Re-enacting beloved Disney characters can be a challenge for any actor, but was it particularly daunting for Katherine Lagaia, who was just 17 years old when she made her live-action Disney film debut. Moana.
Laga’aia, now 19, took over the role from Auli’i Cravalho, who had voiced the character in his previous two animated films, and was well aware of the pressure that came with the role. As an Australian actress of Samoan descent, it was nerve-wracking knowing she was portraying a character she had grown up with, but she was quickly put at ease by co-star Dwayne Johnson and director Thomas Kail, known for the Broadway stage. Hamilton.
She remembers when she saw the film in 2016 for the first time, thinking: “This is a princess who looks like me. This is a princess who looks like my sister. My father looks like my father. This is an island village that was described to me, and now it is clearly laid out in front of me.”
Laga’aia was basically unknown when she auditioned Moanapreviously only appeared in a few episodes of the Australian series Lost Flowers by Alice Hart in 2023, but beat out 32,000 applicants worldwide in an open casting call on Instagram for the lead role.
Although she didn’t have much confidence going into the audition, she joked that her mother knew right away she would get the role — call it a mother’s intuition.
Now, as Lagaia prepares to welcome the world in her Moana, she finds herself thinking about where her love of acting first began: her father, Jay Lagaia, who famously played Captain Tifo in the film. star wars Prequel movies. And you can save the nepotism jokes, because Laqia knows very well who her father is.
“I grew up looking at what my father did, and I have great respect for the grit, determination and passion he puts into his work,” she says. “And when you grow up and you see someone who loves something so much, you say, ‘Well, it must be worth it. There must be something there.”
Below, Lagaia talks about the acting advice she received from her father, how she brought her version of Moana to life on screen, working with Johnson, how she prepared herself for her newfound fame and more.
After seeing your father’s success in the industry, what have you learned from his career that you will carry forward into your career?
One of my dad’s biggest pieces of advice is that your job is to audition. Your job is not the job. You don’t have that yet. So it’s your job what sides they give you and what song they want you to sing. So, the mentality of coming in and saying, I’m going to give it my all, I’m going to give every part of myself to try to do my best, basically.
Knowing that so many young girls look up to Moana, how did you approach creating your own version of this beloved character?
The biggest thing I got from Tommy [Kail] It is my priority [Cravalho] She also had to make it mine. The best thing about a live event is that we don’t want to try to recreate what’s already been done because it’s already been done. What we want to do is bring new things and bring new aspects to our version of the film. So, going into this topic, I wanted to bring elements of myself and parts of my identity. I think Moana is a little older than Moana Olly because I was 17 and she was 14. Although there is a very small gap between these two, meeting a 17-year-old girl and meeting a 14-year-old girl is different. So, being at that age and leaving my school and leaving the things I know to travel to a new place that I’ve never been before, I think that has seeped into my performance.
The franchise represents the heritage of the Pacific Islands. What does that mean to you?
It really felt like we had a village. And the thing that Tommy said a lot is that we are now Motonui villages. We come from wherever we come from. We come from all the islands in the Pacific, and all the islands in Polynesia. But the one thing we all have in common now is that we are all from Motonui. This is a wonderful kind of unifying thing. It felt like we were all family. You call everyone uncle; You see all the little kids and aunts running. It was a lot of fun and a lot of energy.
You also work closely with Dwayne Johnson. What advice did you get from him?
One thing I learned from Dwayne is how well he plays. He’s willing to do anything where they say, “Okay, Dwayne, try this.” And what they ask him to do is like, “Okay, turn around and then jump out of the boat.” I think watching someone say, “Okay, here we go, let’s do this,” that’s the best thing because having someone be so down, it’s a great energy because then all you want is to be completely down. You want to give things just as much and try just as much.
In addition to shooting on location, I also did a lot of work on blue-screen sound stages, where CGI would be added later. Was that a challenge?
I would like a director’s cut of what I was looking at to be released while you guys look at this beautiful pig and the beautiful green tree woman. What was it? [I] Looking at? nothing (He laughs.) But one of the best things is that even though I can’t see and I don’t know what I’m looking at and often I’m staring at a big blue sheet of paper, I have 2016 [movie]. I can always go back and ask, “What’s Te Fiti like? What’s Pua and Hehi like?” I would say the hardest thing is when you have to physically interact with them when they say, “Katie, kick hehe.” And it’s like, “Okay, let me think. Where am I going to kick it? Will it hurt? How heavy is it? How far will it go?” One of the big things for me and DJ was making sure we didn’t step on him because he’s also in the boat with us.
One of my favorite things was when we were shooting the kakamora fight and they were like, “They’ll drop kakamoras on you and you just pull them out and throw them. Wherever you throw them, that’s where we’ll put them.” …And they were like, “Dwayne, snatch one from Katie,” and he was like, “We really looked like crazy people. We looked crazy.”
Did you take any props or costumes from the set to keep as souvenirs?
I hope and don’t think I haven’t tried. Every other day I’d ask, “Hey, can I have this?” “No, you can’t.” But so much of it is so precious and delicate that if I got it, and if, God forbid, they had to bring it back from Australia, who knows what would happen to it? So I have the flower that Moana is wearing. I ordered the raw material and am waiting for it. So to the prop master, to Matt [Cavaliero]Give me my ore because I know you have it and I know it’s in your house somewhere. (He laughss.)
Are you ready for this new interest as this film launches your career and hopefully opens more doors for you?
I find it still very strange. I feel like I can’t understand why people want to hear from me, hear about me, or why they want pictures of me. And even understandable Hollywood Reporter Being like, “Oh, they want to talk to you.” It’s like, “Why? What do I have to contribute?” But personally I haven’t changed much. This is where the idea of overnight success happens, where people think, “Oh, I didn’t know you and now I know you.” Overnight success where you forget all the things that happened before just because you didn’t know who I was.
For those who are just getting to know you through this film, what would you like them to know about you?
I want them to know a) that I am fully aware that I am an unwanted child. I know that, so you can’t tell me that because I already know it. (He laughs). I don’t know what people would want to know. I would say that if they’re not a fan of mine, there are seven other different ones they could try that they might like even more. But yeah, I honestly don’t think there’s a lot of interesting things about me. (He laughs.)
When you look to the future, what are your big goals in this industry? Do you have any dream roles, characters or projects? Anyone you’ve been dying to work with?
I grew up loving theater and wanting to be a part of theatre. This was the element of acting that I loved the most. I think I’ve learned so much about film acting and being on screen that now I love it and I’m like, “Okay, what’s next?” I’m very excited about the idea of doing freelance work, and things like that MoanaBut I would feel inferior if I couldn’t do something on stage.
