Luciane Buchanan

Kiwi-Tongan actor Luciane Buchanan fell in love with acting from her very first role as Billy T’s daughter in 2011 TV movie Billy. She went on to join the cast of crime drama series The Blue Rose (2013) before studying drama and psychology at Auckland University. Since then, Buchanan has co-starred in Netflix fantasy series The New Legends of Monkey as Tripitaka, the chosen one, and Netflix hit The Night Agent, a conspiracy thriller in which she played cybersecurity expert Rose Larkin. In 2024 Buchanan wrote and co-starred in short film Lea Tupu’anga, about the loss of one's native language. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

If there was a character I could play, what would it be? I looked at a lot of experiences from my own life, and also speaking to immigrants all around the world and we had this common thread of not speaking the language of our cultures. Luciane Buchanan on the origins of her short film Lea Tupu'anga, 1News, 21 January 2024