Man of the match

As his football comedy Next Goal Wins finally arrives, Taika Waititi talks about ego, money and having nothing left to prove.

- RUSSELL BAILLIE

As he talks about what a fabulous thing it is to be Taika Waititi, he occasionally glances out the window of the hotel to the gin palaces moored in Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour.

So, which one is his? “They’re all mine. I’m actually trying to get rid of some of these to make room for my QE3.”

Everyone in the room laughs – there’s a Disney PR team with camera crew present for a small conveyor belt of local interviews with journalists under instruction not to ask our most prominent global celebrity anything unrelated to his new movie.

But Waititi does present as a man who has done quite well for himself. That’s assuming the jewellery that is adorning his fingers, neck and ear is as expensive as it looks.

Of course it is. The man’s been on the cover of Vogue, after all, albeit as half of a “power couple” with wife of a year-plus, UK pop star Rita Ora.

It’s not the Listener that has brought up the fruits of his success. Just before the boat quips, Waititi had been pondering the difference between being the young Taika following his creative whims and the 48-year-old one, who now doesn’t have the option of starting things – like multimillion-dollar superhero films – and not finishing them because he can’t be bothered.

Add to that, he has so many irons in the fire, there is a risk of a stable overflowing with shoeless horses. That’s whether it’s writing that Star Wars film (“four pages,” he deadpans on how far he’s got), acting in pirate comedy series Our Flag Means Death, making videos for the All Blacks, among other corporate gigs, or supposedly doing remakes of seemingly everything he ever liked growing up.

Yes, there is a New Zealand film on his to-do list. More of which later.