‘Chief of War’ Sneak Peek: Ka’ahumanu Grapples With Realities of Her Forced Marriage (VIDEO)
In TV Insider’s exclusive clip from the fourth episode of the epic saga of Hawaiian royalty, Chief of War, the smart, unconventional young Ka’ahumanu (Luciane Buchanan, in a powerful performance that shows why she’s the breakout star of this lush series from Jason Momoa) grapples with the idea of losing her freedom in her upcoming forced marriage to Kamehameha (Kaina Makua).
The union was arranged by her father, high chief Moku (Moses Good), to consolidate political and military power. But the character traits Moku passed down to his daughter may make it harder for him to use her as a pawn.
As Buchanan told TV Insider in Hawaii, “I drew inspiration for this character and her decision-making from her parents. Her dad was the strategist. He lives, breathes, and thinks war. Her mother, Nama [Marie Falevai Sibbett] was known as a rebel. She was forbidden to be with Ka’ahumanu’s father and fled her kingdom and was in hiding. The combination of the two produce Ka’ahumanu, who’s a strong-willed person who does go against the grain and does go against her father in some moments and doesn’t listen to him and follows her instincts.”
In this clip, from the August 15 episode, Ka’ahumanu doesn’t get much sympathy from her sounding board, English sailor John Young (Benjamin Hoetjes), who, naturally, insists that obedience to men is just the way it is for women everywhere. Of course she’s going to get married, settle down, and have babies.
Ka’ahumanu though, already knows her path will not be a conventional one, due to her encounter with a prophetess in an earlier episode. The seer foretold many things, including the cryptic prediction that Ka’ahumanu would “break the world” — a vision so terrifying that the oracle revealed that even the gods feared the young woman.
“The prophetess is a big catalyst for change for Ka’ahumanu in that moment. She would’ve taken that as, ‘This is actually what’s going to happen to me,’” Buchanan says. “With that knowledge, she has to adapt and live life differently. So, she’s not going to be one of the many wives and she’s going to choose to do her own thing.”
Chief of War, Fridays, Apple TV+
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