Tour guide to movie star
Meets the Wellington mum who is now making her big screen debut.
Sarah Catherall
Many of us can look back at defining moments in our life which set us on our current path. For Taofi Mose-Tuiloma, it was the ’’white Sundays’’ she attended in the Samoan church from a young age which led to her making her screen debut.
The 32-year-old plays one of the two major female roles in Gary of the Pacific, a film about a struggling real estate agent, Gary Vasisi (Josh Thomson), who becomes chief of a sinking Pacific island while trying to organise his wedding.
Playing his sister, Lani, MoseTuiloma never saw anything of the film until the Auckland premiere earlier this month, telling her partner that she was too nervous to go. While other cast and crew had watched the dailies during filming in the Cook Islands in late 2015, she just couldn’t bring herself to, she laughs.
‘‘They showed us bits during the filming, but I couldn’t watch. I was like this,’’ she says, hiding her face behind her hands.
As the film rolled, she became so swept up in the story that ‘‘I forgot that it was me’’.
‘‘I got carried away with the storyline. Seriously.
‘‘My partner is very proud of me. I have this whole outpouring of pride from my family, and from everyone.’’
Mose-Tuiloma took her 11-year-old son, Levi, to the Wellington premiere, even though he only found out a few
weeks ago that his mother was in a film.
‘‘My whole family had seen the trailer, and he said, ‘Mum, are you in a film?’ And I said, ‘That’s me son, that’s me in the trailer’.’’
Born and raised in Lower Hutt, the actress never knew her mother, who passed away of cervical cancer when Mose-Tuiloma was just 1 year old. Raised by her father and older siblings, they returned to Samoa for a few years when she was young, living in the theological college while her father trained there.
And it was there, and later back in Wellington, that she began performing as part of the ‘‘white Sunday’’ children’s festival in the Samoan church, the genesis of where she is today.
‘‘From a little toddler, right up to my adult years, I was part of white Sunday, where we would recite things from the Bible, and do a performance, and sing. That was in my blood.’’
Majoring in performing arts at Whitireia Polytechnic, her cultural dance troupe travelled around Europe and Asia performing dances. But when she had son Levi at the age of 21, the year she graduated, she had to park her performing arts career.
‘‘It changed everything for me. I stopped dancing for a bit.’’
Acting came next, when she was asked by friends to join them in a fringe production, Poly-Zygotic. She then auditioned for a Pacific musical, The Factory, playing a factory worker. ‘‘I then came back to Wellington and did some soul-searching. I started teaching students dancing, but I knew I wanted to be on stage.’’
In the film, she drew on her own experience having four brothers for the role. Gary reminded her of her own brother, Mose, who is the same age.
‘‘You had all these other characters who were, like, idiots. Lani was the heart of the film, the only one that had a clue.
‘‘The film became about family in the end. It’s about Gary prioritising his girlfriend, rather than his family.’’
It’s a topic that the actress can relate to, and she says it also shows the importance of family to the Pacific Island culture.
Mose-Tuiloma laughs about her ignorance during the film-making when she had to come to grips with terminology that actors like Matt Whelan (of Go Girls, who plays her fiance), take for granted. Getting a crash course over the month, her daughter, now 2, was in the Cook Islands with her for part of the filming.
‘‘The hardest challenge for me was not knowing what was going on. Like, ‘Oh my gosh, are we actually filming right now?’ But the crew was awesome.’’
In her day job, the self-described ‘‘people person’’ works as a Te Papa tour host, which she describes as another type of performance.
Her father hoped she would become a musician like him – he plays the piano in the Samoan church – as she also loves singing.
‘‘I was Dad’s baby. I was the child that had no mum for 14 years, until he married my stepmother.
‘‘Now I think I’ve found my thing. But my children have to be my very first priority. It has to all work around them.’’
(M) is playing in New Zealand cinemas now.
Gary of the Pacific