I think the word ‘diversity’ is wrong. I think that the idea of diversification of the screen is not quite right because it’s actually confusing everyone. And, what’s happening is we’re mistaking that for ‘we have to include a person from every single race, and every single background, and every single part of the human experience, in every show, in everything that we make. That’s not reality and it’s not authentic.
I never grew up with a group of friends where there was someone who represented every ethnic group, in my group of friends (Taiki is Polynesian and grew up in New Zealand in a town of about 600 people). I don’t know who the hell grew up like that…(But,) if I see someone who’s not white on the screen…I’m seeing myself in these people…I know these people have the same experience as minorities, these people who’ve been fighting and having to raise our voices for hundreds of years, we’re all the same, and I think that what happens is another colonial trick to pit us against each other.
-Taika Waititi, The Hollywood Reporter, Raising Our Voices Luncheon, 2023
