Pana Hema-Taylor: How acting can be enlightening...

Pana Hema-Taylor plays one of the petty criminals in hit TV show Westside. His other roles include based on a true story TV movie Resolve, The Brokenwood Mysteries, hit movie Boy, and road drama The Most Fun You Can Have Dying.

In this ScreenTalk, Hema-Taylor talks about:

• Being a "little rebel" on the set of his first show Whānau
• Finding his role in Nights in the Gardens of Spain confronting
• Basing the role of Juju in Boy partly on one of his uncles
• How acting with Cohen Holloway was a comical form of hell
• Why the film Redemption felt so close to home for him
• Learning a lot from actor Matt Whelan while making The Most Fun You Can Have Dying
• Shooting the film ‘guerrilla style’ in Europe
• The poignancy of playing a gay character in Spartacus
• What he loves most about filming The Brokenwood Mysteries
• Channelling his grandparents for his role in The Dead Lands
• Exploring a disconnected Māori character in Westside
• Feeling he was playing a token role in Dirty Laundry 
• Honouring a real-life hero in TV drama Daffodils of May (later retitled Resolve) 

This video was first uploaded on 3 April 2017, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview, Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside