Voice Of Change

Kanoa Lloyd has been censured and praised for standing up for what she believes in, which includes pride in her Ma¯ori heritage and being open about her anxiety struggles. Phoebe Watt finds out what compels The Project co-host to use her voice for others

Kanoa Lloyd looked fierce in every frame. Our May cover star-in-waiting, the 31-year-old co-host of Three’s 7pm current affairs show The Project was splashed across several mock-ups on our creative director’s computer screen, channelling her unique brand of personality and professionalism in pink and purple Maggie Marilyn stripes. This cover story – focused around her personal struggles with anxiety and her advocacy for Ma¯ori representation in the media – was well underway, filled with insights about mental health, and how inclusivity and diversity on our television screens is something all Kiwis stand to gain from.

And then on March 15, three weeks out from our deadline, the Christchurch mosque attacks happened, and the quotes from our interview back in December took on a new resonance.

I spoke to Kanoa the following week. No stranger to adapting to breaking news, she explained that she’d been in the makeup chair at the time, preparing for that evening’s episode of The Project. A crew member ran into the room and said there’d been a shooting. “Then he mentioned that it was at a mosque,” she says, “and my heart just sank, because you can’t hear those words without knowing that it’s a hate crime.”

Immediately reaching for her phone to read the updates that were starting to filter through online, she apologetically informed the makeup artist that she had five minutes left to finish a job that usually takes 45 minutes, and then she was out of the chair and into the newsroom, where she and her colleagues began making calls, watching coverage, and building from scratch a completely revised show that would be broadcast live on air just a few hours later.