Thomas Pa‘a Sibbett: The impact of Chief of War

There’s more than a little Aotearoa inspiration in Chief of War, the historical drama series now streaming on Apple TV+. Filmed mostly in Aotearoa, with a cast and crew that includes Māori and Pasifika at every level, the series looks back at the unification and colonisation of Hawai‘i at the turn of the 18th century.

Here, co-creator Thomas Pa‘a Sibbett — who shares writing and producing credits with fellow Hawaiian Jason Momoa — talks to Dale about the Aotearoa connection and how Chief of War breaks new ground for Hawaiians.

 

Out of respect for our old people, I always like to start by asking about villages and connections. So would you be kind enough to tell us a little bit about your whakapapa lines?

Both my family lines go through Māui, but primarily our family is now on O‘ahu, and that’s where I’ve spent most of my time.

You speak Hawaiian fluently?

I get by. I don’t call myself fluent, but it’s definitely something that I found important in my life — and in my time in Aotearoa, I just loved how prolific the Māori language is, and how prominent it is, and how much it plays a role in the day-to-day. I found that very inspiring.

And when I was there, I did notice little things, such as that my family is from Wai‘anae, on O‘ahu, and I noticed that on the map, there’s a Waikanae. I thought, “Oh, that’s really interesting.” My brain kind of turned on to that. I also have family from Kaupō on Māui, and I noticed there’s a Taupō in Aotearoa. I started seeing those similarities of locations — like Whangārei with Hanalei — and I got a kick out of that.

Is Pa’a your surname, or is it Sibbett?

Pa‘a is the name I go by. My full name is actually Thomas Paʻakaiokahonua Sibbett, but it’s always been easier for people to say Pa‘a. In Hawaiian, a lot of words have the okina, which is the stop, as in Pa‘a, but if you put a “k” where there’s an apostrophe, a lot of times it’s a Māori word. So with Wai‘anae, swap the okina for a “k” and it becomes Waikanae, you know? Even with Hawai‘i, we have that stop in there. If you replace that with a “k”, it’s Hawaiki. I was wearing a shirt in New Zealand that said “kia‘i”, which is like a guardian. Somebody was looking at that and said: “Is this like ‘tiaki’?”

We’re all cousins of the Pacific. What are you making of the rise of Pasifika and Polynesian storytelling?

Oh, man, it’s a big deal, and Aotearoa really is a hub for all Pasifika people, because there’s such a strong representation there. Tinā was a wonderful representation of Sāmoa. And then, Red, White and Brass was Tongans getting their representation. It’s a beautiful thing, and I truly believe the next great avenue for Pasifika people is film. You see us in sports, you see us in music, but I think film is the next great avenue for us.

Films can’t happen without ideas, and so I was wondering about early films you might have seen, or early books you might have read, because the craft of screenwriting and taking the idea from conception through to production is really intriguing. What inspired you?

I didn’t see myself as a writer. I didn’t know you could make any money doing it. But we are storytellers by nature — that is the way it is. I loved movies growing up, but it wasn’t until I heard that Sony was developing a Kamehameha movie back in 2004, 2005, that a light went off in my head and I thought: “If Hollywood wants a Hawaiian story, I can do that.”

I immediately had an idea for a movie, but I didn’t have any clue how to do it, so I bought a book. One book on how to write a screenplay! And I just kind of figured out the format and started working at it. It wasn’t because I was following the dream of being a writer. I just knew that I could tell stories. That’s all it was.

And we all have that. We chant our stories, we sing them, we dance them. It’s very much a part of who we are. And I think one thing that might have helped me is that I grew up not in Hawai‘i but in the Pacific Northwest, in Washington state. And I think because of my upbringing, I had a different view on how to tell a story. I knew that the story needed to be told for a universal audience.

Like, if I wanted to tell a story about Hawai‘i, my goal was never to tell it to Hawaiians. I wanted to share something that the world could hear and see, so they could start making a better judgment of who we are. I wanted to build something that allowed the world to go: “Ah, that’s one aspect of what a Hawaiian is. The image that I had was wrong — this is the image of what it is.” That’s the goal, to basically reintroduce ourselves to the world.

