STILL TOGETHER

Then and now, it’s a thrill to star alongside Stitch

- SARAH BAHR

When Maia Kealoha learned that she was going to play Lilo in Disney’s live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch, she sobbed big, fat, happy tears.

“That might be the first time I was quiet in my whole entire life,” she said of the video call with the film's director, Dean Fleischer Camp, in 2023, when he asked her to be his Lilo.

Kealoha, eight, is a big fan of the original animated film from 2002 about a destructive but adorable alien experiment named Stitch who crash-lands in Hawaii and befriends a young girl named Lilo.

The film, which earned more than US$273 million at the global box office, was one of the first Disney animated movies to be driven by a nonromantic storyline. It also won praise for its strong female characters and nuanced depictions of Hawaii.

“I've seen it 1,000 times,” Kealoha, who was born and raised on Hawaii's Big Island, said in a recent video call. “It's so good.”

Stitch, unsurprisingly, is her favourite character. The rambunctious blue troublemaker also reminds her of someone she knows. Her one-year-old brother, Micah Kealoha.

“I relate to Nani sometimes when I have to take the blame for my brother, or just protect him,” she said, referring to the adult older sister who becomes Lilo’s legal guardian after their parents’ deaths.

“And sometimes I have to teach him some lessons and how to be good.”

The film was Kealoha’s first time acting onscreen, but for several of her castmates, it was a return to a franchise that has come to encompass three direct-to-video sequels, three television series and a number of theme park rides, as well as oodles upon oodles of Stitch merch.

Among them is Chris Sanders, a director and writer of the original animated film who created Stitch and has voiced him in almost every Disney production to date, and Tia Carrere, who played Nani originally and now returns as a social worker, Mrs Kekoa, who checks up on Lilo.