She worked at Target before being cast in Disney’s new movie Moana, but almost didn’t audition because she thought the idea that she could get the role was too “ridiculous.”
‘Moana’ live-action star remembers watching the original movie in theaters
“Moana” live-action star Katherine LaGaia remembers the first time she saw the 2016 animated film in theaters.
NEW YORK – When Kathryn Lagaia suddenly stopped coming to school, her classmates had no idea why.
The 19-year-old had just been cast in the title role of Moana, Disney’s live-action remake of the 2016 animated hit, to be released July 10. Ragaaia, then 17, was sworn to secrecy and had to pretend her life hadn’t changed when she returned to performing arts high school. When her casting was announced, she had already left her native Australia to work on the film.
“I disappeared,” she says. “No one knew where I went. There were crazy rumors about what I was doing and where I was going. …When it was announced, I was in the hair and makeup trailer for the screen test and people were DMing me and being like, ‘Girl, this is AI.'” My dad always makes stupid AI stuff, so they’re like, “This is really lame, Katie.” This isn’t fun. ” Look at Disney’s account! That’s what I thought. ”
Moana, which tells the story of a girl who crosses the ocean to save her hometown of Motunui, will be Lagaia’s first film role. However, she is not a stranger to the world of acting. Her father, Jay Lagaia, is also an actor (he played Captain Typho in the Star Wars prequels), and her siblings have worked in Australia on the productions of Dear Evan Hansen and Hamilton.
Moana’s father insisted that she follow in his footsteps, but Lagaia’s father was more hesitant.
“He knows how cutthroat this industry is, and he gets 1,000 more nos than yeses,” she says. “You know that by sending your child into it, you’re setting yourself up for them to be rejected.”
When Disney called for casting for the live-action version of “Moana,” LaGaia had little experience in auditions, let alone acting. Her resume included several episodes of the series “The Lost Flower of Alice Hart” and several commercials. “I worked at Target,” she said, joking that she was “very useless at that job.” She thought it was a “very stupid idea” that she could get the role and didn’t want to even try.
“For me, it felt like entering the lottery. The chances of winning the lottery are very low, so you’re just hurting your feelings for no reason. But my mom was adamant. She was like, ‘You’ll never know until you try.’ So I had to get up and do it.”
Lagaia has gone through so many auditions that her exact body type is vague. “I change my number depending on who I want to impress,” she jokes. The low point came when everything went to “radio silence” during the 2023 Hollywood labor strike, and she feared the movie was over. “I thought, ‘This is never going to happen. They’re never going to greenlight this again.'”
Lagaia’s own sisters were among the 32,000 actresses who sent in audition tapes. However, there were no hard feelings for her when she accepted this role. “We were both very excited,” she says. In fact, she’s been on the other side of the equation before.
“There was a job that we got and they were auditioning to play the father’s three children. They wanted three girls and they chose my two sisters over me,” Lagaia says. “They were like, ‘Sorry, you don’t look very much like your sisters.’ They cast another girl in that middle spot, and I remember that hurt me deeply.”
But Ragaaia is the first to admit that she is “by far the worst singer” compared to the sisters who auditioned, having no experience outside of the school choir. So the idea of performing an iconic song like “How Far I’ll Go” filled her with anxiety. “I thought they would dub me with someone else,” she says. She says that at first she was afraid of having to listen to her own songs, and that she burst into tears the moment her own songs were played for the first time. “Right now, I’m pretty good,” she said, likening the process to “exposure therapy.”
Auli’i Cravalho, who provided the voice for the anime “Moana,” will return as a producer for the remake. When she was cast in Ragaaia, she sent him a sweet e-mail saying that they would form a lifelong “sister relationship.”
“She’s been one of the advocates for more Pacific Island faces and people of color on screen, and I think the fact that she was willing to step forward and say, ‘You know what? This is an opportunity for someone else to have that great experience and exposure,’ and to step back and step into that (producer) role, I think speaks volumes about the kind of person she is,” Lagaia says.
Having grown up in a busy household with seven siblings, leaving home in the United States with only one companion can be uncomfortable and lonely.
“It was little things like not knowing how a shopping mart worked,” she says. “I don’t know where to put the cart. We’re driving on the wrong side of the road. I had no sense of where I was or what I was doing. It was a lot like Moana on that boat.”
‘Moana’ star Katherine LaGaia talks about her favorite Disney animal companion
“Moana” live-action star Katherine LaGaia has chosen her top four Disney animal companions.
But if “Moana” was the heroine’s journey of self-discovery, “Lagaia” fulfilled the same role.
“There were a lot of times where I thought, ‘This is a hard line. I can’t cross this,'” she says. “But after putting in the time and practicing and getting a lot of positive reinforcement and support, until I almost hit the wall, I was like, ‘You know what? Let’s try a little harder. Let’s try a little harder. Okay, let’s try a little harder.’
Even her father, who had been worried about her becoming an actor, was able to breathe a sigh of relief in the end.
“He feels more confident,” she says. “He’s really proud of what I did. And I think now he knows that maybe I’m good enough and maybe I can do it.”
