Taratoa Stappard reconnects with his Māori heritage in ‘Mārama’

CH: The names themselves are pivotal to the story in how they relate to tradition and the history of European colonial violence on Aotearoa (the Māori name for New Zealand), and to Indigenous women, how they fought back, and continue to fight it.
TS: Definitely. To look at the lead character’s name first, Mārama, with the macron, the line above the first “a,” if it didn’t have that, the word would mean “moon,” which has a feminine connection. Whereas, Mārama means many different things, as most Māori words do, around understanding, and lucidity, perhaps derived from moon, and knowledge. So to extend that, Te Ao Mārama, would mean “the world of Mārama” within the Māori creation story of what we think of as the “real” world where we live, represented as the Earth Goddess by the color red in the Māori flag.

And so Mārama, is about lucidity, knowledge, about identity and coming to understand who you are. So it was an incredibly important name, and once I’d found it, everything made sense and opened up many options for me. Her grandmother Arorangi, I just love the sound of it and that it contains “rangi” which is “sky,” and my own great grandmother was called Rangiriri, which has the meaning of “angry sky,” as an interesting connection.

CH: I’m curious about the choice to make the film a gothic horror set specifically in 1859, as this was a period of time during which the population numbers of the Māori were declining while the number of white Europeans was increasing.
TS: The timing of it all was very important to me so it made sense that Sir Nathaniel Cole made his fortune at that time of relatively early colonization if you like—during a period of horrific history in Aotearoa and New Zealand called The Muskett Wars, when they were being introduced to Māori tribes.

I didn’t sit down originally to write a Māori gothic horror at all. I thought I was going to write maybe a fairly sort of heavy, intense, emotional drama set in Victorian times during colonization when, as you say, the Māori were “a dying race,” which is a line in the film because they were being willed out of existence by colonizers. But they didn’t die. Of course not. They fought back and continue to celebrate their own culture like my own tūpuna, my ancestors, did.

I remember one point in particular during my research when I knew this was a horror story; it was an infamous photograph of a Victorian so-called gentleman who was like a self-appointed expert on Māori tattooing and had become a rabid collector of sacred preserved Māori heads,Toi Moko. His name was H. R. Robley, and there’s a photo of him sitting in his parlor with a whole wall full of mounted Toi Moko. That was a pivotal moment for me, when I saw that photo and started to understand the history behind it and who this was, it became a horror story.

CH: As Mary, Ariāna is fantastic and there’s an aspect of her performance and the story that really stands out to me. Mary exhibits more civility than the British people do. She wears their clothing, speaks their colonial languages fluently, and as a governess, she must act ladylike at all times. But she goes through a transition from being confused, to scared and worried, culminating in anger. So talk about working with Ariāna to figure out the emotional and physical journey from who Mary was, to embracing her full Māori identity as Mārama.
TS: Ariāna is absolutely the spine of this film. Without her, Mārama as a film doesn’t exist. She is the film for me, and did an amazing job at building that role. I still remember when I saw her audition reel that was sent to me by the Māori casting director (Christina Asher) in Auckland who was looking at a wealth of young Māori female acting talent, but there was something about Ariāna, who had the self-confidence to do very little, to be very still.

She had a lot going on behind her eyes, in her eyes, but she was giving very little physically. She has this kind of physical specificity and control that was very interesting, and it kind of clicked with what I imagined Mary Stevens might be. Not repressed. Not just shy, but careful, guarded and of course she’d have to be guarded; she's a person of color in Victorian England, and she’s a woman. So immediately I thought, “Ariāna’s got that, and we can build from that.”

CH: I noticed on IMDB that for your previous films, your name is listed as Toa Stappard, and now you go by your full name Taratoa, is this because you’re reconnecting to your Māori ancestry?
TS: Yes! I’ve reclaimed my full name. My mother gave me the name Taratoa, and promptly started using the name Toa, so I blame her [Laughs], but you know it was fine. I remember as a kid (how) it’s easier when you’re in a new school and the others are like, “What’s your name?” “Taratoa.” “What?!” “Toa.” So it didn’t take long for me to think my name is Toa, and everyone here in London still thinks of me as Toa.

But it’s only really the last sort of five to seven years I’ve been calling myself Taratoa, and I’m happy and proud to have reclaimed that full name.