Rena Owen has played everyone from Beth Heke in 'Once Were Warriors' and the sequel 'What becomes of the broken hearted?' to Nee Alavar in 'Star Wars' but the actor says playing Dame Whina Cooper has been one of the most challenging roles of her 30-plus year career.
Rena Owen Photo: Manfred Baumann
Cooper, who is the subject of new film Whina, lived a trailblazing life.
In 1975, at the age of 79 she led a 1000-kilometre land march from the Far North to parliament, protesting the continued loss of Māori land.
She worked tirelessly to improve the rights of her people, especially women earning the title Te Whāea-o-te-motu, meaning Mother of the Nation.
Owen who plays Dame Whina from the 1979 through to the 1990s, said she felt additional pressure to get it right because Dame Whina's life during that period is so well documented.
She said, "All aspects of her life are documented in RNZ interviews and TV interviews. It's like Miriama McDowell who plays the younger Whina said, they had a lot more license because those chapters of her life there's no footage of them.
"So, you do feel the pressure to get it right when you're playing a real New Zealand icon."
In preparation for the role and in her research, Owen discovered many family connections with Dame Whina - almost as if she was fated to play the role.
She recalls as a kid watching the march as it passed the main streets of Wairua.
"I remember as kids running down the main street to see it going through.
"It walks past the freezing works and my dad was a foreman at the freezing works and a lot of our family and cousins worked at the freezing works."
"They put their knives down, walked out of the freezing works and stood on the side of the street and they cheered Whina on and my father is in those photos.
"And my aunties, one of my father's older sister actually joined the land march," she said.
Usually, an independent features films take 30 to 40 days to film, but due to lockdowns and different Covid levels throughout the country, it took four to five months to film and Owen reckons that was what made this one of her most challenging roles.
"It's because I couldn't just go gung-ho for 30 days and turn her off. I carried Whina for four and half months and she was a big role to carry.
"Whina was incredibly competitive and very ambitious. It was almost like I could hear her at the end of the long day, cackling, I am not going to be your number two, I am going to go to the throne and be the number one most difficult role of your lifetime," Owen said laughingly.
Whina is co-directed by James Napier Robertson and Paula Whetu Jones and opens in cinemas Thursday 23 June.