with those who shape the world through art

Musician/actor MARLON WILLIAMS and director URSULA GRACE WILLIAM

On the documentary Marlon Williams: Two Worlds – Ngā Ao E Rua 

“I struggle with the idea of authenticity, you know, this idea that you’re putting your true self into art … it’s never as straightforward as that.”

Conversation Transcript

Kirsten Krauth: Happy to start?

So what does the language Māori, when you’re writing it — what does it unlock in you? You say in the film that it unlocks something that English doesn’t. And how did it change the nature of your songs and what you are writing?

Marlon Williams: There’s just such a massive difference when going from one language to two. It’s that thing you’re seeing — if you’re raised as a one-language speaker, you, at least intuitively, just believe that the language belongs to the world. It’s synonymous with the world, you know? It’s fundamental, but once you learn a second language, you realise these are just tools of communication, and that the noun ‘chair’ does not belong to the chair any more than ‘tūru’  does.

And then the pure phonetics of the language. The fact that I’m a singer and I’m a songwriter, first and foremost, being able to use different phonetics and different phrasing and having to work out what that does to the songwriting, on the most basic [level] — the line’s gotta fit in the phrase kind of thing.

It was just massive to be able to explore that properly and humbly and stumblingly. But, when I say ‘unlock something in me’, I think I just mean that it reframes my understanding of the world, you know?

Kirsten Krauth: You said, you’d like this album to be an accurate reflection of who you are. Do you feel like the film is an accurate reflection of who you are?

Marlon Williams: Yeah. I really genuinely got used to having Ursula and the team around and not only do I recognise myself in it, everyone who knows and loves me recognises me in it too. So there’s really nowhere to hide on some level. Which is pretty crazy to watch.

Ursula Grace Williams: Yeah. And it’s funny with documentary, ’cause you could skim it such a different way.

And I remember talking to Tom Lynch, who’s one of Marlon’s best friends and works with him, and he was like, ‘we were a bit worried when you first came on board ’cause we didn’t want to be taken aside and then be spoken to in isolation of everything that was going on, with a sit down interview, and then that getting inserted into something — ’cause you’re working with creatives, they understand … framing and process. I guess that probably helped, that there’s not a moment where we are breaking out of actuality and vérité.

Marlon Williams: Yeah. You didn’t give yourself much room to paint in that way.

Ursula Grace Williams: Yeah. Or offer other people’s perspectives on what you were doing. Like it was very through your eyes. Yeah. And so we had to kind of hold true to that.

Kirsten Krauth: I just interviewed Warren Ellis and it’s interesting to contrast them.

Ursula Grace Williams: I bumped into him in Sydney and we had breakfast together and he was saying that they shot it over nine days and I was like …

Marlon Williams: Very different

Ursula Grace Williams: … that is such a different process and I understand how you could carve out that but the fact that we had time was so nice because it meant that I could keep reassessing my assessment of Marlon’s point of view and how he holds himself in the different worlds that he is in. I feel like if that was in nine days, I think it would be very different film.

Marlon Williams: You’d be inserting Marlon Williams into a Marlon Williams story, wouldn’t you? As opposed to following the Marlon Williams story.

Ursula Grace Williams: Yes, exactly. Or embedding in what that process actually was and not sensationalising parts that we potentially could have. And instead just listening to the world around you.

Kirsten Krauth: So do you feel like the end result is an accurate reflection as well?

Ursula Grace Williams:  I think it is an accurate reflection of that particular point in time. And that was super important from the beginning as well, speaking with Al and Marlon, because you’re not anywhere near the end of your career. It wasn’t a reflection on … ‘look at all this amazing stuff, that I’ve reached my pinnacle and looking back’. It felt like we were still on the journey.

Marlon Williams: It’s not a legacy piece.

Ursula Grace Williams: Yeah. And it was very much revolving around the framework of the album.

Kirsten Krauth: Did you know Marlon before you started?

Ursula Grace Williams: We’d met, yeah.

Marlon Williams: The project was there from the first time we met. The first time we met, it came up.

Ursula Grace Williams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a collaborative, ‘you can do this and I can do this.’ Yeah. ‘And surely at some point we’ll do that.’

Marlon Williams: It was just the classic sort of creatives at a dinner.

Kirsten Krauth: It actually happened!

Marlon Williams: Yeah.

Ursula Grace Williams: Yeah, exactly.

Kirsten Krauth: So in some of the framing, it’s like you are peeking in, like sometimes, things are on the sides or coming up into frame. And so it felt like the viewer was peering into something that they shouldn’t.

Ursula Grace Williams: Yeah, definitely. Voyeurism was one of my first visual languages that I drew up in terms of depth of field.

Kirsten Krauth: Why did you make that decision?

Ursula Grace Williams: Just because I felt like I was an outsider looking in. If you look at the chronology of how we shot, it started more as a voyeur, and so you can actually spot within the montages … in the first half of the filming block, you can actually see that there are obstructions to Marlon and that’s totally on purpose.

It wasn’t until Marlon became comfortable with us being around, and it was quite an obvious kind of change. And that’s when I was like, we can go in,  ’cause our other visual was very removed and then very close. And I think that also spoke to my encounters with Marlon too.

Sometimes it felt like, if we were together, it was like, ‘wheeeee, you know, let’s hang out’, blah, blah. But then once you’re away, there’s all these bits. There’s the manager and the publicist and there’s all these things to get to Marlon. That also helped to physically frame the film. So yeah, that first year of filming, we used a lot of obstruction. And that was in the landscapes in the first instance, like at different houses…

Kirsten Krauth: And at what point did it change and why?

Marlon Williams: We had some good conversations. It just took a while to settle into where it was and then to think about where we wanted it to be. Just took me a while to, I guess, trust is maybe not quite the right … A bit of trust, but mainly understanding of what we were trying to do. A shake of the hand and let’s go a bit further and …

Ursula Grace Williams: Yeah. I felt like after LA you were all in. LA felt like a real turning point and how I knew, weirdly, was that Marlon asked me that he needed space. And as somebody so generous with time and people and always ensuring that the room is happy,  I knew that if he could ask me for that moment, that I had his, I don’t know, just okay, cool. It felt like a handshake.

Marlon Williams: Yeah, I think I was just proving to myself that I’ve got the power, you know? I’m not very good at asking people

Ursula Grace Williams: Boundaries.

Marlon Williams: Yeah. And boundaries. So as soon as I felt comfortable putting them in front.

Ursula Grace Williams: And I was stoked.

Kirsten Krauth: Yeah. Because there’s that strong point in the film where you say ‘give me some space’ …

Marlon Williams: It’s the only moment in the film.

Kirsten Krauth: Yeah. And it really makes you stop.

Ursula Grace Williams: And, ironically, it’s kind of at the centre of the film too.

Kirsten Krauth: So how did making the film help you to bridge the two worlds that are shown in the movie?

Ursula Grace Williams: Seeing firsthand the kind of push and pull constantly. It felt like sometimes you were getting pulled into this room and then pulled over there and not that it was against your will, but it was happening a lot and it wasn’t necessarily just Māori and Pākehā in terms of those two worlds, either.

It’s always interesting coming in objectively into somebody’s life and being like, okay, what have we got here? And seeing the isolation that happens in the South Island in terms of all the space that’s around you, physically, and then getting thrown literally into city crowds with people wanting to connect because his music means something in their world.

There was that obvious Māori/Pākehā but then even within his whakapapa, there’s the multiplicity of the North Island and the kind of isolation once again in the South Island for Māori, Kāi Tahu being the only iwi down there.

Kirsten Krauth: So two worlds is working on many levels.

Marlon Williams: Public, private … yeah.

Ursula Grace Williams: And also I think, it’s such a tangible thing for a lot of people, whether it’s motherhood in the workplace or coming from England and Ireland, or whatever it is, we often hold duality in our lives.

Marlon Williams: And it’s a struggle to account sometimes between them. Yeah.

Kirsten Krauth: Yeah, well, that came across really strongly, I felt, you feeling in-between and not quite necessarily fitting into each one, but trying to.

Ursula Grace Williams: Great. And it was such a specific point in time too, ’cause if we had made it now, it would’ve been very different again.

Kirsten Krauth: Why would it have been different now?

Marlon Williams: Well, we met at the right time for me, being about to start the record.

Ursula Grace Williams: Some chapters have closed objectively for you in lots of ways.

Marlon Williams: Totally.

Ursula Grace Williams: Pushing into your thirties is a real time of figuring out, okay, what does this look like? How does the next five to 10 years work? Where do I want to place my energy? Who do I want to spend my time with? I don’t want to talk on your behalf, but it seems to have been quite simple, circle moments that have had lovely little closures. Yeah,

Marlon Williams: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s bang on. My life’s looking different than it was.

Kirsten Krauth: So you say in the film, when you go up to get an award, that the idea of putting anything of yourself in the music is equally nauseating and enthralling. Can you talk a bit more about that because it’s what this doco is about, really …

Marlon Williams: I think I just struggle with the idea of authenticity, this idea that you’re putting your true self into art, and I don’t think it’s … it’s never as straightforward as that. And it usually takes a bit of time, but when I look back on my own writing and my own work, with a bit of distance, I’m able to, like psychologise the person who wrote it and work out where they were and match it up to what was going on in my life at the time.

I don’t believe in that, in the ‘true’ thing, but I can learn from my own writing about myself. That’s where the nausea and the excitement comes from. While a song is not ‘true’, if you analyse it with a bit of space, you can work a few things out, you know. Which is kind of a scary thought because you’ve then got to acknowledge that other people might be able to do that too. If you’re releasing music, then the same clues might be available to them.

Ursula Grace Williams: I think there’s always things outside of the frame, there’s a world going on outside of the frame, which is existing in parallel to what you are observing. You can totally capture moments of authenticity within that frame. Whether that is emotion or a sincere comment or the essence of how somebody relates with that person, over that person, or whatever. I think you can definitely capture moments of it, but it only ever exists within the context that you captured it.

And so it’s never gonna be a 360, there’s always gonna be a 16 … whatever your aspect ratio is … like two to one, you know, four by three, you’re only ever going to capture moments of it, so it’s not in its entirety. And I guess you’re talking about capturing four years into 90 minutes.

So there of course are moments of authenticity and you can do your best. And there’s a bit of a test where it’s like, is this person the same onscreen as they are offscreen? And I think that that’s a good kind of reference point for authenticity in terms of behaviour and manner and those types of things.

Kirsten Krauth: And then there’s also, though, whether that makes a good documentary, as well, because you have someone like Nick Cave who’ll totally construct himself.

Ursula Grace Williams: That’s right.

Kirsten Krauth: And it’ll be a fantastic doco.

Ursula Grace Williams: Totally. Exactly. And it’s still authentic because he’s a performer, you know? And I think it’s really important to bring your authenticity, and just as a filmmaker, be who you are and that’ll implicitly change the environment as well. If we hadn’t got on, I think it would’ve completely changed the course of what people got to see, in terms of the different sides of you.

Kirsten Krauth: At one point you said that being in theatre and film gave the opportunity to test out ‘different ways of being’. I was wondering if being in this doco … how that was different from those sort of performance aspects, or if it wasn’t different? Because you’re still on camera.

Marlon Williams: Yeah. I think the more I do, like, out and out acting, acting roles, I think the more I’m trying to be myself. I think that’s the best way to act.

Kirsten Krauth: As in your starting point?

Marlon Williams: Yeah. Yeah. You don’t wanna feel the acting, you know? Well, when you’re doing it, you just wanna follow a natural course within the room, or whatever you’re doing. And I think, what making the documentary showed me was that they’re more similar than you might think. Where you’re trying to be in a room and respond to what’s going on around you, and there’s not really much difference between me writing a song, me playing the part of the songwriter versus me playing the part of whatever horrible character they’ve decided for me, you know? Just trying to find the natural way to be within each of those contexts is a good move.

Kirsten Krauth: And when you go on stage, is it different again ? You have to pull a performance out of yourself, somehow?

Marlon Williams: It feels the same, but it’s not, the fact that there’s a room full of people who are watching … and the observer effect has a different flavour to it when you’re on a stage.

Kirsten Krauth: But you’ve always seemed very comfortable on stage which is unusual to me, very comfortable to watch.

Marlon Williams: Very comfortable. Nothing can go wrong. Well, I mean, things can go wrong, but nothing can go wrong that … things only fall apart in certain ways on the stage.

Kirsten Krauth: Is that because you have total confidence in the beauty of your voice?

Marlon Williams: No. It’s, it’s right.

Kirsten Krauth: Oh no? Like, I would think that  always pulls you through somehow.

