Warning: slight SPOILERS for The Convert are in play. If you haven’t seen the film yet, you’ve been warned.
Throughout director Lee Tamahori’s 2024 movie The Convert, the theme of grief binds the wider narrative that sees Guy Pearce’s lay preacher protagonist become entangled in the local politics of English settlers and Māori natives. A collaboration that saw actor and director finally working together after 25 years of attempts, it’s a sweeping drama that lives in a realm of personal stakes. In an unfortunate coincidence, a death in Pearce’s family inspired his portrayal of character Thomas Munro in a way that, once he’d explained it, had truly moved me.
The Loss That Influenced Guy Pearce’s Role In The Convert
Sitting down to speak with the veteran performer whose resume includes notable entries such as L.A. Confidential, Memento and Iron Man 3 was an absolute honor. As a fan and admirer, our interview touched upon the areas you’d expect, such as how author Jeffrey Deaver’s offhanded comment about the actor as his ideal 007 led to Guy Pearce’s vague flirtation with playing James Bond.
However, early on in our talk to promote The Convert, the Australian performer shared a very personal story that happened to take place just as filming was about to begin. Recalling the passing of his last living aunt to CinemaBlend, Guy Pearce shared the following:
I had an auntie who was living in New Zealand who died the day I got there, so that was a hard way to start the experience. And unfortunately I didn't get to see her before she passed away. I'd been speaking with my cousin, her daughter, just before I went, and she was saying, ‘You know, Mom's really not doing well. What day are you getting here?’ And I said, ‘I'll be there on Monday. I'll come and see her on Tuesday.’ And she died on Monday night. It was my dad's last remaining sister. So, you know, [it was] really quite an emotional experience from the beginning on all sorts of levels.
Pearce is certainly no stranger to interacting with stories of personal obstacles, as seen in his time as part of the Mare of Easttown cast. So the fact that on a professional and personal level, those experiences left a mark on Pearce as he made The Convert isn’t all that shocking.
But navigating such material under these personal conditions makes all the difference in this specific story. In one particular case, those marks were intentionally permanent, as the Lockout star was inspired to get his first tattoos. For more on how that particular path came to be taken, Guy Pearce provided this:
It's funny on a personal level, I've always loved tattoos, but I've never had any tattoos. I've never really had a good reason. I think tattoos should be really meaningful. And I have a son now, a 7-year-old son … my auntie died, and I've been more and more conscious of my father, who died when I was eight years old, more and more recently. And then when we started the film, and in the movie Tyler Jade does tattoos for us in the story, and it just felt absolutely automatic. And I said, ‘I've gotta get tattoos while I'm here. I've gotta get a tattoo of my son and I've gotta get a tattoo of my father.’ And it's just so that, you know, having my first tattoos done while I was there, really marking this experience, was also just adding to the profound kind of nature of this whole experience. So this film means a lot to me on many levels.
Filming The Convert sounds like it was a personally transforming moment for its centerpiece talent. Certainly if it was enough to inspire Mr. Pearce’s tattoos commemorating family members, it was indeed something that reached into his heart. But there’s also some strong thematic elements that I’d think helped process Guy Pearce’s grief on set.
As his character eventually finds himself protecting a young Māori woman (Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne) who grieves the loss of her husband, those emotions are present throughout the entire picture. Not to mention, the backstory for Thomas Munro is also a tale steeped in tragedy, more than likely allowing Pearce to express a more personal quantity of sorrow.
How The Background Of The Convert’s Thomas Munroe Tied Into Guy Pearce’s Grief
Some might consider having such a personal experience land right at the start of a new project an omen of sorts. The circumstances seem so bespoke, with the potential silver lining being that Pearce wasn’t totally unprepared for his family’s loss. At the same time, The Convert's story allowed its lead to tap into that grief, as his character is beset by mourning from the start.
Revealed through a powerful monologue that sees Thomas Munro unfolding his personal backstory, we learn that Guy Pearce’s protagonist was a British soldier at one point. What’s more, the event that drove him away from his homeland in the first place was the fact that he killed women and children during an exercise, leaving him with traumatic guilt. Through that lens, Pearce continued to explain what he loved about playing this character, in these remarks to CinemaBlend:
What we do see on screen is the military background, and the experience that has led him to being where he is. We understand that he is a man who most likely got to a point where he would take his own life. He had nothing to live for anymore. He was so traumatized by an experience that he'd had in a military exercise that it was the depths of that trauma, and the depths of sort of dark places that he went to, that meant that he felt the hand of God sort of said, ‘I'm gonna pull you out of this, and you need to do something in order to find a new purpose in life.’ And so that is an idea I found really compelling, obviously, because as a character, it's always interesting playing with how much the audience knows, how much they don't know, how much you get to filter sort of backstory stuff into a film.
Backstory is the lynchpin of The Convert’s story for a couple of important reasons. While Thomas Munro is more than capable of defending himself, his personal experience has left him wanting to take the peaceful route. Defying the trope of a former soldier looking for a fight, or a warrior’s death, Guy Pearce is able to take that role in directions that make this picture more of a drama than an action-packed historical epic.
Also, the theme of religious faith is something that definitely comes off as refreshing. While working on contributing to and shaping the story for The Convert, co-writer/director Lee Tamahori explicitly wanted to avoid the typical pitfalls of such a story. Case in point: earlier drafts of the story had Thomas Munro drawn as sort of a religious zealot dropped into this new frontier.
That was changed in favor of the man who Guy Pearce describes above: a person who, while not truly subscribing to religion, saw it as a way to start healing their inner trauma. The actor was in favor of this sort of diversion from the norm, and in some cases it helped Tamahori sell him on taking a part that he initially felt he was too old for.
Right off the bat, that choice was a particularly good one, as Pearce already has roles like that from his time in Bedtime Stories and other movies that took advantage of his skills as a villain. In further highlighting how these novel differences intrigued him, Pearce continued to elaborate with these details:
He doesn't know where he is going. He doesn't really, he doesn't understand the culture he is arriving in, and he certainly doesn't understand himself at that point. So really quite a harrowed and emotional place to start from. I liked that. I certainly liked that it wasn't a typical story about someone bringing the word of God to indigenous people, especially. And it's very clear that from the outset he's there to be the local preacher of a local English sort of settlement. And from the beginning, he's not gonna do that well or properly. So I like that he can't even do the job properly, but there's the whole environment that he's been sent to, it will be the test for him, I suppose.
As the stories of how Guy Pearce’s MCU experience, as well that time Lockout changed his career mindset have shown, the man is always up for a challenge. It’s unfortunate that The Convert saw the acclaimed actor/musician presented with personal sorrow, but after hearing his story of making the movie that ensued, I was truly touched with how he moved through it all. You can see those results for yourself as well, as The Convert is currently showing in theaters and on demand for all who seek it.
