Taika Waititi Reveals Why He Almost Didn't Make His First Marvel Interview

Taika Waititi is one of Marvel's most treasured directors. After the Oscar-winning indie filmmaker took the Thor franchise from one of the franchise's least-favorite properties and turned it into a behemoth at the box office, the House of Ideas quickly invited him back for another Thor flick. As it turns out, however, there was a time before all the success then Waititi almost missed his first meeting with Marvel, a move that could have spelled disaster.

As the director tells it, he was celebrating a birthday in Hawaii when friends took his luggage back to New Zealand. Unfortunately for him, that luggage included his passport, which technically should have barred him from traveling between the states since he isn't an American citizen.

"I was in Hawaii and just had a birthday. I'm glad you ask this, I've been wanting to tell the story. A bunch of friends came to visit me in Hawaii and went to went back to New Zealand, they took my luggage with them and my passport was in one of those suitcases," the filmmaker said in a recent stop on The Late Late Show. "Not being from America, you can't travel domestically without some sort of American I.D. and all I had was a New Zealand drivers license. If you've seen one of those it looks like it comes out of a Corn Flakes box."

Regardless, Waititi still opted to go to the airport to try getting on an airplane, because he felt it could be a life-changing meeting. Despite some initial hesitation, customs officials at the airport finally let him on the plane for a pretty surprising reason: he showed them the contract he had with Disney as a screenwriter on Moana.

"I turned up to the airport because I just had to try, and there were these lovely guys at Customs. I showed them my ID and they laughed," Waititi said.

Taika Waititi, who directed Thor: Ragnarok, returns to direct Thor: Love and Thunder. He also co-wrote the film's screenplay with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. The film and stars Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Chris Pratt, Jaimie Alexander, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Sean Gunn, Jeff Goldblum, and Vin Diesel.

Thor: Love and Thunder opens in theaters on July 8th.