Marlon Williams: I do enjoy the feeling of singing, I like the sound that I’m hearing. And I get lost in it and that’s really nice. And that’s certainly part of it. But it feels like time stands still when you’re on stage. I’d feel really betrayed if, touch wood, if someone I loved died while I was on stage. You know, it doesn’t feel possible. It feels like the only things that can go wrong are me forgetting the words or slipping over, you know, like, it’s fine.

Kirsten Krauth: Which is no big deal.

Marlon Williams: I don’t care. It feels there’s some purity or something there.

Kirsten Krauth: [In lockdown I watched your show and] I remember thinking that mistakes kind of make you in a way, like it was something great to watch,  because you’d use the mistakes or you’d like them. That was my feeling.

Marlon Williams: It sort of gives it a broader base. If you accept mistakes into it, then you can do whatever you want, you know, as an audience.

Ursula Grace Williams: I remember in your solo t our at the Hollywood, you were just like, ‘uh oh, I forgot the chords. I’m just gonna start the next song.’ And not that that’s normal for you. Like you’d done 27 shows in a row but everyone was just like, ‘Whoooo. Yeah!’ It just doesn’t matter.

Marlon Williams: Yeah, I think doing things like a solo show where it’s just me for two hours for 27 shows in a row, there’ll be other times where I’d start a song and be like, ‘I am so bored of that song, I’m not gonna finish that, I’m gonna do something else’. I don’t know. It just changes the room and it brings such a feeling of, like playful danger

Ursula Grace Williams: And it’s so forgiven ’cause it’s live, and in two minutes time you’re doing something else, so everybody’s just like, ‘Yay!’ Kinda like radio or comedy or something in that same way.

Marlon Williams: Totally. Yeah. I think if you can perform failure, then everyone feels secure.

Kirsten Krauth: Yeah. It’s taken me a long time to realise that.

Ursula Grace Williams Yeah. Flaws are endearing.

Kirsten Krauth: So well done. So how did you navigate the family dynamics of Marlon’s parents? Where you mention private people with their very public son.

Ursula Grace Williams: It took a while for them to say yes, and I respected that, like two years for them to want to be on board because of their private nature. But I just found them so familiar because Marlon and I have quite a lot in common in terms of our childhood, and I understood what it was to be somebody in the middle of two people. And also I have children of my own, and so I understand what it is to be a parent. And so I just went in with that.

It’s just like, I understand you and I respect you, like I would with everybody else, I guess. I don’t really know how to word this, but basically if I go into a room and I’m talking to somebody, often I am not … you know how some people go in and they’re waiting their turn to speak or they’re thinking about something else, I go into a zone where I am listening so intently that I can hear everything around people, and just zone in and truly listen to them and pick up on lots like behaviours, just very sensitive …

Kirsten Krauth: Emotions as well?

Ursula Grace Williams: Yeah, yeah. And then kind of responding accordingly and it’s a bit of a dance where you have to just lean into somebody else’s state of being. And that changes too. I remember the first time I met your Mum when we were on the beach and it was COVID times and it was quite a windy day and I could see that she was … not nervous, but I felt like I was being checked out, which is what I do with all of my kids’ friends, you know? Yeah. I’m like, are you a good influence on my kids?

And then that compared to Lake Kaniere is like chalk and cheese, where we were talking about the deepest of things in the night and that is such a blessing. What a beautiful experience to be welcomed into people’s worlds and just talk to them about stuff.

Marlon Williams: It’s the most impressive thing, I think, from my perspective that Ursula pulled off, but also the most important to me. We do have these similarities in our childhood and in our upbringing and that resonated, but also her academic background is in making sure representation is done in the right way, you know?

So it was really impressive just to watch. And very important to me that it worked like that. It’s just crazy that at the end of all that time, my family love her. They do! Like my whole extended family and for her to be able to make the film she wanted to make and still maintain those relationships. Yeah. Yeah. It’s really impressive.

Ursula Grace Williams: Yeah. But that’s the most important part …  is relationships. Like that’s all we are. Like I can’t carry … That’s also something we probably have in common, actually, is that I just don’t like it if there’s bad juju in the room. I’d rather not make the film.  I literally would’ve put tools down and not have done it …

Kirsten Krauth: So those connections come first?

Marlon Williams: Yeah …

Ursula Grace Williams: Yeah, yeah.