very remote place in New Zealand was able to create such important and powerful change."
Early discussions about bringing the Te Rarawa leader's life to the big screen began with her extended whānau 13 years ago. Her granddaughter, Irenee Cooper, came on board as executive producer and was a key presence on set, ensuring the film's authenticity.
Rena Owen was already involved in the project when James Napier Robertson joined as co-director, alongside Paula Whetu Jones. He'd worked with Bennett on the 2017 psychological thriller Human Traces and describes him as an incredibly charismatic actor. "What felt so right about him for this role is that he's a very strong kind of masculine presence, yet also has the softness and emotional range to play the love story with Whina. I think he did a beautiful job."
Napier Robertson cast another charismatic young actor, James Rolleston, as Whina's beloved nephew Gabriel — her "angel" — who's wounded in World War II and later joins her on the land march. Rolleston, the moonwalking star of Taika Waititi's breakthrough film Boy, was still in his teens when he played a gang leader's troubled son in Napier Robertson's 2014 drama The Dark Horse.
"I love James to bits," he says. "He brings such a warmth and humanity to any role and any moment he's on screen. There's such soul in his performance. He's one of those actors who can express depth of emotion in his face and eyes without any dialogue at all."
Born in Ōpōtiki, Rolleston was a country kid who grew up fishing and pig hunting before he accidentally fell into acting. Originally cast as an extra on Boy, he was given the lead role three days into the shoot — a decision Waititi has described as the best he's ever made.
In July 2016, Rolleston took his mother, grandmother, aunt and then-girlfriend to the Auckland premiere of his latest film, The Rehearsal, based on Eleanor Catton's debut novel. Three days later, he drove down to visit friends and family in Ōpōtiki.
After a quick stop at his bags at his nan's house, he headed off to meet up with some rugby mates — or so he's been told. He doesn't remember any of it. A month later, he woke up from a coma with a traumatic brain injury and metal rods or plates in his right forearm and both legs. His car had smashed into a bridge with such force he had to be cut from the wreckage.
In the long months that followed, Rolleston had to relearn the most basic motor skills, right down to brushing his teeth. Six years on, he still finds it difficult talking about the accident, because the conversation inevitably ends up focusing on what he's lost. What he lacks.
Now flatting with his brother in Auckland, he's worked hard on being grateful for the fact that he can live independently, unlike so many of the other young men he saw in rehab with severe spinal injuries. Physically, he's largely recovered. What he struggles with most is fatigue and cognitive loss, although give him a script and he can still drill his lines.
At the Canvas photo shoot, he's unfailingly polite and easy company, trying out on different outfits and horsing around with Bennett. The pair have known each other for years but Rolleston draws a blank when Bennett starts telling a funny story about how they first met. "My memory is shot," he says. "It's had it. Far out, it frightens me. I'm only 24."
At school, Rolleston was good with his hands and he'd always wanted to learn a trade before he got caught up in the whirl of a film career. He did some building work for a while but the plate in his right forearm made the physical demands too difficult. He's now switched to cabinetry and loves it.
Not that he's ready to give up acting altogether. Since the accident he's been in two other movies (The Breaker Upperers in 2018 and Lowdown Dirty Criminals in 2020), filmed two seasons of the TV series Golden Boy and had a guest stint on Shortland Street. When we meet for this interview, he's had three auditions in the past fortnight and has a film shoot lined up for September.
Despite the moustache he's retained from his role in Whina, there's still a spark of the cheeky, freckle-faced kid from Boy in Rolleston. Cliff Curtis, his co-star in The Dark Horse, called him "luminous". Napier Robertson says he's also an incredibly hard worker and utterly dedicated on set.
"It's not just a miracle that James survived but it's a miracle for us that we still have him, because he came incredibly close to losing his life. I watched him every step of the way from when he was in hospital and it was absolutely remarkable and a testament to his strength as a person that he pushed through. It's the most wonderful thing that we didn't lose him."
Both Rolleston and Bennett are young Māori men whose lives could have gone off the rails. And it's rangitahi like them they hope Whina speaks to, with its embrace of te reo, the light it shines on past wrongs, and the reclamation of cultural pride.
Bennett, who grew up in Christchurch, had a "blip" in his teens, at a time when he was searching for male role models in all the wrong places. At the age of 16, he was pulled out of his media studies class and questioned by the police about a fight that had broken out the week before.
He was put into a supervised Youth Court programme, and then discovered drama at school the following year. "I wouldn't say it saved my life but it helped give me some direction and find some passion and purpose that I was longing for," he says.
"The thing about acting, which is quite special, is that it encourages vulnerability. In New Zealand, especially, young men are raised to build this wall of bravado. For me, acting has been a huge step in learning how to be vulnerable with my feelings and fight against the natural inclination to want to bottle it up and let it eat away at me. I've learned that sharing pain with each other is not a bad thing."
Rolleston, too, has faced down some dark times since his accident. In 2017, he was sentenced to 200 hours' community service after pleading guilty to dangerous driving causing injury (his passenger, a close friend who now lives in Australia, required spinal surgery but has since recovered). "Everyone is entitled to make one mistake in their life," Judge Louis Bidois told him. "You have made yours."
Raised by his grandparents, Rolleston has never known his father — another parallel with Bennett. He loves Ōpōtiki but acknowledges the traps teenagers can fall into growing up in small towns because they're bored or don't have the right guidance. It's something that weighs on him at times.
"I do worry I'm not doing enough for other young men like myself, who either come from places where there's not a lot of opportunity or they don't have Māori role models in their life. Because I know myself, if I saw a Māori boy from a small town similar to mine, I'd think, 'If he can do it, surely I can give it a crack.'
"To be able to tell Māori stories is very important for younger generations — my generation — to see kuia like Whina and for our people to still be here, walking our land."
Whina screens on Waitangi Day, Monday February 6, at 7.30pm on TVNZ 1.
