A college basketball player in the United States whipped out an impression of a Kiwi character and ended up going viral on ESPN.
Dallin Hall is a guard for the Bringham Young University basketball team and during a press conference he decided to show off his impression of Taika Waititi’s Korg from the Marvel movie ‘Thor: Ragnarok’.
A few Kiwis commented on ESPN’s post of the clip.
“As a New Zealander, you nailed that cuzz,” says one commenter, only to be contradicted by another commenter from Aotearoa.
“It’s not spot on at all but he did great!!!!!” the other Kiwi wrote.
Other people commenting on the post reckoned the impression was really good. Some going even as far as to say they couldn’t tell the difference between Dallin and Taika.
“Bro that’s spot on,” wrote one person.
“Lmao, sure he wasn’t the voice actor for him?” said someone else.
“No way he isn’t the voice actor,” another commented.
‘Thor: Ragnarok’ came out in 2017 as part of the hugely popular Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was the fifth feature film Taika directed after making some Kiwi classics like ‘Boy’, ‘What We Do in the Shadows’, and ‘Hunt For the Wilderpeople’.
Directing ‘Ragnarok’ really pushed up Taika’s status as a celebrity in Hollywood. As it did when it was revealed he was dating, and is now married to, pop-singer Rita Ora.
Both talked about how all the attention that comes with their craft has been hard to deal with. Talking to BBC’s Louis Theroux, Taika said that once paparazzi started capturing Rita and Taika he recognised the annoyance that others told him about.
“I enjoyed hanging out with you,” he told Rita. “Then people started taking photos of us, then for about 5 minutes I thought, ugh, this is what they talk about.”
Rita agreed, saying: “It’s a really hard thing to digest because you’re not trained for it.”
