Stacey Leilua plays the "moral compass" of Silo Theatre's new production of A View from the Bridge. Photo / Cameron Pitney
Ask Stacey Leilua how she made the call to put whānau first, instead of capitalising on a breakthrough role in Hollywood opposite Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and she doesn’t miss a beat.
“My daughter is number one on my priority list,” she says. “Nothing else is more important than being a mum to her and making sure she is grounded in her life. So it was an easy decision to make.”
Leilua played Johnson’s Samoan mother, Ata, in Young Rock, a TV sitcom based on the pro wrestler’s early life, and was nominated for a best actress award by the 1st Hollywood Critics Association.
However, it’s not only Leilua’s 10-year-old daughter that keeps the Auckland actor so strongly bonded to home. Of Samoan, Māori and New Zealand-European descent, she’s been part of an ecosystem nurturing Māori and Pasifika artists here since she began acting at the age of 15.
A founding member of the Kila Kokonut Krew, Leilua co-wrote New Zealand’s first Pacific musical, The Factory, which was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014 and is now being developed into a feature film.
Along with fellow Krew founders, Vela Manusaute and Tinā’s Anapela Polata’ivao, she’s also developing a “dark comedy series” through the NZ on Air-funded development programme, Rupture.
“What we have here in New Zealand, and particularly Auckland, when it comes to being a Pasifika artist, is probably the only situation of its kind in the world,” she says.
“The stories we are involved in telling, what representation means, working with these younger ones coming through – they’re all things I couldn’t do if I was just trying for auditions in Hollywood.”
Leilua’s latest project is a perfect example of that. She’s part of a cast drawn from Pacific and other migrant communities in Silo Theatre’s new production of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge, based in Brooklyn during the 1950s.
Directed by Polata’ivao, the play’s original setting and script remain unchanged. Leilua has been working on her “Noo Yawk” accent using Edie Falco’s character, Carmela, in The Sopranos as the model for her Brooklyn twang.
However, the optics give fresh resonance to questions raised by the play on migration, identity and a sense of belonging.
“This idea of immigrants coming into a new environment and fitting in, or not fitting in, is extremely prevalent right now, not just in New Zealand but across the world,” she says. “I know that was at the forefront of the casting for this piece.”
Leilua plays Beatrice, the wife of a wharfie whose two undocumented cousins arrive from Sicily, heightening tensions within a family already under strain.
In the role of her husband Eddie is long-time friend Beulah Koale (Hawaii Five-O, Tinā), who’ll be acting opposite her for the first time. Also among the cast are Iraqi-born actor Arlo Green (Miles from Nowhere) and The Twelve’s Hanah Tayeb, who emigrated with her family from Algeria when she was 7.
In Aotearoa, the spectre of the 70s dawn raids still casts a shadow over Pasifika communities, says Leilua, whose Samoan grandparents had already settled in Auckland by then.
“There’s a lot [in the play] about hiding family members from immigration and what happens with this threat looming over them. It’s really not dissimilar when you listen to the scene and hear a knock at the door.”
As part of her research for the role, Leilua looked up Red Hook, the rundown neighbourhood settled by migrant dockworkers where A View from the Bridge is set.
Scouting the location on Google Maps, she realised she’d been there before, during a three-week trip to New York in early 2020 performing Tusiata Avia’s Wild Dogs Under My Skirt in Manhattan.
Now that her daughter is older, Leilua hasn’t ruled out returning to the United States if the right role comes her way, although in recent times her focus has shifted to scriptwriting.
When Young Rock was being cast, she had to be convinced to send in an audition tape for the show, which was filmed during Covid and wrapped in 2023.
The production company flew her to Los Angeles for a chemistry read with Joseph Lee Anderson, who plays Johnson’s father, Rocky. Although she chatted with Johnson and his mother, Ata, on Zoom, travel restrictions meant that was as close as they came.
“He was filming all his stuff in modern-day America and we were filming the 70s and 80s in Australia, so I never got to meet him or Ata,” she says. “I’m still hoping that will happen one day.”
Joanna Wane is a senior lifestyle writer with an interest in social issues and the arts.