Taika Waititi

• 1. Introduction

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  Taika Waititi stood at the Academy Awards podium in 2019 as the first person of Maori descent to win an Oscar in a screenplay category. He had just taken Best Adapted Screenplay for Jojo Rabbit, a film in which he played a buffoonish imaginary Adolf Hitler to a ten-year-old boy in the Hitler Youth. That night also brought him a Best Picture nomination. The questions worth sitting with are these: how does a kid from Raukokore, a small town in the Bay of Plenty, become one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world? And what does his career reveal about the relationship between identity, absurdist comedy, and genuine emotional weight?

• 2. Roots and Identity

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  Wellington is where Taika David Cohen was born on the 16th of August 1975. His Maori father was an artist of French Canadian and Te Whanau-a-Apanui descent. His mother, Robin Cohen, was a schoolteacher, and her paternal grandfather was a Russian Jew whose family came from Novozybkov.

  Waititi describes himself as a "Polynesian Jew". He was raised more connected to his Maori roots, in a household where Judaism was not actively practised. He identifies as an atheist who puts more stock in indigenous beliefs.

  The name question is woven into his biography. His legal surname is Cohen, but Waititi has been known primarily by his father's surname for most of his life. Early on he used Cohen for film and writing work, and Waititi for visual arts. After his first short film found success, he kept Waititi professionally.

  His father was in and out of prison and was the founding member of the Satans Slaves Motorcycle Club New Zealand chapter. Waititi was raised primarily by his mother after his parents divorced when he was around five. He grew up between Wellington's Aro Valley suburb and Raukokore, and his paternal grandfather, also named Taika, served as a Maori Battalion soldier during World War II.

• 3. Comedy Roots and Short Films

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  At Victoria University of Wellington, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1997, Waititi was part of a five-member comedy ensemble called So You're a Man. The group toured New Zealand and Australia.

  He and Jemaine Clement, performing as the comedy duo The Humourbeasts, won the Billy T Award in 1999 - New Zealand's highest comedy accolade. That same year, under the surname Cohen, Waititi appeared in the black comedy film Scarfies.

  Waititi began making short films for New Zealand's annual 48Hours film contest. The short Two Cars, One Night, which he directed in 2003, involves two young boys and a girl meeting in the car park of a rural pub in Te Kaha, New Zealand. It earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film in 2005, losing to the short Wasp.

  His first feature, Eagle vs Shark, a romantic comedy he co-wrote with Loren Horsley, was released in US theatres for limited distribution in 2007. That same year he wrote and directed an episode of the TV series Flight of the Conchords.

• 4. New Zealand Box Office Records

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  Boy premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010 and received a Grand Jury Prize nomination. Waititi took one of the main roles as the ex-con father who returns to his family. On its New Zealand release, Boy eclipsed several local box office records.

  Hunt for the Wilderpeople, based on a book by Barry Crump, also premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, in 2016. It centres on a young boy played by Julian Dennison and a grumpy man played by Sam Neill, on the run in the wilderness. When it opened in New Zealand, it broke Waititi's own record for a New Zealand film in its opening weekend.

  Both Boy and Hunt for the Wilderpeople have each been the top-grossing film entirely funded and produced within New Zealand. That achievement - held by the same director for two separate films - points to an unusual capacity to make distinctly local stories that connect at scale.

  During this period Waititi also co-wrote the initial screenplay for the 2016 Disney film Moana, which focused on gender and family. Those elements were passed over in favour of what became the final story.

• 5. What We Do in the Shadows

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  In 2013, Waititi co-wrote, co-directed, and acted in What We Do in the Shadows with Jemaine Clement. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2014. Waititi and Clement played members of a group of vampires living in an appropriately gothic house in modern-day Wellington.

  A television adaptation was commissioned in May 2018, with Waititi as executive producer and director. The series premiered on FX in March 2019. Its second season received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series.

  The mockumentary format - borrowed from a tradition of observational comedy and applied to flatmates who happen to be centuries-old vampires - became a template that Waititi would reach for again. The premise's absurdity is played straight, which is precisely where the comedy lives. Jemaine Clement had been Waititi's collaborator since their Billy T Award win, and their working relationship runs through a significant stretch of his career.

• 6. Jojo Rabbit and Oscar History

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  Jojo Rabbit, released in 2019, is set in the 1940s and follows a child in the Hitler Youth whose mother is secretly hiding a Jewish girl in their home. The film is based on the book Caging Skies by Christine Leunens. Waititi wrote the screenplay, directed the film, and played a buffoonish version of Adolf Hitler as the boy's imaginary friend.

  The film received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Waititi won Best Adapted Screenplay, making him the first person of Maori descent to win an Academy Award in a screenplay category, and the first indigenous person to be nominated for and win in that category.

  In 2021, he won the Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media as a producer of the film's soundtrack. The BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay also came with the film.

  The character he played in his own film - Hitler reimagined as a vain, petty, ridiculous figure who exists only in a child's imagination - is an encapsulation of Waititi's method: taking a subject loaded with gravity and finding a way in through absurdity.

• 7. Marvel, Mandalorian, and Television

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  Thor: Ragnarok, released in October 2017, was Waititi's first major studio film for Marvel Studios. He also portrayed the alien Korg in the film via motion capture. He had previously directed a short film series for Marvel called Team Thor, which chronicled the lives of Thor and his roommate Darryl Jacobson.

  In October 2018, Lucasfilm announced Waititi as one of the directors of The Mandalorian. The series tells the story of a lone Mandalorian gunfighter in the period between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. It premiered on the 12th of November 2019. Waititi directed the first-season finale, Chapter 8: Redemption, and voiced the droid bounty hunter IG-11. His voice work earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance in 2020.

  He also co-created the comedy series Reservation Dogs with Sterlin Harjo. The show chronicles the lives of indigenous Oklahoma teens and comprises a main cast, directors, producers, and writers of indigenous peoples. On the HBO Max side, Waititi executive produced, directed, and starred as Blackbeard in Our Flag Means Death, whose first season was released in March 2022.

  Thor: Love and Thunder, the sequel to Ragnarok, was released in July 2022 and received mixed reviews. Critic Mark Kermode complained that the jokes and catch-phrases were "just incredibly tired". Amy Nicholson of NPR wrote that she was "really compelled by the ideas Taika Waititi was teasing in this film", but found the eagerness to please pulled her back.

• 8. Advocacy for Indigenous Filmmakers

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  Waititi incorporates his Maori and indigenous heritage into production practice, including hiring indigenous interns and having traditional owners conduct a Welcome to Country ceremony at the start of filming in Australia.

  He is an executive producer on The Breaker Upperers (2018), Baby Done (2020), and Night Raiders (2021), all directed by Maori or indigenous filmmakers. In 2021, his cousin Tweedie Waititi, whom he considers a sibling, began producing and directing Maori language versions of Disney animated films. She does this work alongside Waititi's former partner Chelsea Winstanley.

  In 2023, Waititi executive produced Frybread Face and Me, directed by Billy Luther. In 2024 he executive produced We Were Dangerous, directed by Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu. In the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to film.

  In April 2026, Netflix announced that Waititi will voice Willy Wonka in an animated follow-up to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, titled Charlie vs. The Chocolate Factory, on which he also serves as executive producer.