Jason Momoa loves this place, doesn’t he? It feels like he’s a Māori, because he’s here so often, and we see him playing in a band and promoting film. Where did you guys meet? And how did you form a friendship and a bond?

I’d written some scripts, but I don’t have representation or anything like that. I found out that Jason’s dad went to the same high school as my mum. They’re from the same place. So I called his dad, and I knew I was gonna get one of two types of people. In Hawai‘i, you either get the guy that’s Mr Aloha — he’ll talk to you, he’ll listen to you — or you can get the guy that’s like: “What the hell are you doing on my phone?” I didn’t know what kind of guy I was gonna get, but his father was great. He said: “I can’t put you in touch with my son, but I can put you in touch with his agent. And if you’re good, then so be it.”

So that’s how it happened. I sent a project to his agent, his agent loved it, gave it to Jason, and Jason called me out of the blue. And he literally said — these are his words, not mine — he goes: “I don’t know who the fuck you are or where you came from, but I have to work on this project with you.”

We were able to strike up a friendship, but it really was born out of the work. It was born out of the art and what it is that we’re trying to tell.

It’s an amazing cast that you’ve pulled together for this project, Chief of War, and I was intrigued by your decision to have it in the Hawaiian language with subtitles. Talk to that for a moment, because it was a bold decision.

Actually, there was never a version of it where it wasn’t going to be that way. If you do a movie in Korean, there’s a demographic for it. They understand how much money it can make. If you do it in Spanish, there’s a demographic. There’s no economic precedent for a film in the Hawaiian language, right? So it is a scary proposition.

Apple had no idea if people were gonna watch this show. But they bet on it because they were betting on us, and we just assured them that it was the only way to do it. That if we want to stand here and talk about cultural authenticity, talk about leading with culture, and running production through the lens of cultural sensitivity, then to remove that removes the authenticity, removes the thing that makes it real.

And so, we didn’t back down. But it was funny, because when they said yes, then we had to turn around and say: “Okay, how the hell are we going to do that?” We weren’t quite sure how to pull it off, because it’d never been done before. But, no, it was wonderful. It was wonderful.

Tell us about the reaction.

With this movie, people are getting an authentic piece of cinema. And across the board, that’s been good. There are some people who say: “I can’t watch it if I have to read subtitles.” And that’s fine, because if they’re not going to read the subtitles of our show, then they’re not watching anything else with subtitles, so the show is not for them, you know?

You don’t have to be Hawaiian to enjoy it. But what I will say, whether you speak Hawaiian or not, is that there will be an impact on future generations from being able to hear and experience ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i on film. And that’s wonderful, to think about the inspiration for that younger generation.

But it was more than just something for future generations. People don’t understand that we’re so far behind in representation on film — my parents had never heard ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i on film. My grandparents had never heard it.

So the film was for everyone. It was for all of us. There are people in Hawai‘i who, even if they don’t speak Hawaiian, said: “I just closed my eyes and I listened.” They loved having an opportunity to hear Hawaiian spoken as if it was just a normal thing. And that was awesome. That’s the kind of impact it can have for the specific people that it relates to, and by extension, the people of the Pacific, knowing that our cultures and our languages are marketable.

You can take your culture, your language, your stories, and make them marketable. The trick is to learn how to do it for an international audience. That’s really the only difference.

I don’t speak Hawaiian, but I certainly could feel that magic. What was the reaction from your mum and dad, and your whānau?

It was beautiful. Because, for a Hawaiian, it’s more than just the language — it’s how the language equates to everyday living. The language is more than just a series of words. The language is born from the land. We speak in ways that acknowledge the things around us. A traditional greeting in Hawai‘i is to greet someone from Kumokahi to Lehua. These are the furthest points in the east and the west, and what that means is you’re greeting people in the order that the sun rises and sets over the islands.

There’s a depth to the language, there’s a meaning to the language, and to have an opportunity to share it and showcase it was huge.

