Marlon Williams Has Always Lived in Two Worlds

“Te reo Māori takes one generation to lose and three to regain it.”

Those words, said to Marlon Williams by Māori artist and academic Kommi Tamati-Elliffe, might be the heaviest moment in Ngā Ao E Rua – Two Worlds. It’s one of a handful in the new film, which follows Williams over four years during the making of Te Whare Tīwekaweka, the acclaimed singer-songwriter’s first collection of songs performed entirely in te reo Māori.

While the 34-year-old’s earlier albums – Marlon Williams, Make Way for Love and My Boy – placed him comfortably at the intersection of Americana and indie rock, Te Whare Tīwekaweka finds him firmly rooted on home soil, in Aotearoa New Zealand. To that end, director Ursula Grace Williams has created a love letter to the country – to its First Nations people, its language and its jaw-dropping scenery that couldn’t belong anywhere else on earth.

But Ngā Ao E Rua is also an exploration of Williams’s many dualities: a child of separated parents who identifies as part Māori, part Pākehā (of European descent), with Kāi Tahu and Ngāi Tai ancestry. There’s also the famous globetrotting musician versus the introvert who’d like to stop “borrowing against the bank” and prioritise his health.

Despite the weight of it all, the film remains buoyant in its depiction of Māori identity during an acute period of cultural tension in Aotearoa New Zealand, making it one of this year’s most uplifting new documentaries. Broadsheet spoke with the two Williamses (no relation) about their long collaboration and making a quietly radical film in 2025.

Marlon Williams

Is putting out a film the same as putting out an album?
It’s definitely different. I’m a step removed from the film; I see it as Ursula’s baby about my baby. It’s been important throughout the whole process to not feel a sense of ownership or entitlement over the film, and to objectively be proud of my friend for making a nice thing.

Were the album and the film conceived as one?
It developed out of the album. I met Ursula in 2019 I think. I was at a dinner of a mutual friend and we were chatting over a donburi about what we were up to. I told her I was making this record and she sort of went quiet. She emailed me a few days later with the pitch and convinced me that it was a worthy story and she was the right person to tell it. I took the plunge without fully reckoning with how long it was gonna take. Four years later, we got there.

You’ve embraced film acting in the last couple of years, and you embody a certain character in your live performances. Being the focus of a documentary exists somewhere between those two worlds – what was it like trying to inhabit that space?
When I first got into acting, I really had to think about ideas of authenticity and how to represent a world convincingly, compared to presenting music and trying to convince – or evince something from – an audience. Going into this third world, as you say, there’s this observer effect of the camera. I’m earnestly trying to write music [in the film], but there’s no doubt the camera is having an effect on the way I’m writing. So there’s this crazy feedback loop that you end up in.

This was a deeply personal album for you – but did you ever feel external pressure to make a commercially successful record, or consider the possibility that you might be alienating broader parts of your audience who aren’t familiar with te reo Māori?
I’ve been drip-feeding Māori into my songs for a little while. And while it certainly helped with the band, just introducing one song into the set five years ago and starting to normalise it helped get it past the goalie both internally and externally. In certain conversations, you’re gonna lose some small amount of audience. But I knew that the response would be largely positive and that it was gonna work on some basic level. I think we can be confident that it’s the right time to put out a record like this, in terms of the public conversation. I probably had a lot more faith than I might have had [otherwise].

How do you feel about New Zealand now, after this process?
I just love it. I really do. The older I get, the more I just want to be home, you know. I’ve had the privilege of being able to travel and see a lot of places, but the more I see of [New Zealand], the more I want to explore my own little backyard. I love everything about it. It’s a little bit embarrassing. I’m not a patriot, I just really like the place.

Ursula Grace Williams

You’ve worked on series previously, but this is your first feature-length documentary. How does the process compare?
Having a sustainable story that’s engaging, dynamic and profile-fixed – in this case – needs to hold people’s attention for 90 minutes is a whole different ball game. In many instances as a director, you can be a director for hire, with producers and story content makers on board who already know what they want the project to be. But this was an original piece from the beginning – right down to fonts, grading and all those things I enjoy so much as a director. Being able to pour my full self into something was very different and very exciting. That collaboration over time with one person – sustaining those relationships, ensuring we actually enjoy each other’s company, and maintaining a duty of care to those around Marlon – was something that lasted over a four- or five-year period.

What were the creative challenges involved in this project?
Creatively, the most challenging thing was consistency. Right from the beginning, my director of photography and I had this real stable visual guide and quite a thick rule book of things we would and wouldn’t do. That translated as consistency, because the nature of the documentary meant we had to work around Marlon and those around him, and sometimes scheduling didn’t necessarily align with myself and our team. Consistency had to be palpable even when there were new people getting involved. We also didn’t want to fall back on sit-down interviews, which meant I had to look at point-of-view as a creative tool and ensure that, if we were hugging close to Marlon and his world, that it had to come from his perspective.

The film’s title, Two Worlds, speaks to duality on several levels. Did you have a clear understanding of those layers or were they revealed during the process?
Having Samoan heritage myself, I understand the duality of walking into a world where the language and culture feel like they’ve been taken from you, but at the same time you feel like you completely belong. There’s constant pluralism in there, too. The mōteatea [chant] Marlon opens the film, and his shows with, talks about duality: “In this day and every day, I am split”. It’s in his rural and urban identities and even in his Māori-dom, he’s got two different iwi (kinship groups): Kāi Tahu in the South Island and Ngāi Tai in the North Island. Constantly this was coming up – the push and pull, the light and the dark he’s always balanced so beautifully in his music and personality. He can be extremely funny and extremely serious in the same take. We were constantly looking to him as a reference and being like, this duality is prevalent in every scenario. It was definitely tangible at the beginning but it revealed itself the more we went into it.

What was your relationship with te reo Māori like before and after the film?
My relationship with te reo Māori has been a close and complicated one. I don’t have Māori heritage; I’m from the whakapapa [ancestry] that’s part of the wider te moana nui a Kiwa (Pacific Ocean). My mum, being Samoan pākehā, knew that she didn’t have a relationship to Samoa despite being born there. We lived next door to a Māori-speaking family, and my mum decided to enrol me in a bilingual unit that taught me te reo Māori from the ages of five to nine. That doesn’t mean I’m fluent today, but it gave me a huge sense of tikanga, or protocols – all these things that meant I had a close relationship and ally relationship to te reo Māori. While we were filming this, I enrolled myself into Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, which is a free school for tertiary education around te reo Māori to remind me of my commitment to being an ally.

What is your relationship with New Zealand like now, after having done the film?
It’s been an interesting time to release a film like this. And you know, if you follow New Zealand politics, you might have seen the Treaty Principles Bill that was rebutted by the Toitū Te Tiriti movement. There’s been a lot of upheaval and complex things have arisen based on our current coalition government. Releasing this film during those tensions has been interesting, a gift, and lovely to be part of the antidote to some of those more conservative, racist, colonial conversations coming from the right. To stand by something like this and show how beautiful, peaceful, joyous, inclusive and generous Marlon and all those associates within this film have been, has been a real privilege. I’m not sure that my position has changed, but I definitely feel proud to stand alongside this piece of work and the waiata [Māori song] album Marlon has produced.

Ngā Ao E Rua – Two Worlds is out now through Madman Entertainment.