An interview with
INTERVIEW ANDY TAYLOR PHOTOGRAPHY SARAH TRAVERS
Jacinda Ardern travels pretty light. She may be the deputy leader of the opposition and a closely watched rising star of New Zealand politics tipped for greatness, but she arrives for an interview and photo shoot for Plenty without an entourage and without any sense of the urgency you’d expect from someone who is scheduled to walk out in front of a packed town hall meeting straight after our meeting. She also arrives without an ego or agreed agenda – she is happy to discuss anything we want to throw at her, and waves away talk of copy approval and any topics being off limits. The trademark smile is there – she sheepishly and somewhat awkwardly admits she can’t not do it – and she is happy to go straight from walking in the door to being in front of the camera as the light quickly fails. In a world of fake news, carefully manufactured public personas and early morning tweets, Jacinda Ardern in person is – refreshingly – the Jacinda Ardern you see on the telly: genuine, erudite, thoughtful and funny. The only real baggage she carries is a peculiar authenticity that makes you feel you already somehow know her, that perhaps you went to school with her, or maybe grew up around the corner from her. She has a mojo and a mana that are hard to explain, and maybe, just maybe, that has something to do with a little corner of the Bay of Plenty.
16
P L E N T Y. C O . N Z // M AY 2 0 1 7
