Dame Jacinda Ardern and Anna Osborne (holding a photograph of her husband Milton) after the 2017 signing of the cross-party deal to re-enter the Pike River Mine. Photo / Mark Mitchell
How do you convince a former prime minister to star in the story of your life? All Sonya Rockhouse had to do was ask.
Dame Jacinda Ardern makes a surprise appearance as herself in the new film Pike River.
Advance cast lists gave no clue Ardern would appear in the movie that has its New Zealand premiere in Greymouth on October 13.
Pike River tells the story of Sonya Rockhouse and Anna Osborne’s 15-year fight for justice following the deaths of 29 men at the Pike River coal mine on the West Coast. The script features multiple political figures but only Ardern plays herself.
“After leaving office Dame Jacinda was asked by a Pike River family member involved with the film to appear,” said a spokesperson, in response to an interview request from the Herald.
“She agreed to briefly appear as herself, in a voluntary capacity. She hasn’t yet had the opportunity to see the film.”
Director Robert Sarkies says the decision to approach Ardern for the part “wasn’t a political choice”.
“We’d cast a lot of people. We’d even found someone to play John Key who I thought could be incredible,” said Sarkies.
“And we couldn’t find anyone to play Jacinda because she’s such a distinctive person. And I mentioned this to Sonya... and I did quietly mention, ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if Jacinda played Jacinda’. Sonya just says to me ‘well, I’ll ask her’. And within half an hour we had a yes.”
Ardern’s cameo, which lasts approximately 20 seconds and includes three spoken lines, occurs when Osborne and Rockhouse, played by Melanie Lynskey and Robyn Malcolm, travel to Wellington before the 2017 general election. The pair are there to lobby political parties to sign a commitment to re-enter the coal mine where the bodies of 29 workers – including Osborne’s husband Milton (Milt) and Rockhouse’s son Benjamin (Ben) – have never been recovered.
“Of course we’ll sign,” Ardern tells the pair in an office scene that includes a camera pan of the classic wartime American “we can do it” poster.
In 2017, Ardern was just seven weeks into the leadership of the Labour Party when it won enough seats to form a coalition Government with the Greens and NZ First. Andrew Little was named the new Minister for Pike Mine Re-entry and the Pike River Recovery Agency was created as a standalone government department. (In 2021, that agency abandoned recovery plans, citing technical challenges and cost. More recently, police resumed borehole drilling and imaging and are currently in discussion with the Crown Solicitor over whether to lay charges over the disaster).
Ardern received no payment for her appearance in the film. Sarkies was initially reluctant to discuss her involvement in the movie project, saying “I think that sort of thing can take over what the film is actually about”.
But, while he said it was not his intention to make a political film, he accepted the Pike River story was “inherently” political.
“I think left versus right politics is often quite poisonous because it’s all black and white, no grey. And there’s a lot of grey. There are a lot of reasons Pike River happened that relates to both political parties going back 20 years.
“I haven’t wanted to take sides, but I’d be naive to think that Pike River isn’t actually a political story. These families needed to bring politicians on side in order to get the thing they wanted. The families needed to ‘manipulate’ - in inverted commas - the politicians, because no one’s got the money to get into that mine. You need the politicians to do that.”
Online movie information platform IMDb does not list Jacinda Ardern in the Pike River credits. The cast list shows former National Prime Minister John Key is played by Daniel Cleary and Stephen Bain appears as former Environment Minister Nick Smith. Actors also appear in non-speaking roles, playing the likes of National MPs Gerry Brownlee and Judith Collins, and NZ First leader Winston Peters.
Sarkies says the scene with Ardern, who moved to the United States in 2023 to take up a position at Harvard University, was shot in New Zealand.
“Jacinda said yes, because she loves Sonya and Anna. She has visited Sonya, post being a politician, at her house in Christchurch. There was one cute moment Sonya told me about... Jacinda was visiting, and saw a poster and said ‘that’s funny, I had a poster just like that in my office’. And Sonya says, ‘yeah, Rob noticed that and he put it in the film and then he gave the poster to me’.”
Pike River (which goes on general release from October 30) was made in association with the New Zealand Film Commission, NZ On Air, Three, the New Zealand Screen Production Rebate and Park Road Post Production.
Online records show it received $484,000 from NZ On Air in 2022. Meanwhile, the Film Commission this week confirmed almost $5m of funding, comprising $4,498,760 in rebates, equity funding of $1,922,100, development funding of $77,900 and an additional $20,000 in on-the-job industry support for a trainee director internship and a trainee producer attachment.
Ardern’s brief appearance in the film is her second big screen moment this year. Prime Minister, chronicling her tenure as New Zealand’s 40th Prime Minister, recorded the strongest opening week for a local documentary in seven years. Distribution company Rialto said the film had earned $417,000 in its first week, including previews.
Ardern has also released two books this year - her memoir A Different Kind of Power and the children’s book Mum’s Busy Work.
Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016 and is a senior reporter on its lifestyle desk. Read her feature-length interview with Pike River director Robert Sarkies and the two women who inspired the film here: Pike River movie brings Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse’s fight to the screen