“Logo Text [This story contains spoilers up to episode seven of Chief of War, “Day of Spilled Brains.”] Jason Momoa Has Waited His Entire Life To Make Chief of War, The Ambitious New Apple TV+ Series That Dramatizes the Reunification of Hawaii in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries. After Making A Career Largely”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
[ThisStoryContainsSpoilersUptoEpisodeSevenof[ThisstorycontainsspoilersuptoepisodesevenofChief of War, “Day of Spildled Brains.”]
Jason Momoa Has Waited His Entire Life To Make Chief of WarThe Ambitious New Apple TV+ Series that Dramatizes the Reunification of Hawai’i in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries. After Making A Career Largely Out of Playing Ficton Action Heroes-Aquaman in The DC Universe, an Ill-FATED NOMADIC WARLORD IN Game of Thronesa swordmaster in the Dune MOVIES-The 46-YEAR-OLD FINALY GETS TO PLAY A REAL-Life Superhero in a passion Project Set in his Father’s Homeland.
Co-Created by Momoa and Thomas pa’a sibbett, the Nine-Part Series-WHICH COURCKE BE RENEWED FOR more SEASONS-STARS MOMOA As Native Hawaiian Warrior Ka’iana. Over the Course of the FIRST SEASON, KA’IANA RETURNS HOME from Traveling Overseas – Where He Witnessed The Horrors of Slavery, Famine And Monetary Greed – Beajing. Hawaiian Islands to Save His Own People From The Threat of Colonization. However, he is ebuffed at everybody by his fellow chiefs, MOST NOTABLY KAMEHAMEHA I (Kaina Makua), Who Later Becomes The Conquest and First Ruler of the Kingdom of HAWAI.
The Series Features a Cast of Prelinantly Polynesian Actors Speaking in Multiple Languages and Was Filmed in Hawai’i and New Zealand as an Unpreted Retelling of Hawaiian. Perspective.
“Everyone that have had hee here as These Vacations and Brings Home These Memories, But They Fall in Love With Hawaii. Now, They Going to Be In The Comfort of Their Home. About, ”Momoa Tells The Hollywood Reporter on a recent video call from hawai’i. “BUT WHAT IS GOING to DO FOR US, FOR INDIGENUS [actors]and how it resonates with our people – that’s all i care about. We Are The Great, Great Grandchildren Bringing All of this Back and Trying to Inspire the Next Generation. ”
AT A TIME HISTORY IS BEING ERRASED IN CLASSROOMS ACross The Country, Momoa Adds, “I DON’T’T THINK Anyone Knows a Part of this America ‘Holy shit!’ And they’re going to get a big deep Dive Into What Went on Here.
Below, Executive Producers and Longtime Collaboratories Momoa and Sibbett Open Up About Whoshei, Antry Poin, Hawaian Histroy Between the English and ʻōlelo hawaii’i languages, and how the end of the Seventh Episode-Titled After The Real-Life “Day of Spield Brains Life-and-Death Stakes of the Final Two Episodes.
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You Two Were First Approached to Tell The Story of Kamehameha I About A Decade Ago, But You Chose to Include that Historical Figure in a Larger Series Center. WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER FROM YOUR INITIAL CONVERSATIONS WITH Each Other About this Project, and How Did that Idea Evolve Into the Final Product Wee See in Chief of War?
Jason Momoa We ACTUALLY HAD A DIFFERENT SCRIPT.
Thomas pa’a sibbett TThe TRUTH IS THAT KAMEHAMEHA’S SHORY WOURT BE A SLAM DUNK FOR Hollywood. I Got All The [elements] You Need and Wound Want. So we did Talk about it. It Was Something We Thought About, and Ultimately It Just Wasn’t Our Place to Tell It. There was a Lot Involved With That, Culturally Speaking.
Momoa ALSO, I WOURT NEVER PLAY KAMEHAMEHA. I would never have the Balls, to say the least, to actuly Think I Could Play Someone with that Stature. SO we wanted to find a story that could encompass the whole World, Because there was a many people like kahekili or kammalu. SO Thomas Did come up with an Idea for the story of ka’iana. HA WAS ACTUALLY the most famous hawaiian at that time, Because he have sett sail sail around the World and Went to so Many Different Places That Was Very Well-Known.
So that became very interesting, as a journeyman myself, to go, “wow, what an interest to come from this World, to be a relctant war chieftin whoht. Again, and then he flees where he’s from – only to see Slavery, Sickness and Just Everything as He Went Armund The World. ” [He was able] to go up to alaska and then bring back 10 War canoes filled with weapons to then Help Unify the islands Because [he thinks they] NEED toing EVERTHING TOGETCHER BECAUSE OF WHAT’S COMING [to their shores].
