Tale of redemption
When Norm Hewitt (All Black) and Manu Bennett (Hollywood actor) were at school together, they weren’t best mates. But it’s never too late to say sorry, writes Shaun Bamber.
When they were at boarding school together, at Hawke’s Bay’s Te Aute College, future All Black Norm Hewitt beat future star of stage and screen Manu Bennett ‘‘to within an inch of my life’’.
Bennett owes Hewitt a lot for what happened that day.
Hewitt, on the other hand, perhaps owes the Spartacus star more for what happened the day they met by chance as adults, some 20-odd years later.
‘‘I remember putting my hand on Manu’s shoulder and going ‘Manu’,’’ says Hewitt. ‘‘And Manu knew exactly who it was. Twenty years after the fact.’’
The two men were in the Koru lounge at Auckland Airport, and when Hewitt saw Bennett, he knew it was an opportunity he couldn’t let slip – this was his chance to apologise to the man he’d so ferociously beaten all those years ago.
While the beating itself was a blur of rage and anger and brutality – ‘‘I wanted to kill him’’ remembers Hewitt – the memory of that event would resonate throughout the lives and careers of both men.
‘‘I saw Manu’s career go from Paradise Beach to Shortland Street, to being on the gladiator show as Crixus, then The Hobbit, and Arrow – and all the while going, ‘OK, one day . . .’
‘‘I’ve come across other people that I’ve hurt, but I never had the courage to do anything about it. And I’d keep pondering this kind of question – would you ever have the courage to do something?
‘‘And then walking in the Koru lounge and seeing Manu and going, here’s a moment. You can either do two things – go ‘yeah, nah’, or step into the moment. And I was prepared to walk across into that moment.’’
By now you might be wondering, so why does Bennett owe Hewitt so much? The man himself explains.
‘‘I said to Norm when he apologised to me, ‘You know what, you shouldn’t apologise to me – I should thank you for all the material you gave me to work with in my career! I’ve shaped characters out of my memories of you’.
‘‘Throughout my life and my career the one name that always bounced back into my head was Norm Hewitt,’’ explains Bennett.
‘‘When I played Crixus intimidating Spartacus, I thought about Norm intimidating me, standing over the top of me.
‘‘When I played Azog the Orc – you know, giant, powerful, power that just controls by presence alone – I thought of Norm. And funnily enough when I was going down to do the last day of filming as Azog in The Hobbit, that’s when I met Norm.’’
Despite battling his own demons, Hewitt wasn’t entirely unaware that he had become the unexpected inspiration for many of Bennett’s acting roles either.
‘‘It was the articles that Manu started being interviewed for,’’ he remembers. ‘‘He started utilising that experience, and it would come out in an article, and people would say hey, you need to read this.
‘‘And I’d read the article and it started provoking me to go, what could I do? Because Manu’s talking about it openly. So when do we get to the point that we can come together? That was part of that catalyst of going, what would I do one day if we ever crossed paths?’’ Hewitt says.
‘‘And that’s what that experience at the Koru lounge in Auckland was – and on the last day of Manu filming Azog and going down to The Hobbit. You couldn’t script that stuff right?’’
This meeting of two men who last knew each other as children – as bully and victim – was also the catalyst for Making Good Men ,a documentary in which the pair share their story of how they came to be where they are today.
Each had childhoods that were, in their own way, harrowing. Hewitt’s father – who appears in the doco – would regularly bash his son, while Bennett suffered the heartbreaking tragedy of losing both his mother and his brother within weeks of each other.
It was the car accident that killed Bennett’s mother – he was in the car with her, and still bears the scars – which ultimately led to his enrolment at Te Aute College and what would be a life-changing confrontation with the young Norm Hewitt.
‘‘I arrived at Te Aute College because unfortunately my mother and brother were both killed in car accidents,’’ Bennett says. ‘‘They were buried two weeks apart, in Hastings, and then my grandparents said, ‘You’re not going home with your dad [to Australia]. You’re going to Te Aute’.
‘‘So I was kind of like just a piece of beaten-up meat already in a way, and unfortunately I was also a very fast athlete – I say unfortunately, because the school principal put me in the First XV, and that kind of sparked off a few repercussions with the Te Aute boys . . .’’ Bennett says.
Hewitt was already established at Te Aute, but the boarding school hadn’t exactly been kind to him either – in fact he had been sexually abused by an older student at the age of 13.
‘‘Then Manu turned up – he was fast, he was athletic, he was built, he was from a different world. I didn’t know anything about Manu except that he was there and then he was put in the First XV. And what I saw was, ‘Who’s this guy?’ He hasn’t done the hard yards, he hasn’t been a third former, he hasn’t walked through this hard journey of life.
‘‘After that it was about, ‘OK, here’s the level’. But to test that, I went into an uncontrollable rage. And wanting to break, but getting lost in that absolute moment of rage, where I become my father.
‘‘And the rage that I was consumed with was the same as my father standing over me, and me thinking I’m going to die. It’s amazing how you harbour that. And then what happens in a moment,’’ Hewitt says.
‘‘I think what we’ve ended up with here is not really about us at all,’’ says Bennett of Making Good Men. ‘‘It’s about two things – it’s about victims and bullying. And that’s something that I think affects anybody, from schools to workplaces to families. But nobody talks about it, nobody has dialogue.’’
‘‘We need to stop telling our men to say to our boys, don’t cry, don’t be girls, harden up you pussy – all that kind of stuff,’’ adds Hewitt.
‘‘That language I heard when I was growing up, how do we change it so our boys can feel that they can find their heart and their presence and still be great at what they do?
‘‘Whether it’s as an All Black or an actor, whether it’s playing roles that are strong or being the All Black captain that requires certain traits that enable us to say – that’s a good man.’’
Making Good Men, Prime, Monday July 25, 9.30pm.