As Netflix continues its ambitious plan to debut one new, original film every week throughout 2021, Finding 'Ohana, directed by Jude Weng, is ready for the spotlight. A coming-of-age adventure that has a family return home to Hawaii for a fresh start, the movie sees sibling rivals Pili (Kea Peahu) and Ioane (Alex Aiono) lead a group of newfound friends to search sacred indigenous grounds for a legendary treasure. Along the way, Finding 'Ohana blends classic action-adventure tropes common in films like The Goonies and Indiana Jones while still keeping sight of its emotional core and celebration of Hawaiian culture.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, stars Alex Aiono and Lindsay Watson talk about finding chemistry with their co-stars during production, what the film's love letter to Hawaiian culture means to them personally and the team effort required to make the project come together.
Alex, your character's relationship with Kea Peahu's Pili is the emotional core of the film. How did you find that rapport?
Alex Aiono: I have to take that all the way back to when we did a chemistry read. We did enough auditions that they wanted to pair us together with the potential actors and I got to work with a couple of different Pilis. But Kea, for some reason, when it was me and her in the room, we hardly had to act. She was so encouraging to me to be that mean, older brother, which made me have so much more love for her than even before. So by the time we got to the time where we were actually loving each other as siblings and really bonding together, it was all just that overflowing heart I had for Kea and how incredible she is as an actress and how incredible she is as a person.
Lindsay, your character is the wisest of the group, guiding everyone through the Hawaiian folklore and culture in the film. How was it taking on this role?
Lindsay Watson: That was the biggest appeal for the role of Hana for me. I was born and raised in Hawaii, surrounded by this culture, went to Hawaiian school, so this is everything I grew up with and was surrounded by but I [had] never seen it on TV; never seen it out there. So when this role came to me and I finally saw this Netflix movie, featuring Hawaiian culture -- not the surface-level Hawaiian culture but the real Hawaiian culture -- I read the script and I immediately knew that someone from Hawaii had to have had their hands on this because this is the language, this is true pidgin!
So I was laughing that this was finally happening and it was so surreal that I got to be the person that's playing this Hawaiian character for the first time on the big screen. And she's always teaching, she's like the moral compass of the group. She always wants to make sure everyone's doing everything right and that's what leads her to butt heads with Ioane because she can make sense right off-the-bat that he doesn't respect his culture and his family and sister. It's a hard thing but I feel like that's her project, under the surface, to fix him, like "You're going to love this whether you like it or not!" [Laughs] But it was such an honor to play Hana.
Your characters are always crawling through the dirt and going through waterfalls and all that. How was it catching that dirty, physical side of your performance?
Aiono: It takes an absolute village to make this movie, we suffered probably the absolute least of everyone on set. We were wet for all of the fifteen seconds we were filming and then we were immediately in a jacuzzi or in a warm towel and robes. I can't let us take credit when there were hundreds of people in the crew who faced worse conditions, who woke up earlier than us, who fought for longer hours and really made this movie come to life.
Watson: Yeah, that's definitely the truth! And don't get me wrong, we all put in our work as actors -- Alex did a great job for his stunts that he was able to do -- we were all crawling through the dirt but it did take a village. We can't take all the credit for that at all! [Laughs]
Directed by Jude Weng, Finding 'Ohana stars Kea Peahu, Alex Aiono, Marc Evan Jackson, Lindsay Watson, Owen Vaccaro, Kelly Hu and Key Huy Quan. The film premieres on Netflix Jan. 29.