And the response was great, which is why, in Hawai‘i, when we had the premiere, we didn’t do a traditional showing where you might have 300 to 500 people go to a movie theatre and watch it. We had 3,000 people, because we wanted everyone who worked on the film to have an opportunity to be there.

I guess we should acknowledge Apple, too, because it was a bold move from their side as well, saying, “We support this approach.”

A hundred percent. We pitched to them, and they were so much in support that within 24 hours from the time that we pitched it and developed the visual deck of the show, Apple was not only saying: “Yes, we want it,” they had found producers and directors. They were ready to go.

And it was a wonderful testament to, first of all, that our stories have value, but second, that there are people willing to bet on something that has no economic precedent.

There are obvious difficulties in crafting work featuring pre-European times, and there’s the challenge of having the reo delivered by people who are just becoming familiar with it. I’m curious about your decisions to go into that pre-European time zone, and also the research behind how you crafted the story.

A lot of times, with a movie like this, you might have a writer and producer who spend a couple of months researching and diving into it, but you’re ultimately going to end up filling in the gaps with everything you don’t know.

The difference is that I’m a Hawaiian studies major, and I grew up with the culture in my home, so these are stories I’ve heard told and retold over and over since I was a child.

So my research process didn’t begin with the creation of this show. My research process started many, many years before. And although you’re never going to be able to tell a historical story completely accurately, I’m never filling in gaps with things that I don’t know. I’m filling them in with other cultural touches that might work.

I might take the chronology of the history and move things around, but I’m gonna be faithful in the areas that I’m moving. Or if I can’t have certain characters, I might merge two characters into one, and I might be able to tell both of their stories through one character, as opposed to completely leaving people out or trying to make things up.

But then, to buffer ourselves, we had over 15 cultural advisors, and we placed them over every major department and every major aspect of the show. So not just costumes or production design. We placed them over va’a, canoes. We placed them over the hale, you know, the hut building. We placed them over even small aspects, like the cloth in the materials the characters wear. We had specific people for the lua, the Hawaiian martial art, the authenticity in the weapons and the movements that would take place, military strategy, all of that. Also, the tattoos. We made sure that it was all being overseen by somebody.

There’s a perception of our people, Māori, that we were always at war, but incorporated into the storytelling is tenderness, too, and strong relationships with men and women. Were you conscious of incorporating that dimension into the script, so it wasn’t just the violence that people sometimes associate with pre-European history?

Yeah. And it’s not just in what you see, it’s also in what you don’t see. For example, I purposefully have no surfing and no hula in this first season. And that was a conscious decision. It’s not that those things weren’t practised, or that they weren’t important, it’s just that I wanted to create and present something that people don’t expect. So every time I show them something, it feels fresh and new. I didn’t want to feed them their personal expectations of what Hawai‘i is, and what Hawaiians have.

I’m really just focusing on the ali’i class, the chiefly class. So I’m not really diving into the beauty of the maka‘āinana, the mahi‘ai, the lawai‘a — the farmers, the fishermen, and all that. I’m specifically focusing just on this ali’i class, which is the warrior class.

But of course, you need to make sure it’s balancing out through relationships and emotional arcs and all that kind of stuff. That’s just good storytelling. That’s Film 101. As long as we have all of that, and we can continue to present something new, then I think we’re doing all right.

It’s not a film, it’s a series, and so it gradually unfolds and shares more of itself with the viewer. How much more challenging might it have been for you as a writer to do that rather than perhaps a one-block script that was destined for a two-hour film?

In our first conversation, Jason and I talked about doing this as a movie. But once we started really talking about character, I was like: “Bro, there’s absolutely no way we could do this as a movie.”

So we talked about doing maybe six episodes, and then from six episodes, eight episodes, and then we didn’t decide until five weeks before we started shooting that we were gonna just make it to where the story could continue. So we effectively changed the entire structure of the show five weeks before we shot it.

We just thought: You know what? The story is good enough that we need to double down and bet on ourselves. Just bet on ourselves that we can present something that audiences are gonna enjoy, and that we’re gonna take the right care.

