Our Flag Means Death interview: Taika Waititi is against people becoming pirates

Subscribers to the HBO Max Pirate Comedy Our Flag Means Death aren’t going to be surprised by the tone or nature of the humor. The TV series was created by Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi, who were co-stars. Flight of the Conchords and Waititi’s movies Wilderpeople: HuntAnd How We Work in the Shadows. (Darby, famously, was the profanity-hating leader of the “werewolves, not swearwolves” pack.) This new series features some of their same absurdist comedy, but with a subdued, more subtle tone. It’s based around endlessly awkward and puffed up strivers, who don’t realize how silly they are to others. This time, Darby stars as awkward, incompetent pirate captain Stede Bonnet, and Waititi backs him up as his partner and mentor, Edward Teach — aka the notorious pirate Blackbeard.

What may surprise people, though, is that the show’s silly confrontations, outsized characters, and weird story developments are all drawn from real history. Stede Bonnet, the “Gentleman Pirate,” was an actual 18th-century plantation owner who abandoned his wife and children, bought a ship, declared himself its captain in spite of his lack of nautical experience. The records from his life show him being repeatedly wounded, capturated, or sworn in as captain. Blackbeard ended up being his partner, which was a complicated relationship meant to support plot twists.

While the historical record marks some of the facts — what ships he looted, when he lost control of his own ship, and so on — there’s relatively little information about the smaller details of his life, or about what happened between him and Blackbeard to cause the various wrinkles in their personal and piratical relationship. Our Flag Means Death David Jenkins, creator and showrunner (who also produced the TBS 2016 series) People of EarthPolygon is told by ) that the mystery surrounding their relationship inspired him into creating a comedy series about their lives.

“I saw a really great story with a lot of holes in it,” Jenkins says. “And a great start: This guy has a midlife crisis, and then he blows up his family and his life. Then he turns into a pirate. Which already is a couple of different genres at once — it’s like true crime, mixed with whatever genre ‘midlife crisis’ is. And then he’s bad at it, and then he gets stabbed, and then he meets the world’s greatest pirate, who befriends him. And we don’t know why AnyAll of them happened. Figuring out how to patch those holes in the story — just making it up — was really the reason to do it, in my book.”

In a group interview ahead of the show’s release, Jenkins, Darby, and Waititi (who also executive produced Our Flag and directed its pilot episode) talked to Polygon about their roles on the series, the balance between improv and scripts, and why Waititi thinks the show might inspire other people to ditch their lives and take up piracy — though he advises against it.

This interview has been edited in order to maintain clarity and coherence.

Photo by Jake Giles Netter/HBO Max

Are the other members of the audience aware that Stede Bonnet was on the horizon?

Taika Waititi: Yes, Stede was not something I knew about until David shared it with me, the first time we met by phone. I’d heard of Blackbeard, but knew nothing about him. And then when I talked to David more about Blackbeard, I got the feeling that I probably shouldn’t bother doing any research. I did a tiny bit, enough to find out no one knew anything about him, and I thought, “That’s perfect. Now I don’t have any homework. Or have to learn an accent!”

Rhys Darby Yeah, I didn’t really know about the guy, but upon reading a bit about him, he’s very intriguing! This guy’s a huge risk-taker, and something about him lets people believe in him. He’s very troubled. It is difficult for him to understand his motivations. What made him leave his family, including the children and wife? What made him choose to enter the most hazardous and dangerous job you could imagine? You think, “He probably won’t survive.” And of course, he didn’t. He survived for surprisingly long, despite having no other skills than walking in heels. I wanted to be that person because I knew there were elements of his life that I could relate to — that kind of overconfidence, and no one believing in me.

Waititi:Stede to many of us is an inspiring hero, simply because he was brave enough to make it happen. I think a lot of people are gonna watch this show and then turn to look at the house around them and say, “This is not my beautiful wife, this is not my beautiful house.” They’re going to look all the way around, and they’re gonna be like, “Should I … become a pirate? Should I?” They’re going to question things about their lives. It’s not to say that they’ve made the wrong decisions to get where they are, but that questioning is a thing we all do. I don’t think you should ever say, “Yeah, I should definitely go and be a pirate.” “Screw up your life and go be a pirate!” is not what the show is saying. But it is tapping into this inherent sense of —

Darby: “Are you happy?”

Waititi: “Have I had enough adventure? Have I actually lived my life?” We all feel that.

David Jenkins: And then there’s a part of it where — wherever you go, there you are.

Waititi: Yeah, you can’t escape yourself.

Jenkins: You’re still gonna be fucked up. You didn’t fix your baggage by running away from it. Stede thought he could outrun his baggage, and you can’t outrun your baggage.

Darby: Your baggage should be with you.

Waititi: I’m loving where this is going. You’re dragging the baggage along, and then you get on a boat with the baggage. The baggage is made from Lead.

Darby: But here’s the thing — he could have dropped all his fancy garments, put on some crappy clothes, and just joined a crew. Although he would probably have been more fluent than others, he could still have tried to pretend that he was speaking better and could even have become a poor crew member. But he decided “No, I’m going to be the captain!” It doesn’t make any sense!

