Jacinda Ardern documentary shows life behind the Prime Minister - Nicky Rennie

Prime Minister is a revealing documentary about former PM Dame Jacinda Ardern.

• The movie Prime Minister explores Jacinda Ardern’s motivations and challenges during her leadership.
• Ardern became Prime Minister in 2017, aged 37.
• The film highlights the toll of major events such as the Christchurch attack and Covid-19.

With anything new to the market, I try to get in quickly so that I can make my own decisions about how I feel about something without any undue influence. So when the movie Prime Minister came out last week, I made haste and went to see it.

Trust me when I say I wouldn’t have made the effort if it was a movie about Robert Muldoon, David Lange or, in fact, any other politician but her.

My aim was to get some level of understanding of the woman that is Jacinda Ardern: what motivated her, how she dealt with the pressure she was under, and also to find out whether this pressure was the reason that, since late 2023, she has called America home.

She is serving as a fellow at Harvard University.

Her rise to power was swift once the juggernaut got cracking.

In August 2017, she was voted in as leader of the Labour Party when Andrew Little resigned. In the space of just two months, in October 2017, at the age of just 37, she did the unthinkable and became New Zealand’s youngest Prime Minister in 150 years.

To call the response to Jacinda polarising is the understatement of the decade.

It doesn’t matter where you are in New Zealand, or who you talk to, everyone has a very definite opinion of this woman.

The level of hatred that some people carry for her would curl your hair.

But hate her they do. From what I have been able to deduce, the shift happened a few months into Covid-19, when people got sick to death of being told what to do, and everyone else thought they would have handled it better.

While New Zealand was being lauded internationally for the swiftest response to the global pandemic of any nation, the rot had set in and people’s opinions weren’t for changing.

People had their pins out, and Jacinda was the voodoo doll.

What nobody saw was the real emotion and the personal toll it took on her to shut our borders.

It was based on scientific advice that she was given, and she put the health and welfare of New Zealanders first.

What we see in the movie was her reaction to Boris Johnson’s approach to the same pandemic.

I know in which country I would prefer to have lived through Covid, and it sure as hell wasn’t Britain.

Every single person in this country was affected by Covid in some way, shape or form, and people have been very quick to forget that her own wedding couldn’t go ahead because of it, but she just got on with it.

It’s impossible not to take into consideration that I am a woman first.

My curiosity was driven by the fact that, soon after becoming Prime Minister, Jacinda and her partner Clarke announced that she was pregnant.

Any new mother will tell you that this journey is frightening in and of itself, but trying to navigate breastfeeding, waking through the night and running a country?

That takes big cojones, and a very supportive baby dad, which she had in spades with Clarke Gayford.

He did a lot of the filming for this movie, and we get an insight into their relationship throughout.

I admire him. It’s not easy to put your own career aside to support your partner, and he has also copped a lot of flak, but you see their interaction and raising of their daughter Neve and it’s lovely to see.

That little girl is much loved and as cute as a wee bug’s ear.

There is an expectation that, in the top job, you have to deal with a lot.

But try the eruption of Whakaari/White Island, the terrorist attack on the mosques in Christchurch, the global pandemic and then the occupation of Parliament’s grounds for a month, and you can see why Jacinda called time.

By her own admission, she had nothing left in the tank. If I had the same level of hatred and vitriol aimed at me, I would have gone to ground a lot sooner.

The overwhelming feeling I had at the end of the movie was sadness that, as a country, we have treated her so badly that she doesn’t feel safe here or want to raise her family here.

Yes, New Zealand is her home, but you really can see and feel her sense of lightness and joie de vivre now that she is far away from it.

It would appear that everyone else loves and appreciates her for all that she has done, except us.

It would appear that New Zealand wasn’t listening when she uttered the words “be kind” because they sure as heck haven’t been to her.

Whanganui-based Nicky Rennie returned to her home town in 2018 while celebrating three decades in broadcasting. She has written a column for the Whanganui Chronicle since 2021.