Because Jason is at a place in his career now where he’s ready to take that. I’m at a place in my career where I can build that. And so we basically tell the world: “Watch this season, and if you like it, we have a lot more.”

Tell us about your move from Hawai‘i to Aotearoa.

This is important to discuss because we weren’t able to shoot the whole thing in Hawai‘i, and a lot of people have asked about that. The reasons why are political and boring to get into, but I will say that the result of not being able to film in Hawai‘i was this. We were presented with the option of filming in Thailand, the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico.

Visually, those places could pass for Hawai‘i. But culturally, they cannot. For us to tell our story, if we couldn’t do it in Hawai‘i, there was only one place we could go, and that was Aotearoa. Because we have a lineage connection. There’s a shorthand between us, so that when we’re trying to tell our story, they would be able to shoulder that responsibility and support us in the way that we need it.

I can’t begin to express how many times the decision to go to Aotearoa paid off. First of all, just the cultural protocol that’s in place. It was so grounding for us that Māori hold the space properly — they insist that there is a certain level of decorum to be done on their land.

By bringing in Cliff Curtis as a producer in Aotearoa, he was able to help us do that. And we had great cast members like Te Kohe Tuhaka, who were able to uphold a specific cultural standard. Also, it was an opportunity for us to use production as a means of reconnecting lineage lines. And that, in and of itself, was so worth it, and most of that was not even captured on film.

It was just us having the opportunity to interact, reconnect, and bring people together. That was not only a highlight of the film, but one of the highlights of my career.

I remember there was one time we were filming, and there was a group of Polynesian men, and they’re all dressed up in Hawaiian regalia. I stopped to talk to them, and I asked one of them: “What’s it like to wear that? You know, being Māori? Is it weird? Does it feel off to you?” And he said: “No. When I first put on the feather cape and the mahiole, I could feel something. I had to go to the beach to see if the ancestors were present. I could feel them.” I thanked him and went into the production truck and said: “That’s why we’re here.”

They know, instantly, and you can’t buy that. You put the clothes on them, and they already know how to act. They know how to carry themselves. If you tell them: “You’re gonna be ali’i,” they know what that means.

It’s wonderful that you chose to bring your skills to our land, to celebrate the connection we share. I want to wish you well going forward.

I appreciate that. Can I ask you a question, Dale? What’s been the reaction of people in Aotearoa? What is the feeling in general for the show?

As with that young man you spoke with, it just resonates so comfortably with us. The kakahu, the dress, the warrior status, the interpersonal relationships. You’ve cottoned on to something that is quite universal across our Pasifika peoples. The ali’i that you talk about are our ariki. This sort of shared connection around the Pacific region is something that’s been celebrated in your efforts, celebrated in Tem’s efforts, in Cliff’s efforts. We’ve got many stories to tell.

I’m gonna share one more story with you. The wahine of Ka‘iana, Jason’s character, is played by Te Ao o Hinepehinga, and she does a great job. She plays Kupuohi. Kupuohi’s sister is Heke. So, here’s a story that I haven’t told many people. Heke is one of the very few characters that is not a real person. I created her.

Heke is created for a very specific reason in the show. She’s the only person in the family who’s not a warrior. She’s a medicinal person. She works with the plants. I wanted to show what it’s like to be an innocent in the world of the warriors. I patterned her after the Grace character in Once Were Warriors. I named her in honour of Beth and Jake Heke.

She is literally inspired by Māori cinema. And she’s actually a wink and a nod to our respect and our honour for the storytelling that has come out of Aotearoa. That’s how much we are invested in the work that’s being done over there, and how much we want to work together.

I often tell people that after Chief of War, if it does well, people are going to be looking through the Pacific for more stories. And when they do, I truly believe the next big TV series or movie is going to come out of Aotearoa. I believe that.

And I don’t want to be left behind. I want to be a part of that mahi. I’ve tried to stay close enough and to let people know that I know it’s coming. And when it does, look across the Pacific — and hopefully you’ll see me, and Jason will be there to support, and we can get more of these types of stories going.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Chief of War is now streaming on Apple TV+

E-Tangata, 2025