Kiwi Film Producer Chelsea Winstanley Scorches Ex Taika Waititi for Lack of Support, Cheating
Award-winning Māori producer Chelsea Winstanely gave a tell-all interview to New Zealand RNZ reporter Anika Moa. The conversation covered a range of topics, including her struggles around having a child at the age of 20, breaking her legs and face in a horrible car accident, living on welfare and - most harrowing of all - being married to Taika Waititi for seven years.
Waititi and Winstanley wound up having two children together, the latter of which was born around the time he was shooting Thor: Ragnarok in Australia and receiving expert service from his personal assistant (who would later be his date to the Oscars for JoJo Rabbit).
Winstanely, who did NOT hold back, said that their marriage probably unravelled around the filming of Ragnarok for a few reasons. The main one being that Taika was "on his own buzz" (a phrase I must assume is Kiwi slang for... self-centeredness?), had no time for her ambitions or career goals, and expected her to sit "twiddling her thumbs" in a hotel room on the gold coast waiting for him to finish filming.
Said Winstanley: "I mean, lots of other wives do that in other departments and they'll dutifully do that thing. But I couldn't think of anything f***ing worse to go to the Gold Coast. I'm sorry."
She then added, blisteringly:
That probably was the beginning of the unravelling because I wasn't that pandering, dutiful. Get on my knees and whatever you want. Someone else was, though." (emphasis mine)
Winstanley has been behind the driving force behind the te reo Māori dubbings of popular Disney films like Moana, Frozen and the Lion King-allowing Māori children to enjoy movies in their own language, something denied to many Indigenous New Zealand children despite Māori now being recognized as an official language of the country.
This writer would also like to state for the record that Taika hasn't made a good film since their divorce, prior to which she was one of the main executive producers on all of his projects.
Source.
Discussion: ONTD, can you believe that Rita Ora's husband was holding a woman back from her ambitions?