To have that kind of persons a disease, in a way. HE Can Never Go Back [to his old way of thinking] Because of What Hat Has SEEN, AND THEN HE Can’T REALLY Connect to Anyone in His Culture, But He Also Wants to Help Them and Save Them Because He Knows Whats Coming And [the importance of] Being Able to Trade with The Rest of the World. SO I Feel Like That Story Is Very Complex. I’ve Never Quite Played A Character Like That, And I DON’T NECESSARY AGREE TO A LOT OF THE VIEWS THAT HAS.
A Lot of TESE Characters – The Thingshe Done – It’s Pretty Crazy to Connect [the events]. We have [to go from point] A to b, but there’s so much we have to find in that we don’t know. SO IT’S BEEN Amazing Partnership and the Time to Create Worlds Like This Is Exciting. If people love this, this show opens up – It Gets Even Bigger. And that’s exciting, once you go down the rabbit hole of the history. We’re Hitting Historical Moments, But Also, We’re Condensing Time in Some Ways.
Sibbett It is Wonderful to Be Able to Attack a Story this Way, and Realistic, It’s What HapPens Who Stories Can Be Built From The Inside Out. That was the other Approach we had. We Realized that, Yes, KameHameha is a Story that would work and people would enjoy that. But if you ask US, we Know Our History [so well] That’s like, “Well, Look, if You Shift The Perspective Just A Little Bit, You Hit This Guy Insthead of That Guy.” Now We Have A Whole Other World That Audiences Wuld’ve Never Known About.
Ka’iana is Such A Lesser Well-Known Story. Despite his positioning in that time period, he was trly the only hawaiian that people every talked about people. They Were Coming to The Islands Looking for Him. They Had Heard About Him or Worked with HIM. CAPTAINS WERE LIKE, “NOW We KNOW TESE ISLANDS EXIST. SO WHERE IS H? CAN HE GUIDE US? HE CAN HELP US.” What a Great Fertile Gund for Storytelling, and the story that i don’t’t through the anybody else would’ve found if they don’ve that that’s that insider Connection to Hawai’i ITSEELF.
Jason momoa as ka’iana in Chief of War. Apple TV+
Jason, to your Point, Ka’iana Was The First Chief to Travel AROUND The WORLD, AND HE RETURned with A Very Clear Understanding Of The Threat That Colonization Wold Warring at the time. How did you think about creating an emotional arc for him over the Course of these Nine Episodes? How did you Want Him to Evolve as A Leader?
Sibbett We’re Trying to Be Careful, Because to Talk About Ka’iana Is To Talk About His Who Journey, WHICH IS A S STORY THAT We Still Want to Tell. So if we’re just keeping it with [of this season]It Really Is Everything that Jason Described. He’s a guy who ends up in a foreign land and his eyes are being operated. It would be the equivalent of Landing on the Moon and Seeing Aliens and How they Operate, and then having to go back home and warn people the aliens are are coming. It’s Great for Character, and that’s Really What We Can Explore This Season. HIM Seeing the Danger, Trying to Ring the Alarm – and How do you do that to people who have the Never Seen the moon?
Momoa Ka’iana is struggling because he wants to]revolt against his king, to go against kamehmeha, knowing that guys are are, that guys are, that this white man. And then [he has] to go, “no, this is māmalahoe. We don’t do this. THESE Are Our Rules and Our Laws. But You Know That He’s Going To Hurt People, and You Have to Go Against Your King ” – and that’s Just the Human Condition Going,“ Fuck, they Wrong and You’re Wrong. This Needs to STOP. ” You’re in the Same Position Going, “Oh Man, We Know This Is What’s Going to Happen [to these Hawaiians]”SO YOU’RE Torn as an Audience Member.
Sibbett But that urgency causes them to make mistakes. What’s Great About The Story Is That Just Because You Know Something Doesn’T Mean You’re Making the Right Decisions. We are following this character, we’re trusting him – and then all of a suudden he messes up, or he’s in a situation WHERE he is 100 percent correct, and they better listen to him. This Story Is Universal As Anything Else, and We Were Excited To Dig Into It And Alow The Story To Be Told Tortroduce Us to this World, But Really Follow All. Story.
