“The night I was cast, I went out and bought The Empire Strikes Back and Jaws. My goals were to get a voice as sinister as Darth Vader and the menacing physicality of the shark. It’s so easy to take these big beasts – these ferocious characters – and cook them at ten the whole time. But I wanted to have this circling, steady presence that would suddenly attack randomly. Peter allowed me to make a lot of adjustments. Being a Maori, in the scene where I’m beating up Thorin, I rocked back on my warg, raised my eyes up and did this look that in the Maori world is called ‘pukana’. You show the enemy the whites of your eyes. It just happened instinctively and at the end of the take I said, “Peter, I think I pukana-ed!” I didn’t think he’d use it, but sure enough, when I went down to the premiere with a bunch of Maori friends, there it was.”
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(Source: weta digital)
