Jason Momoa worked with a coach to speak Hawaiian authentically in ‘Chief of War’

This image released by Apple TV+ shows Jason Momoa in a scene from "Chief of War." (Apple TV+ via AP)

HONOLULU — Jason Momoa drove a vintage pickup along a winding country road in Hawaii, a tattooed arm dangling out the window and Metallica blasting.

“POO’-ah-LEE’,” he said.

His passenger corrected him, again, modeling the subtle emphasis on the “u” sound: “Puali.”

Momoa was preparing for his role in “Chief of War,” the first major TV series featuring the language and culture of Hawaii’s Indigenous people. His passenger, KahoʻokahiKanuha, connected with Momoa years ago while they were both protesting against a giant telescope on a mountain summit held sacred by some Native Hawaiians. He wound up living with the Hawaiian Hollywood superstar for nearly a year as his personal language coach.

The word they kept working on during the drive can mean “warrior” or “army.” It was one of many to get right.

Like many Native Hawaiians in Hawaii and elsewhere, Momoa didn’t grow up speaking Hawaiian. Most of the other actors in the series also aren’t fluent. They worked with coaches like Kanuha to pronounce the vowel-laden sounds. Kanuha was at Momoa’s side 24/7, with a binder in hand of the actor’s lines to practice any chance they had -- while driving, eating, working out.

“My objective was to be able to get him to say his lines, deliver his lines in a way that wasn’t distracting to the viewer,” Kanuha said.

The final product of the Apple TV series that premiered in August isn’t perfect, Kanuha and other Hawaiian language experts say, but it’s a successful global-scale contribution to revitalizing and normalizing a language that has endured erasure attempts amid colonization. They say it’s too early to quantify but that it can only help spark interest, especially among young Hawaiians who now have a mainstream representation of their language and culture.

While the first two episodes are mostly in Hawaiian, the language is spoken less as the series progresses from 18th-century Hawaiian society before contact with Europeans to Momoa’s character traveling beyond Hawaii.

Punished for speaking Hawaiian

“This is a moment where we’re showcasing our people, our language on a scale that says, we’re here ... we are amazing and our language is beautiful and thriving,” said Moses Goods, an actor in the series who said he “grew up largely without the language.” Hawaiian was his mother’s first language, but her parents forbade her from speaking it as a child, he said.

An 1896 law, a few years after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom by American business owners, dictated English as the medium of education, said Kaʻiuokalani Damas, an assistant professor in Hawaiian language at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

That resulted in a systemic devaluing of Hawaiian and forbidding children from speaking it, Damas said.

“We have lots of stories of students being beaten or made to haul boulders and rocks from one side of the school to the other,” he said. “Writing on the blackboard 500 times, `I will not speak Hawaiian.’ ”

By 1940, native speakers were rare. Revitalization efforts in the 1960s and 1970s to restore Hawaiian as the medium of education resulted in immersion schools. It’s difficult to count how many are fluent today, Damas said, noting that recent Census data showing more than 30,000 speakers includes a wide range of proficiency.

Hawaiian bubble

Momoa’s language coach started learning Hawaiian as a second language in 1994 at an immersion preschool.

“It’s not a language that my parents or my family spoke,” Kanuha said. “And so I learned as a kid that going through these programs ... can sometimes be a very lonely journey.”

Now 36, Hawaiian is his primary language and the first language of his two young sons.

As a family, it can feel like they live in a Hawaiian bubble until they leave home and everything is mostly in English, he said. With the show, his children can enjoy entertainment in Hawaiian -- when they’re not closing their eyes during violent battle scenes.

“How ironic that being Hawaiian -- in Hawaii -- speaking Hawaiian makes you feel lonely,” Kanuha said. “I think this helps to kind of start to reverse that a little bit.”

Other actors share their experiences

Before acting in the show, New Zealand-born actor Luciane Buchanan said she had barely heard Hawaiian spoken. Her mother is from the Polynesian country Tonga and her father is of Scottish descent.

“I’m not going to lie, it freaked me out because I wanted to do it, but I only speak English,” she said. “I’m Tongan, but don’t speak Tongan, so I understand that kind of language trauma that I can empathize with the (Hawaiians) that have that disconnect.”

She recalled having to also learn other characters’ lines with her coaches so she could react appropriately -- “so it’s not like we’re giving blank faces.”

Actor Cliff Curtis drew on his identity being Maori from New Zealand as a way to make connections with Hawaiian language, but said there were also challenging differences.

“There’s a fluidity to the way that it flows in Hawaiian,” he said. “There is a different cadence.”

Apprehension about the outcome

Puakea Nogelmeier, a former professor of Hawaiian language at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, helped translate the script. He said he was nervous about the show’s outcome knowing how few of the cast were fluent in Hawaiian.

Nogelmeier isn’t Hawaiian, and he learned the language after moving from Minnesota to Hawaii in 1972. He said the show helps prove it’s a “functional, viable world language.”

“I was pleasantly surprised,” he said of the actors’ performances. “I’m afraid that even Apple doesn’t know how well they did.”

When Momoa first shared the idea of the show with Kanuha, he doubted it would ever happen. Before “Chief of War,” it was normal not to have any mainstream entertainment in Hawaiian, Kanuha said.

Now he can’t imagine a world without it.

“Not only to hear their language, but just to see our world,” he said. “To be able to see the world that we talk about, that we’re trying to preserve, to be able to visually see it and to hear it.”

He and others eagerly await news on whether there will be a second season.

Jennifer Sinco Kelleher, The Associated Press

AP journalist Leslie Ambriz in Los Angeles contributed to this report.