Taika Waititi Almost Missed His First Meeting With Marvel Because His Passport Was in a Different Country

Taika Waititi nearly missed his first meeting with Marvel due to a passport blunder, which should have prevented him from boarding the plane – until Moana came to his rescue.

During a recent appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden, Waititi recounted the story of how he almost lost out on the opportunity to meet with Marvel to discuss Thor: Ragnarok, explaining that he had celebrated his birthday in Hawaii prior to the rendezvous but got separated from his passport, which he required for his trip to Los Angeles.

“A whole lot of friends had come to visit me in Hawaii and a bunch of them went back to New Zealand and they took a lot of my luggage with them and my passport was in one of those suitcases,” the filmmaker recalled. “And not being from America, you can’t travel domestically without some sort of American I.D. and all I had was a New Zealand driver’s license.”

Waititi added that the driver’s license, which was his only official form of identification at the time, looked like something that had come out of a cereal box but he decided to try his luck at the airport regardless. The customs agents initially laughed at his attempt to board the plane without a passport, until he pulled out a contract he once had with Disney for Moana.

“I looked in my bag, and I still had a contract sitting there, an old contract from Moana, because I was the first writer on Moana,” Waititi said. “And I said, ‘Look, all I’ve got is this. It’s from Disney – Marvel, Disney, all the same people, you know. I’m trustworthy.’ And to their credit, the guy looked at the thing, he said, ‘Hey, bro, you’re working on Moana. Hey, we’re pretty excited about that. Get on that f**king plane!'”

Waititi extended his gratitude to the airport staff who allowed him to board the plane, which ultimately meant that he could attend the meeting with Marvel and secure his seat in the director’s chair for Thor: Ragnarok. The filmmaker has since signed on to write and direct the follow-up to his 2017 blockbuster, returning to the MCU with Thor: Love and Thunder.

Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is also back for the sequel. He stars alongside the MCU’s Tessa Thompson, Natalie Portman, Chris Pratt, Jaimie Alexander, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Sean Gunn, Jeff Goldblum, and Vin Diesel. Christian Bale enters the mix as baddie Gorr the God Butcher while Portman’s Jane Foster becomes her own version of Thor.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Thumbnail image credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images.