Jacinda Ardern: raw, real and still healing

SOMEWHERE on the cutting-room floor of Prime Minister, a new documentary about Dame Jacinda Ardern's fraught 5½ years leading New Zealand through crisis after crisis, is a montage of her repeatedly asking partner Clarke Gayford to please get that camera out of her face.

- JADA YUAN

"Someone would have just seen a lot of me telling him to go away," Ardern says, laughing.

In person, Ardern, 44, is warm and disarmingly down-to-earth. She styled her hair herself, now a few shades lighter than it was in the film. Her aide says she's travelling with "a far bigger entourage" than usual: three people, including him.

But there are also hints that she's still living with some trauma from her time as prime minister. She pre-signed all her books and only takes questions at the event that were submitted in advance. She's ushered in and out of the room in record time by several large security guards.

When Gayford started asking her to process her raw emotions about her biggest moments as prime minister on camera, Ardern went along with it because she figured no one would ever see it. That is, until the couple handed over 300 hours of tape to documentarians following Ardern's shocking January 2023 resignation as New Zealand's prime minister. Her voice trembling, she'd said she was stepping down because "I no longer have enough in the tank" to give the job what it required.

"You might ask why on earth would we do this and put this much of ourselves out on screen," says Gayford, 48.

"And the goal that we wanted to achieve is just trying to humanize politicians. [They're] just people, by and large, trying to make the best decisions that they can."

A widely known radio DJ and host of a TV show he created called Fish of the Day, Gayford says he was simply operating on instinct when he first pulled out a camera to document Ardern learning she'd become prime minister in 2017 at age 37, having found out days earlier that she was pregnant.

There's a moment early in the film when Gayford apologises for prodding Ardern to reflect on her election win while she's sitting on an unmade bed, trying to get gunk out of her eye.