God Bless You, Mr Kopu may unfold like a darkly comic genre piece about ambition, desperation and the seductive promise of success, but beneath its increasingly twisted surface, writer-director Alex Liu is asking a more personal question: how much of yourself are you willing to surrender to become the person you think you’re supposed to be? Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi stars as Mafu, a struggling Tongan immigrant in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland whose fortunes seemingly change when he falls under the influence of charismatic American salesman Marco Cass (Simon Rex). What initially looks like an escape from desperation soon becomes something far more dangerous, as Mafu begins adopting not only Marco’s methods, but something of his carefully constructed identity.
For Liu, who describes the film as part of a burgeoning “Pacific New Wave,” that tension between authenticity and performance extends across its characters. Mafu gradually masks his culture and moral compass in pursuit of society’s idea of success; Grace Palmer’s Margot romanticises her own existence as if she’s perpetually starring in the movie of her life; and Marco’s easy charm conceals the calculated grifter underneath. Speaking with Peter Gray during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Liu, Schuster-Koloamatangi, Palmer and Rex discussed the masks their characters wear, the desperation that makes Mafu vulnerable without rendering him passive, turning Rex’s natural charisma into something sinister, and what success can cost when achieving it requires becoming someone else.
I wanted to ask all four of you – because I know, Alex, you have described the film as being about identity and self-perception and the masks that people wear to survive – what mask do you think each of the characters are wearing?
Alex Liu: Good question. I mean, I think it goes back to the fact that it’s all about identity. They all have these façades – maybe not Mafu so much, but certainly Margot and Marco – of, “I have everything together. I know what my life is. I know what I’m passionate about.”
Actually, one of my favourite scenes in the movie is when you see Margot’s façade crack. It’s an amazing performance by Grace. There’s a moment in the restaurant where she’s with Dimetrius, and she talks about how her mother is Māori, but she doesn’t look or sound Māori, and that’s a good thing because it means she can go to Hollywood. There’s this little moment where you just see the sadness break through, and to me, that’s such a perfect moment that encapsulates what all of these characters are feeling.
It’s a really beautiful piece of acting from Grace and a great scene. I think that’s their mask: acting like they know who they are when, really, none of them do.
Grace Palmer: Mine’s pretty easy, I’d say. I feel like Margot is really good at making people feel like they’re the most important person in the room. She makes them feel seen, heard and understood, but she can do that with everyone. Although it is somewhat genuine, it’s also a little contrived.
I think, like you said earlier, she romanticises everything. She’s very aware of how she’s perceived all the time and sort of sees herself in the movie version of her life. You know when you’re walking down the street with your headphones in and, whatever song you’re listening to, you’re like, “Yeah, I’m in the music video”? I feel like that’s Margot in her life. She’s always kind of performing.
Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi: Yeah, I think I’m struggling to think of Mafu’s mask. When we meet him, he’s so defeated that he can’t even put up a mask anymore. Actually, I feel like his mask is more about rejecting his roots or the values that were instilled in him growing up.
As the movie progresses, that becomes his mask. He’s masking his culture and, really, his moral compass. All of that gets thrown around, and it starts becoming a story about what you’re willing to give up and what you’re willing to lose of yourself in order to become successful – or to become society’s idea of successful. So, yeah, I think that’s probably his mask.
Alex Liu: I would say that Mafu is the only character who actively puts one on, and then he has to rip it off.
Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi: He’s very naive when you meet him. But he does start building one as he meets Marco. He steals Marco’s mask a little bit.
Simon Rex: Yeah, and maybe I’m wrong here, but I feel like, for Marco, the mask is his whole con. The entire time, he knows what he’s doing. He’s grifting, he’s taking advantage of people, and it’s all very deliberate.
I feel like it’s not until the end – without giving anything away – that it all comes crumbling down. He’s maintained this façade and acted really cool and collected, but then things go south and you finally see the real weasel that he is.
Alex, in casting Simon, was it partly about taking the quality people liked about him and then turning it into something unsettling?
Alex Liu: Yeah, that was part of it, for sure. I mean, there’s a public persona that we all have, and I think Simon is pretty beloved, so it was fun to rip that away and create this character who was completely different. Obviously, what’s in the script is in the script, but Simon works really, really hard and gives an amazing performance. It was something we jointly built, and it was a lot of fun. But, man, this guy killed it.
Simon Rex: Thank you. And, you know, in real life, if I’m being honest, I don’t think I was even aware of how performative I’d been throughout my life. I’d been surviving in this kind of fight-or-flight mode without really being aware of it, always feeling like I had to be “on.”
It wasn’t until recently, around the time we were shooting this, that I became more aware that you don’t have to be on all the time. It’s okay to turn it off. For me, it had just become this natural default setting. And it’s a weird thing to go through in real life because you start asking yourself, “Well, then who am I really if I’m not this?” So there were actually a lot of parallels there.
And Mafu is vulnerable without ever being completely passive. How did you make sure that his vulnerability didn’t become a weakness?
Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi: That’s a great question. I think it was really just about playing it truthfully, to be honest. There wasn’t too much rocket science behind that decision; it was more a credit to Alex’s writing.
I wanted him to be perceived as desperate, because when you see someone who’s desperate in real life and operating out of that mindset, they’re not necessarily weak. Sometimes that’s when they’re at their most dangerous. So it was about trying to capture that without making him seem too much like, “Oh my gosh, I hate my life, I hate my life.” He’s really trying to get it together. There’s that aspect of vulnerability, but it’s not passive.
Alex Liu: He’s just desperate. Dimetrius is half Tongan and half Samoan, and I’m half Tongan and half Kiwi European, so I understand that vulnerability Mafu shows. In terms of who he is, and being kind of lost and confused, you have to take control of the situation any way you can. That’s what he does, and the opportunity just happens to fall right into his lap. But that’s what happens when you’re desperate.
Grace, it’s an incredible performance. What did you think Margot understood about Mafu that he didn’t yet understand about himself when we first meet him?
Grace Palmer: I think New Zealand – and you’re probably aware of this in Australia too – has this weird tall poppy mentality where we tend to cut people down. Then you go to the US and it’s almost the opposite; they really celebrate success.
I think Margot comes back to New Zealand, meets Marco, sees the potential in him and thinks, “If you just had a little taste of success, money or the limelight, imagine the confidence that could give you.” I genuinely think that, by the end, she believes she’s helped him in some way. She’s brought this guy out of his shell. He comes back wearing glasses and a suit, and he’s got money, and she’s like, “See? I knew you were in there.”
But it’s not real. Sadly, I think those things are important to her. She’s only in New Zealand to make money so she can leave again, and that’s part of who she is.
One of the really great jokes is when Marco and Margot realise how incredibly similar their names are. Was that something, Alex, as you were writing that you realised? Did you always intend them to be similar? Was it a reflection of their personalities being similar?
Alex Liu: I could have changed one of their names in the first draft, but I thought it was funny. It was obviously some subconscious thing that happened. And then Grace has that line about the sound person at the front being like, “All Grace,” and I wish I’d written that! Once I wrote the joke about them having the same name, I was like, “Yeah, I’m not changing them.” It’s just fun.
God Bless You, Mr Kopu is screened as part of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which ran between September 10th and 20th, 2026. For more information, head to the official site here.
