By Sarah Catherall
Taika Waititi as Blackbeard in Our Flag Means Death. Photo: Warner Media
Without Nancy Hennah, Taika Waititi might look very different onscreen. For the past few years, the Kiwi make-up artist has spent hundreds of hours applying make-up, beards, wigs and tattoos to Waititi for his film and TV roles.
"He's a good friend and an incredibly, incredibly talented person,'' says Nelson-based Hennah, who was the lead make-up and hair designer on the HBO series Our Flag Means Death, in which Waititi plays notorious pirate Blackbeard.
Make-up artist Nancy Hennah has worked closely with Taika Waititi on a number of projects. Photo: Supplied
Our Flag Means Death is loosely based on the real-life adventures of 18th century would-be pirate Stede Bonnet (played by Rhys Darby). As well as playing Blackbeard, who falls in love with Stede, Waititi was executive producer of the second season.
For the first season of Our Flag Means Death, Hennah and her husband, Ra Vincent, an Oscar-nominated production designer, spent months on set at Warner Brothers' studios in Los Angeles. Their teenage daughters, Ruby and Tui, typically study by correspondence, following their parents around the world for their work.
"We're like a little band of travellers and we just cruise around together,'' Hennah laughs.
Taika Waititi as Blackbeard and Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet in Our Flag Means Death. Photo: Warner Media
Season two of Our Flag Means Death was filmed over 67 days in late 2022, at Kumeu Film Studios, Bethell's Beach, Piha and Howick Historical Village in Auckland. Nearly all the 780 Auckland-based crew were Kiwis.
Hennah was on set by 6am to turn Waititi into the leather-clad pirate. Each session would take around 75 minutes, as Hennah and her team applied his hair, make-up and about 30 tattoos - 14 on his arms, and a huge one on his back which had to be applied over his own real tattoo. At the end of a long filming day, those same tattoos often had to be washed off.
"Taika and I had a chat and the idea with Blackbeard is that when he's a bit bored he just sits and (creates) another tattoo," Hennah says.
"A lot of them should look like they're sort of stick and poke tattoos, not fancy tattoos but ones that he or one of his shipmates might have done."
Nancy Hennah working on a beard for Taika Waititi to wear in Our Flag Means Death. Photo: Geneva Nash-Morgan
With that in mind, Hennah enlisted her family to help create tattoos with a homemade-feel: "I'd say, 'draw a shark'', and we'd all have a go."
Family drawing sessions aside, the show required huge amounts of behind-the-scenes work for the make-up and costume departments.
A storm on the boat causes havoc for the tattoos and wigs. The ship's scribe, Lucius (played by Nathan Foad), has a wooden finger "which had to be carried around,'' says Hennah.
"It was often a source of great worry. 'Have you got the finger?'''
All this drama is second nature to Hennah. Film sets have been her second home for the past four decades. Her parents, Dan and Chris Hennah, both work in the film industry - her father won an Academy Award for set decoration on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, while her mother, Chris, managed art departments. They've both worked with Peter Jackson since his 1996 film, The Frighteners, and continue to work on film sets.
Like her own daughters, Hennah didn't have a typical childhood. When she was nine, her family lived in Tahiti, when her parents worked on the film Mutiny on the Bounty.
When she left school, Hennah studied art, intending to work in film and TV art departments like her parents. She then had a moment of deciding she wanted to do something different, so retrained as a nurse. It was the 1990s, when there was a job shortage, so the nursing graduate found herself back on film sets, this time working as an on-set medic.
Handing out Panadol and plasters quickly got boring, but she became good friends with the make-up department team and ventured to London to study a make-up diploma.
She honed her make-up craft on The Lord of the Rings trilogy, then joined forces with Waititi in 2019 for his upcoming film, Next Goal Wins. She's been working with him ever since, including on the set of his TV series Time Bandits, which was also shot in New Zealand last year.
"I love what I do,'' she says. "I want to keep working with Taika and Ra, my husband, and just keep having a good time.''
Our Flag Means Death is streaming now on Neon and Sky Go.
