-Our next guest is a talented actor you know from
"Flight of the Conchords" and the "Jumanji" movies.
He stars in the HBO Max series,
"Our Flag Means Death."
New episodes are available to stream Thursdays.
Let's take a look.
-If it were real, why would she have sold it to you?
Why not keep the map herself and find the treasure herself?
-Oh, strong question. Love that.
-Well, maybe she's just lazy.
I mean, she works down at the docks
selling maps, for God's sake.
-Best of luck to you, mate.
I'm taking a nap.
-Last I heard a ship only has one captain.
And the captain of this vessel says
"On your feet, we're having a day."
once I've changed.
-Please welcome to the show, Rhys Darby, everybody.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
Welcome to the show, Rhys. -[New Zealand accent] Thank you.
-I've been a fan of yours for a very long time.
And this is, I mean, it's just an ideal role.
This is a real pirate? -It is.
-Stede Bonnet. -Yes.
So he's on the fringe of well-known pirates.
But this one, it's a crazy story.
So he had a midlife crisis
and decided to go and become a pirate.
Now he was an aristocrat. He had everything.
He was a wealthy landowner.
And to make matters worse, he left his wife and kids
in the middle of the night and just took off.
-It must be very fun to tell the story of an unknown
or lesser-known, I should say, pirate
and have so much fun with the comedy side of it.
-It is. It's, it's there's a lot to tackle there,
because why would he do it? -Yeah.
-And you know, he survived for a certain amount of time
without giving too much away. [ Laughter ]
-Still, I don't get the sense. -All pirates die in the end.
-Yeah. -But look, he actually
purchased the boat, you know.
And he paid his pirates a wage.
And he, he even took obviously all his fancy clothes with him.
And he even built a library on his boat.
It was ridiculous, so.
-You, you mentioned that he bought a boat.
You took this very seriously. You took a sailing lesson.
-Mm-hmm. -In order to play
to bring some authenticity to the pirate.
Did you? Was it helpful to take a sailing lesson?
-Well, I got that wrong because of course,
this chap had no idea what he was doing.
And unfortunately, I did.
So I had to double act once I got here.
Oh, so you made the mistake of learning a thing
that then you had to pretend you didn't know how to do?
-I was too qualified. Yes.
That was that was me going I'll do those ropes.
Or actually, no, no, I don't know how to do them.
[ Laughter ]
-This is ah, this is very interesting casting.
A delightful casting.
In the show, we see a younger version of Stede.
And your son was cast to play a younger version of you.
And here he is with with Taika there with blood on his face.
[ Audience "Aw's" ]
-And that's yeah, that's little Theo.
-Yeah. -This is was his
first acting role. -Oh, gotcha.
And did he take to it? Did he enjoy it?
-Oh, he took everything to it.
And honestly, hats off to this guy
because he had to do his own stunts as well.
The stunt person didn't turn up or was sick it was --
-Really? -It was some sort of COVID issue
or laziness. Anyway, I'm not sure.
But he was told he had to run into a tree
so he'd never acted before.
And also he had to vomit.
So he was fed cold soup by Taika. He had to do that.
Run into a tree and then on the on the boat, in the river,
he was just throwing stones at, you know,
he was literally abused.
So it was it was all part of the role.
But at the end of it, he said,
"Look, I'm not sure whether I like this as a job,"
and I said, "But you're so good," I say.
And he said, "Alright, well, from now on, I'm offer only."
-Really? -Yeah.
So after one job, I don't know whether that's a record.
-When you knock it out of the park on your first job,
you switch to offer only. -Yeah.
-So much like Stede, as well, you, you were in the military
in real life. -I was. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I've been wearing uniform
since I was 12, actually. -Gotcha.
I did this air training corps thing,
which in New Zealand is like a little Air Force thing
for kids once a week.
And then I switched over to the, to the Army.
It was more fun toys to play with there.
And, and then I joined the regular force
at the age of 17 and did this cadet school
and then was a signals operator for four years.
-Wow. So you were active military
for four years and were you someone?
Did you bring your sense of humor to that job as well?
-I did, unfortunately. Yeah.
-Not a place where it's meant to thrive, yeah.
-They said I'm good for morale, but if there's an actual war
about to happen, we're worried you're gonna ruin things for us.
-Yeah. -So they politely let me go,
in the end, they -- it's a funny story.
They actually the C -- the C.O. brought me
into his office and he said,
"How do you think the career is going?"
And I said, "Pretty good, sir."
And he went, "Have a seat. I've got a pamphlet for you."
And, and he gave me this pamphlet.
It was for a local university. -Really?
And I said, "Oh, wow, university!"
He said, "That's be good for you."
He said, "You know, with your English skills
and you're a good computer-- communicator."
I can't even say the word. He got that wrong.
But I said, "Well, will I have time off to do university."
And he said, "Oh yeah, I think we'll give you,
I think we'll give you a lot of time off."
-So this is interesting because I think historically
people think of the military and maybe setting up a booth
at a university handing out pamphlets.
But this was you were so unique
that they sent you the other way.
-I'm one of the only ones that was sent the other way.
I think, that yeah.
Which yeah, it was the right move.
-They de-cruited you. -Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was.
It was a soft let go.
But I did manage to keep the jacket.
-You -- Oh, they let you keep your jacket?
-Yeah. I wanted all the kit, but they said, No, we need that."
But, um, you can take the jacket.
-Well, I think if you have the full kit.
You can pretend like you're still in the Army.
But if you just have the jacket, people know your foolin'.
-That's it. Yeah. Yeah. -Yeah.
But you -- signals operator.
So you learned Morse code?
-Yes. And is this something?
Do you forget Morse code once you stop using it?
-Over time. -Yeah.
-Absolutely.
But I've sort of stuck with it.
-Okay. -It's a handy thing to have.
-I mean, it comes so in handy. -Yeah, yeah.
-I look honestly, we were the last of the Morse coders.
It's not even trained anymore. -Really?
-Yeah. -Well, I mean,
I guess that makes sense. I'm surprised that
you were even in the generation where they were using it.
-Well, this was New Zealand. -Oh.
-So you know, I mean, they stopped doing
Morse code last year. -[ Laughs ]
-You know, it was an intensive course like three months,
just hearing all the dots and dashes
and you're writing stuff down, you know,
and then my big job was all these codes would come through
and I'd decode them and then hand it to the officer.
And, you know, the battle would commence.
-Could you still could you still understand
or even could you speak Morse code?
-Uh, yes, I could, certainly. -Could you say something
in Morse code now? -Okay. Here we go.
[ Imitating Morse code ]
-Oh, wow. -Yeah.
-That was great. [ Cheers and applause ]
-What uh?
I mean, are you -- do you want to tell us
what you said or should we just wait until somebody
can, you know? -Well, be funny the way.
I was going to tell you it was, uh...
-What was it? -"I wish I was somewhere else."
But it wasn't that! It was "Seth rocks." There you go.
-[ Laughs ] "Seth rocks." -You guys, that's Rhys Darby.
New episode of "Our Flag Means Death" are available to
stream Thursdays on HBO Max.
We'll be right back with more "Late Night."