This show fits so much into the themes of Taika’s work, from How we work in the ShadowsYou can find more information here Thor: RagnarokThe book is all about people creating proud images that they can hold onto, and self-mythologizing. Is that how it came to be such an important idea in this book?

Jenkins: We both seem to enjoy it. And I think there’s a lot of overlap in terms of what appeals to us in comedy. I like this because it shows a character experiencing existential freedom. I believe EveryoneThis is something he feels on some level. He likes to see that reflected in the screen. As opposed to, like, James Bond, who’s invulnerable. I don’t care. I don’t care about James Bond. That’s why there are 20 movies about him — anyone can play James Bond. Rhys could be James Bond, if you so desired.

Darby: Taika, can you do that?

Waititi: Yeah, done.

Jenkins: I think to play someone who is in this much pain, and do it as a comedy — that’s wonderful for me. On some level we feel that way, and I want that to be reflected onscreen. But I don’t want to see it in a drama. It makes me laugh. It’s something I long to experience, and I also want to be able to laugh at it.

Waititi: That’s exactly what I feel. I’m attracted to characters who are just trying desperately to be seen, or to be cool, or just to be pulled in from the margins. And often, when that happens, they realize, “Oh, it was way cooler way out there, way cooler with a small group of my people. We were unique!” So that self-realization, the idea that people always want something more, and then when it’s presented to you, it’s actually one of the worst things, it’s actually the biggest curse you can have — I love those stories.

Jenkins: It’s the oldest story — be careful what you wish for.

Waititi: And the things you’ll sacrifice along the way to what you wish for — your friendships and relationships and the things that made you who you are, the things that made your real friends see you, those are the things you’ll give up to fit in.

Photo: Aaron Epstein/HBO Max

The show is telling a big central story that’s obviously carefully planned, but I’ve also talked to Leslie Jones, who says there was a lot of improv on the set. How did scripting and improv feed into what we’re seeing onscreen?

Jenkins: I don’t think there was enough improv on set! Our schedule had a lot of storylines and it was very hectic. Our show was designed and budgeted for a 1-hour program. However, we had a 1/2-hour production deadline, so it meant that we would have to shoot these episodes. We also needed certain emotional moments. It was difficult to find fun places.

There were wonderful things in there — there was an improvisation between Rhys and Taika at the end of the show where I remember everyone clapped on the set. This was amazing. Taika did some crazy judo move, and it’s in there in its entirety. You try to find those things even while you’re moving forward and trying to advance the characters.

Waititi: That’s the thing — improv still needs to move the scene forward, and move the story forward. It can’t just be two people doing puns on the same theme again and again, which is a very American style of improv that’s kind of pointless. What I’ve found as a director is that there aren’t a lot of people who can actually do it. There are some people who just don’t have the right skills. I think it’s actually dangerous to just open it up to every single actor and go, “Let’s improvise!” because it’s just chaos. Everyone gets pissed off with each other, because no one’s listening. So it’s a balance you have to have.

Jenkins: It’s interesting because the cast composition. I really like it when you can build a company of people from different traditions — we have Con O’Neill from ChernobylRory Kinnear and. Saturday Night LiveThen, there are people like Rhys or Taika. And it’s like, everyone’s a little scared of each other when it starts, because —

Waititi: Different gangs joining together.

Jenkins: Everyone comes from a different thing, and they’re like “Oh, shit, you’re really a serious actor!” and “Oh, shit, you’re really funny. I’m not funny!”

Waititi: Here comes the Meisner-man! [In four completely different tones.] Meisner guy! Meisner guy! Meisner guy! Meisner guy!

Taika: After so many years of work as a director how can you approach this difficult task as an actor?

Waititi: It was a good thing that my acting had already finished prior to me directing. That’s a comfort zone for me, directing myself, but I’m starting to feel like I’d prefer to concentrate just on the acting in a given scene. I think I’m better when I do that. When I’m directing, I’ll just give myself the easiest shit to do. A lot of the time when I’m directing, if I’m running out of time, I’ll say “My character doesn’t even need to be in this scene. I dressed up in all this stuff all day for nothing.” [To David.]But, how was it with all the directors?

Jenkins: You were great with the children. I mean, it’s intimidating when you’re coming in and directing a director. I was anticipating a little, like, “Euuugh, how’s this gonna go?”

Darby: There were a few times when you were like, “Oh, I wouldn’t have done that.” [General laughter.]He said it to me, not to the director.

Waititi: I’d just come up behind them like, “Huh. Mmmkay. Well, That’s … Well, it’s your episode.”

Jenkins: Before “Action!” there was a lot of [Sucks teeth doubtfully.] “Ahhh. Hmm. You’re going to make that choice.”

Darby: I think the two of us can be hard to direct sometimes, when it’s the two of us, when we’re together, because we’re like, “Nah, we know what we’re doing. We know where this is going to go, so just let us do it.”

Waititi: We’re finding a rhythm sometimes, and the director goes, “Cut! Great!” and We’re like, “But … we just, we could feel the electricity! We’re about to create this beautiful little improv baby for you!”

Three episodes from the first season of Our Flag Means Death Now available on HBO Max New episodes drop every Thursday.