Academy Award Winner Taika Waititi is no stranger to mixing intimate workplace comedies with elements you wouldn’t necessarily expect like vampires, indigenous kids, musicians, etc. Now, he and writer/showrunner David Jenkins have teamed to bring you a humorous and heartfelt tale of pirates with their new show, “Our Flag Means Death,” which premieres March 3 on HBO Max.
“Our Flag Means Death” follows a wealthy aristocrat, Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) who decides to leave his life of privilege to become a pirate in the early 18th century. Together with his crew, he begins to make a name for himself, although perhaps not the name he had set out to make. Of course, the dread pirate Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) catches wind of Stede and swashbuckling hijinks ensue!
Today on The Discourse, Taika Waititi and Rhys Darby stop by to talk about their new series and how they got involved.
“[David] called me and he just described the story and what struck me is that it was this story about a very plain and normal guy who was experiencing what a lot of us go through at a certain part of our lives,” explained Waititi. “The big question: ‘How did we get here? How did I get to this point in my life where this is what I’m doing?’ And even though I’ve got a nice career, I’m still like, ‘Is this my true path? Should I have done this? Would I be happier if I’d stayed home and done this other thing?’”
He continued, “Every single person in the world has got that question: Would I have been happier? And then Blackbeard didn’t come until about a year later when [David] said, ‘I’ve actually written Blackbeard for you.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, OK! Um…I’m not white and I’m not from Bristol.’ And then it was really interesting. Again, he was like, ‘None of that matters. In this show, none of that matters. It’s really irrelevant what people looked like or what the color of their skin is. It’s all just character-based and they have their own histories and their own backgrounds, which has somehow led them to here. So, the only thing that matters is people trying to escape a past life.”
Taika also talks about how working on “Our Flag Means Death” also informed his next directorial effort, which longtime collaborator Rhys Darby also is in, “Next Goal Wins,” which is due out later this year. The film is based on the 2014 documentary of the same name by Mike Brett and Steve Jamison, about Dutch-American coach Thomas Rongen’s efforts to lead the American Samoa national football team, considered the weakest football team in the world, to qualification for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. A Taika-esque plot if you’ve ever heard one.
“That’s a drama as well. Like, I’ve been looking at this film in the edit and thought, ‘Oh, this will be a comedy about this subject and the more I developed it and shot it and looked at what the story was about, I’ve actually realized it’s like, basically the kind of thing that’s in keeping with most of my work, it’s a drama with beautiful, funny moments, but, essentially, the story is quite profound,” Waititi teased.
Of course, the conversation does touch on some of the bigger projects that Waititi has coming up, particularly “Thor: Love and Thunder” and “Flash Gordon,” both of which are top secret, but highly anticipated, nonetheless. You can listen to the full discussion below:
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