Anapela Polataivao is not only one of New Zealand’s great theatrical actors, she is also a mother of three — Rocky, 23, Iuni-Katalaina, 20, and Hector-Jack, 18. So her most recent role, as a high school choir teacher who has lost her daughter in the Christchurch earthquake, drew on every part of her being.
For the role of Mareta in the film Tinã, Anapela tells The Weekly, she called on her “own humanness. I’m Samoan, I’m a woman, a human being and a mother. I have one daughter who is like my best friend. So I’m going to get teary just thinking about going through all that.”
And she wasn’t alone. “At the first table read, the narrator was sobbing, bless him. And then, of course, by the end of it, we were all pretty much in that space as well. But it was a freeing experience, as an actor, to be able to just go in there and serve it as best as you could.”
Anapela’s family gave her hope
Anapela was Samoan-born and raised in South Auckland. “And that means you will go as far as you allow yourself to go,” she says thoughtfully.
“We were poor … We didn’t have a phone, we didn’t have a car back then, in the day. For summer breaks, I wanted to do these theatre programs and I had to ask Mum and Dad for coins, and scrap coins together to pay for them.
“So I came with all that experience and got myself into drama school with the support of my parents, and with all the guilt. I’m thinking, my gosh, my parents need me back at home to work and to help the family. In my first two weeks of drama school, I asked my brother to pay for my train fare to come back home because, at that point, I was like, I’m throwing the towel in, I can’t do it. But when I got home, my mother said, ‘Pack your bag, you’re going back and you’re going to finish what you started.’”
Anapela’s mother has been her mentor
Anapela names her mother as a mentor and a constant support. “Every time I’m with my mother,” she says, “I do feel like a child again because there’s nothing that’s ever too big or too small for my mother to take on or handle. She’s helped to take care of my kids when I’ve been travelling for work … My mother has absolutely been my constant.”
After drama school, Anapela says, “I knew I was going to have to work my ass off because there was nothing out there for people like myself — for Pacific [people] specifically, and also for Maori.”
From Auckland to the international stage
She graduated from the New Zealand Drama School in 2002, she has built a stellar career.
Her international breakthrough was in the short film Night Shift in 2012. She has pushed boundaries and created pathways not only for herself but for younger actors in New Zealand theatre, film and television. She played the Edinburgh Fringe in the musical, The Factory, and she made history in 2020 as the first Samoan woman to direct an off-Broadway production, when Wild Dogs Under My Skirt (based on the poetry of Tusiata Avia) made its New York debut. It was ultimately declared the winner of the Fringe Encore Series at the SoHo Playhouse.
Of course, success didn’t come easily or overnight. “In theatre, there is no money, and film is like once in a blue moon,” she says, and again, she’s been grateful for her mother’s support through the good and the lean times.
“I’ve never had her ask me why I do the things that I do,” she says. “I guess what she sees is that her kid is happy and joyful to do what she’s doing, and is hopefully contributing to the bigger message of the world, which is about love and peace and healing. Ultimately, they are my political drivers — that’s what I do in all of my works, and I try also to bring presence to us as Samoan people, as Islanders, and to our stories.”
Telling Samoan and Pacific stories
Anapela brings that spirit fulsomely to her role in Tinã. Written and directed by Miki Magasiva, Tinã has impressed judges at film festivals internationally and in spite of (or perhaps because of) all those tears, the film is brimful of hope, joy, music and truth, as Anapela’s character brings meaning to every life she touches.
“I’m just so driven to tell our stories, to maintain our presence,” Anapela says. “The reaction to Tinā — and all the feelings it has evoked — it’s healing.”
Tinā is in Australian cinemas from May 1.
