The Bluff is a brand new action film from Amazon MGM Studios and AGBO, following the tale of Ercell “Bloody Mary” Bodden (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), a former pirate who thought she had escaped her sordid past and finally found peace with her own family. However, when that deadly past comes knocking, she soon finds herself fighting for everything she holds dear.
With the film now streaming, we were able to catch up with star Temuera Morrison (The Book of Boba Fett; The Mandalorian) to talk about his pivotal role in the feature as Lee, Captain Connor's right hand man and the crew's quartermaster. In our extremely informative chat, Morrison walks me through his experience on the film and working with fellow Kiwi Karl Urban as well as the film's leading lady Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and his own son for the first time in his career.
Plus, he tells me whether he saw any similarities between this character's code and the code of his most famous character Boba Fett.
In case you missed it, be sure to check out our exclusive interview with Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Karl Urban at the following LINK!
Frank E. Flowers helmed the feature, with a screenplay he co-wrote with Joe Ballarini, while the Russo Brothers served as producers alongside Priyanka Chopra Jonas. In addition to Chopra Jonas and Urban, the supporting cast featured Safia Oakley-Green, Temuera Morrison, and Vedanten Naidoo.
The Bluff is now streaming on Prime Video!
Watch our full interview below and/or keep scrolling to read the full transcription. Plus, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive content!
ROHAN: Lee is the Quartermaster for Captain Connor’s crew. In pirate history, the Quartermaster was often the "voice of the crew" or the one who maintained order. How does Lee balance his loyalty to Connor with the demands of a bloodthirsty crew?
TEMUERA: Yes, well, that's correct. I really took that on board, seriously, that I'm the disciplinary man. I actually had an uncle that worked on the ships, like on the modern day fishing ship, so apparently he had a hard reputation. He was just a hard man. If you weren't opening the oysters fast enough, he’d grab you and throw you off the ship. He was just a hard task master. So, I knew discipline was the main thing on my ship, so I just wanted to run a tight ship, and that's how it works. And when we go into battle or attack some island, that's what it comes down to, discipline, everyone's trained well. So, I wanted to bring that right across.
With Karl, I had total respect for him, being a New Zealander as well. So, there was a little bit of real stuff going on there too. Both being from New Zealand, both making our way to Hollywood out of a small country of New Zealand. I was very, very proud of what Karl's achieved in his career, and so, that was kind of a natural thing. That was like more of a real life thing. So, again, it wasn't until the movie progressed a little bit that I started to see my captain going off the rails a little bit, and going too far there, and too far there. So, I was wondering what was up with him. And again, I think at the end of the day, he was going to go a bit too far, and it comes down to some moments in the film where, you know, at the beginning, I wanted to really try and work on those connections, where we are tight, anything my captain says, I'm right there for him. Any order he gives, I'm right there delivering it to the men. So, by the end of the journey, there's a little bit of a letdown, there's a little bit of a brotherly love that's been broken, and someone I've given my life to is starting to disappoint me now, and so, I can actually come to a point where I have to make a decision, but without setting that stuff earlier, you know, without setting it up earlier, there's nowhere to go. So, I'm glad you picked up on those little nuances there. Again, you know, I drew a lot on just our real life, both being Kiwis, both leaving New Zealand. So, here we are on a ship, but it was just in another time, in the 18th century.
He’s a lovely actor too. He's quite a subtle actor, Karl, very low key, very subtle. And, yet within that subtle presence he has, there's a lot of power as well. So, I wanted to have a lot of energy, you know? I wanted to be the guy who does all the yelling, gives all the commands. He loved the sound of my Maori language too. So, when I'm saying ‘Hoist the sail,’ you know, I say it in Maori, and I know that just my own Maori language has such an authority within the tonal qualities of the language. So, I think Frank enjoyed that too. And, again, I enjoy that, especially for my own people back in New Zealand. One day, my family and the Maori and the New Zealanders will watch this film, and they'll go, oh, he's talking in Maori, and my Maori people get a bit of a buzz when they hear words and different things like that. So, yeah, it's kind of funny. It's kind of great to put it on the international stage, and people go, oh, was he talking Maori, or was he, but, yeah, I get a bit of a buzz just promoting the language, you know, in a world where sometimes, you know, a lot of our indigenous stuff is sort of still hidden under the table, so it's nice to bring it up, bring some more indigenous culture.
And then, I think that at that time, I also drew on the fact that a lot of our ancestors from New Zealand would jump on a ship and sail all the way back to London and try to meet the King. The King, it must have been the fifth or something, trying to think who was the King back then, but they would try and get to England. They were trying to get to Tahiti and whaling and trading was going on in New Zealand in that same period of time. And, so actually, New Zealand was known as the hell hole of the world back then, in the early days of trading, because there wasn't any law down there. We hadn't become part of the New South Wales English regime, the French were trying to overtake us at first. So, I use a lot of my imagination to say, hey, just for the believability of my character, hey, a Maori warrior could have ended up on a ship, ended up in Tahiti, ended up on another ship, ended up in the Caribbean, being good at what he does. The Maori were great sailors anyway, Polynesian sailors. We could navigate by the stars, and that's all coming around again too. We're having a renaissance of all this traversing the ocean. Apparently, we could sail all the way to Hawaii, because when we're in Tahiti, some went to Hawaii, some went to New Zealand, and some went far east to the Rapa Nui. So, there's the connection. So, I drew a lot on Polynesian history to show, you know, of course, we had Captain Cook, but a hundred years before him, Abel Tasman came to New Zealand, then in 1792, Cook came. Then whalers, and then traders came, and then, the world opened up to us. And this is what this whole thing was about. We have an international crew from the four winds of the Earth all joining together on the ship. Now, I'm quartermaster Lee, and we're off on an adventure.