I’m very fascinated by the way you balance ʻōlelo hawai’i with English in this show. The First Two Episodes Are Entirely in the Native Hawaiian Language, and the Arrival of Some Non-Hawaiian Characters-MOSTLY WHITE Stowaways and a black sl howl-Graduly introtro. At some point Later in the Season, some hawaiian Characters Only Want to Speak in Their Native Language, Some Only Want To Speak In English, And Some Swan Litch Seamless Bene. SITATION OR THE PERSON SHE’RE INTERACTING WITH. How did you think about the Interplay and interaction of language in this show?
Sibbett WHEN YOU TAKE A STEP BACK AND Look at the Big Picture, Language Is Also A Represation of What We Give and Take WHEN CULTURES Are Mixed and Start to Come Together. There’s Some Good Things, There’s Some Bad Things. Communication’s Obviously Key. Hawaiians Actually Had An Edict From A King That Said, “I Want You All to Learn to Read and Write English.” Within 50 Years, Hawai’i’s 97 Percent, ALMOST 98 Percent Completely Literate – The Highest Literacy Rate of Any Country Armund The World. SO IT’S Understanding that Hawaiians Were Adaptive, that Actualally Valuened Learning, and We Get To Show That Through This Course of Language.
Momoa I SomeTimes Get Extremely Pissed Off Who You Watch a Movie, and You’re Like, “Wy Am I Watching This Guy DO IT IN A NATIVE AMERICAN ACCENT? IT’S A FRENCH MOVIE.” There’s Always Those Choices That You Have To Make, But There’s Just No Way You Way Wow Ever Make This Without It Being in the Hawaiian Language – and It’s The Most Beautify Language in In. Having Said That, My Character Obvioously Travels Outside of There. If You Were Going to Be A War Chief, The First Thing You’re Going To Know Is Your Enemy. You’re going to know your surroundings, you’re going to learn the [enemy’s] Language. You would be an idiot, a Horrible Chief of War, if You did not Understand the Other Language of Everyone. SO it is very essential for me to learn.
We condensed Time, But He Went On Many Journys and THEN CAME BACK. Obviously, We Wanted Everyone Else to Be Learning Too, Because Kamehameha Had Advisors, They Had Stowaway White Guys Who Were Teaching The Language to Theam, And We Wan. Through It Quickly. But Certain People Like Keking, Kahekili, KameHameha – [the English language] Makes No Sense to Them. They can have their Advisors be [focused on] All that [English]. SO it was a nice bless.
Mosses goods in “day of spildled brains.” Apple TV+
Each Episode Feels Epic and Cinematic in Scope and Scale, But One of the MOST GUT-WRONCHING MOMENTS HAPPENS at the END of Episode Seven, WHEN CAPTAIN SIMON METCALFE (Jason Hood) and His Crew, After Their Offer of Trade Was Kindly But Firmly Rejected by Chief Kamemehameha, Go to The Nearest Bay, Fill Their Canons With Nail Bombs, and Open Hawaiians. Jason, Can You Give Voice to What Is Going Through Ka’iana’s Mind as He Watches his Worst Nightmare – The Sensles Killing of His Own People at the Hands of the “Paleskins” —
Momoa That was the ultimate horror. It’s to come back, Know What’s Coming, and Ten Voice What You’ve Seen, and Not Be Trusted and Ten Also Have to Live by Some Laws that You Necessarily Don’t Believe in Anymore. [Ka’iana now believes] There Aren’Tese Gods, They Aren’t Going To Look After Us, and These People Are Going to Hurt Us if We Don’t Get Aligned. So to be muzzled and not be heard, but also be poisoned by the Outside Rule, I Feel Like He’s Coming Back [to Hawai’i] and carrying that [burden]. He Feels Inflicted Who He Comes Back, But He Can’T Let That Go.
The King Says, “You Are Not Allowed to Do this. You Can’t retaliate.” But then whohn [the massacre] happles, all these people were murdered for noting because they don’t listen. You’re in theese places whore they’ve never been this way before. THESE Are The First Times This [kind of outside violence] HAS EVER HAPPENED TO THESE PEOPLE – AND IT’S FRUSTRATING FOR THE AUDIENCE, IS FRUSTRATING for the Characters Even Wang Wrong in Many Ways.
Ka’iana constantly keps trying to do a stuff, and the door keefs shutting. WHEN YOU LOOK AT ALL The Advisors, Some of the Main Advisors are stowaways. These Paleskins Were Probably The Lowest of Lows [in the social hierarchy in England]but they just happled to survive, and they’re the advisors to kamehmeha because they’ve seen the world. SO IMAGINE THAT: Someone Who Isn’t Necessarily a High-Ranking [official]but because they’re and can advise and whisper in the ear of our king, they can spread rumors about everyone, reality.
Sibbett One Thing to Point Out, Because You’re Talking About Something Really Specific, Is That This Whole Section Is Actually Historically Accurate. There was that confronation on the ship Beforehand WHERE Ka’iana Just Believed that Couldn’t ALLOW CAPTAIN METCALFE TO Continue to OPERATE IN HAWAI’I. KameHameha Turned It Down and Said, “No, MAN, I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU WOURT WANT TO KILL HIM.” And he didn’t quite understand that. So ka’iana Did Try to Sneak on Board with His Men, and They Did Try to Take Out CAPTAIN METCALFE, BUT HE WAS SPEPED BY KAMEHAMEHA. They argued in hawaiian, and the Crew Didn’t Quite Understand What Was Going on. So for jason, as an actor, he have to then Fill in the Gaps to Figure Out, “Well, Now What Kind of Emotion Does That Evoke?” Because History Wrote that Story for Us.
The Massacre That Happy [in this episode] Really Did Take Place. I a real thing that happled at olowalu. It have to be someting that the a are a are still dealing with the trauma of that evult today. WHEN SIMON METCALFE LEFT [Hawai’i in real life]he didn’t technical go in the next harbor; Hew to the Next Island. But for US, It Was A Way for Us to Be Able to Say, “Look, This Is A Real Story. The Only Differentnce in the Writing Was to Make Sure that Ka’iana’s Character Gets To Experience It.” Our Characters Are All Impacted by It, Because the Truth Is We’re Still Affected by It Today. The name of the episode is “day of spildled brains,” because in hawaiian we refer to that evult as klolopahu, or “Day of Spilled Brains.”
How did you figure Out the Logistics of Shooting that Massacre Scene? DID YOU EVER CONSIDER HAVING THAT ATTACK PLAY OUT IN A DIFFERENT WAY?
Sibbett IT WAS TRICKY, BECAUSE HAWAIIIANS ACTUALLY WENT OUT TO SEA TO MEET HIM [in real life]and the first version of the story was hawaiian canoes were getting shot and people were getting hit and being Dragged Out of the Water. IT’s a LOT. SO to MAKE IT EASIER, WE DECIDED TO DO IT WHERE The SHIP IS THERE [on the water]and they shoot onto Land. Of Course, that in and of Itelf is still Impactphul and traumatizing, But it’s not near as bad as it real was. But if you want to talk real logistics, that Particular Scene was was actually shot in aotearoa [New Zealand]and we needed to make Sure that were okay with the tribes to shoot on their Land and to Tell The Story of the this type of signification. [We asked] WHETHER OR NOT WE SHOULD EVEN PUT Explosives Underneath the Sand – is that going to cause Issues to their local marine Life and all of that? So there was a Lot Taken Into Account for that Scene – from the writing to make that we have were also.
Jason Momoa and Luciane Buchanan in “Day of Spildled Brains.” Apple TV+
Circling Back to the Start of this Conversation, there are Decdes of History You Could Retell in this Show, But You Had to Figure Out What to Include And Include OTEENSODESSODES Tell More of that Story in Subsequent Seasons. How did you settle on the “day of spildled brains” as a launching-Pad Into the Final Episodes of Season One? DID YOU ALWAYS KNOW YOU WANTED TO INCLUDE THIS HORRIFIC MOMENT IN HISTORY?
Sibbett I Think We Were Always Planning On Doing Iting. It is the wounded knee of hawai’i. IT’s Important Because Ita Enables Us to Really Look at this Point in History and Dissect What Went Wrong. Not everything about Cultures Coming Together Is Bad, But The Was One of Them. History Gives US The Ability to Look Back and See What Led To It, What Caused It, What Was The Mindset, and for Us to Make Sure We’re Not Making Tese Types of Mistakes Again. Story-Wise, It Was Just A Matter of Figuring Out How We’re Going to Make It Fit, And What Parts of It Need To Be Dramatized In Order For It Work. But A Lot of the History was there.
I Always Thought It Was Fascinating from That Point of View to Say, “SO if Ka’iana Had Killed CAPTAIN SIMON METCALFE, THAT MASSACRE Wuld’ve Never Haper.” But On the Flip Side, You Could Argue, “Well, Was [Ka’iana] One of the Reasons Who [Metcalfe] DID IT? ” SO It Becomes Really Interesting Moment in History Who Easony Couldy Could Take Blame for It.
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Chief of War is now streaming on Apple TV+, with The Season Finale Set to Drop on Sept. 19.