The thing with my director too, I just had a great connection with Frank too, so whatever he said, he was my quartermaster, Frank Flowers. I just loved working with him. He was like a Yaman. We had a Yaman connection, so it was like a brotherly love. And again, I always respect people like Frank, if they decide to cast me in their film, I treat it as an honor. I treat it as, gee, this guy likes me so much, he wants me in his movie, I'm going to bring something to the table. And, you know, the director guides us through. And we had a lot of fun, too. Karl and I would have a lot of fun. Sometimes we're trying to act and trying to out act one another, us both being Kiwis. I’d sneak over to quickly have a word with Frank, and tell him, Frank, Frank, I think he's got the better of me there. I think he's getting the better of me there, Frank, but we had some nice stuff to do too, with the dynamics of the character, loyal to the end, and then all of a sudden, he's starting to get a little bit crazy by the end of it. So, I had to try and bring him in, yry and bring him in. What are you doing, sir, what are you doing? You've had too much of that stuff, like some things in life, you gotta bring them back to Earth.
But, you know, when you're working with Priyanka Chopra, and his love for his old love, only a woman does that to a man, only a woman. That's what drives a man. So, it shows in this film. There's all those little sub plots. There's some history between that relationship. I don't think he ever got over it. It's like you, you know, when you've lost that girlfriend or lost that woman, and you've still got the blues, like the song says, still got the blues for you. *sings the song* It's only a woman that does that, and this is what influences Karl's character. He's starting to go crazy. He remembers the glory days and all that history. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing it because I'm not quite sure what I’ve done, my brother, but I'm looking forward to seeing it because I'm getting positive reactions as well. They must be Star Wars fans, so I think they might just be being nice to me.
ROHAN: Having played Boba Fett, you've spent a lot of time playing a man who lives by a strict code. In The Bluff, you're playing a man within a lawless pirate crew. Did you find any common ground between Lee’s sense of order and your past as Boba Fett?
TEMUERA: Yeah, all that stuff. I tried to bring all that common code stuff into quartermaster Lee too, just like the Boba Fett stuff. So, a lot of things has come through into the performance and being Boba Fett and Jango Fett, it was a great experience for me to sort of have all that in my repertoire as well and sometimes I do catch myself going, oh, gee, gee, reminds me of some other character I played a little while ago, the good looking guy with the helmet on his head.
He's trying to keep law and order here in Tatooine, but things are getting a bit carried away now. Now, I'm the Godfather, I'm running the whole of the deserts of Tatooine, and I just wanted to go out and destroy people. I think that's where we got a little crazy mate. I think I became more of a diplomat instead of a bad ass bounty hunter. So, in this movie The Bluff, I just went right back to being a bad ass sailor, a bad ass buccaneer, like we should have kept Boba. They turned Boba Fett into a diplomat, but I'm not the writer.
Frank was also great. Frank Flowers, great director to work with. And again, as I said earlier, I just had so much respect for Frank and what they do with their cameras, and I try to come up with, you know, the vibration, with the vibrational stuff that Karl and I can play with. Again, I had a great time working on this. I wanted some more scenes with Priyanka, but they weren't in the script, so I just had to make do with what I had. And man, working with Priyanka, and she had a physical role too, and I was very impressed the way she handled the physical side of things, you know, being a beautiful princess as well, so she can actually get down and get dirty, you know, when she when she needs to, and she can fight too, she can move. So, I was very impressed with that. So, I think they captured that, you know, we've got all the essence of everything there. So, just wonderful.
ROHAN: Your son also has a small role in this film - what was it like working with him for the first time?
TEMUERA: Yes, well, this is the first time. He's a young man that's just been doing his own thing. And I told him long years ago, while he was working in finance in London, I said, go down to the Shakespeare school and learn how to act, you never know. And so, this was the first opportunity I had to work with him. Also, Karl's son also had a little minor role as the water bearers as well. So, I did make a deal with the director, I said, look, Frank, if my son's not cutting it, we can kill him off anytime you want. So, fortunately, he lasted to the end of the film. And it was always great for me. It brought a little bit more emotion to my end scenes as well, too. I was able to conjure a little bit up with my own son being there. I loved working with him. I loved having him on set with me. So, it’s been a special film for me in those terms. He's a beautiful boy as well. He's lucky he's got his mother's looks. He's got the bug now, so he's looking for something else. He's auditioning for a few commercials. And, he had a great time too. I think he loved it as well. He loved the experience. So, yeah, he really enjoyed the mechanics. Thank you my brother.
Ercell “Bloody Mary” Bodden (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) thought she had escaped her violent past as a pirate, finding peace in the Cayman Islands with her loving husband T.H. (Ismael Cruz Cordova), their son Isaac (Vedanten Naidoo) and her sister-in-law Elizabeth (Safia Oakley-Green). But when her notorious former captain, Connor (Karl Urban), arrives seeking revenge, Ercell’s world is torn apart. Forced to confront the demons she’s tried to bury, Ercell is thrust back into a deadly game of secrets and survival. Armed with lethal swordsmanship, cunning traps, and a fierce will to protect those she loves, she wages a brutal war against Connor’s merciless crew. Ercell’s fight to save her family becomes a journey of redemption, as she reclaims her power and embraces the warrior she once was. Against the breathtaking backdrop of the Cayman Brac’s Skull Cave and towering bluffs, producers Anthony and Joe Russo present The Bluff; a gritty, adrenaline-fueled action-adventure about family, survival, and the indomitable strength of a mother’s love.