Breaking Through
Photo courtesy Ashley Smith
If Lachlan Ta‘imua Hannemann was wondering if he was on the right path, he got a big sign on Jan. 22. He was asleep in his family’s Kaimukī home when his dad burst into his bedroom at 3 a.m. exclaiming, “Dude, you got nominated!”
The up-and-coming actor, who goes by Ta‘imua, recalls thinking, “Holy sh–! Wow!”
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had just announced the 2026 Oscar nominations and a short film he’d starred in had made the cut.
His heart was racing and soon his phone would be buzzing with messages. Jane Austen’s Period Drama, the approximately 13-minute comedy he’d leant his talent to in 2023-2024, was in the running for Best Live Action Short Film.
Ta‘imua is 25 years old. He’d only begun pursuing acting seriously about five years ago, but he fell hard, enrolling in acting classes and picking up a steady stream of roles in films and television shows, including in Christopher Kahunahana’s upcoming psychological thriller Hotel Street and season two of Netflix’s Untamed, both of which are being filmed in Hawai‘i.
But as it turns out, Jane Austen’s Period Drama did not win an Oscar at the 2026 Academy Awards on March 15. Instead, comedian Kumail Nanjiani stepped onto the stage and told everyone to calm down because there was a tie. It was only the seventh tie in the award show’s history, and the last time it happened in this category was 32 years ago, in 1994.
Ta‘imua, seated up on the fifth tier of the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, was shaking with nerves.
The Oscar went to Two People Exchanging Saliva and The Singers.
Losing this time didn’t dampen his enthusiasm.
“I will be back and sit in the front row,” he says, referring to the area where A-list actors and studio executives get to sit.
In Matthew McConaughey’s book, Greenlights — a favorite of Ta‘imua’s — McConaughey says life gives you signs when you’re headed in the right direction. Sometimes those signs appear to be setbacks, but if you stay focused but open, you can turn them into launchpads.
Focused but open might be Ta‘imua’s life philosophy. The Saint Louis School alum, who was born in Texas but raised in Hawai‘i, initially had dreams of making it to the NBA.
At just shy of 6 feet 3 inches with a rangy build, Ta‘imua, who is Chinese, Samoan, German, Swiss and Swedish, idolized Jeremy Lin, whose standout performance with the New York Knicks in 2011-12 was dubbed “Linsanity.” Lin was entertaining on and off the court, known as much for his press conferences and YouTube videos as he was for his athleticism.
It was when Ta‘imua was a freshman at California Lutheran University, still pursuing his hoop dreams, that fellow student-athletes told him he should take a theater class.
“All the athletes were like, ‘Oh, theater class is going to be so easy, you just throw energy balls around,’” he says. “I was like, ‘I’m down!’”
Instead, they were taught to embrace emotional vulnerability.
“The person to my right and left are these massive jocks who play football and they’re crying,” he recalls. “We’re all crying.”
Someone else might have made a beeline for a ceramics class.
Ta‘imua thought, “OK. This is something.”
A hip injury took him off the basketball court and while he was in the hospital recovering from surgery, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. As soon as he was able, he returned to Hawai‘i, where he began making videos and posting them to social media.
“Moving back home was the best freaking move ever,” he says.
Everything that followed flowed from that choice.
His videos picked up traction. Management company M88 noticed and offered to represent him. He went all in, dropping out of Cal Lutheran and enrolling in Identity School of Acting in Los Angeles.
At IDSA, Ta‘imua learned Shakespeare and the Alexander Technique, how to strip himself of his own identity to fully inhabit a character.
He befriended one of his instructors, Brandon Mendez Homer. It was Homer who mentioned a role for a character named Mr. Dickley in a short film that satirized Jane Austen novels while destigmatizing menstruation. He thought Ta‘imua would be perfect for the part.
Julia Aks and Steve Pinder, who wrote and directed Jane Austen’s Period Drama, say they’d asked Homer to audition. But Homer, who has a role in the HBO hit series The Pitt, already had a full schedule.
Then they got Ta‘imua’s audition tape.
“My husband is also a filmmaker and he’d seen Ta‘imua’s tape and he was like, ‘That guy is going to be a star and you’d be foolish not to call him back,’” Aks recalls. “He looked the part and his essence was the right essence for Dickley. He had to be charming and earnest and ignorant but you still root for him.”
In the film, Mr. Dickley is proposing to his love, Estrogenia — played by Aks — when he notices she is bleeding. Before she can explain, he sweeps her off her feet, rushes her home and dashes off for the doctor.
The comedy unfolds as Estrogenia’s sisters dream up increasingly ridiculous ways to hide the source of her blood. When the truth is revealed, Mr. Dickley goes from stupefaction to distress and it culminates with a line sure to melt a modern menstruator’s heart: “I want to bring you chocolates when you are cramping.”
“It worked because he so embodied the emotion beneath his lines,” Pinder notes.
Ta‘imua says it worked because he didn’t know much about the topic. As part of the writing process, Aks had asked women about their experiences with menstruation. Some had funny stories, but others shared sobering accounts of living with endometriosis and severe mood swings.
Ta‘imua has a girlfriend, so he isn’t totally ignorant about women’s monthly cycles. Still, the details were eye-opening.
“I was educating myself during the process,” he admits. “I didn’t know much about the actual terms … about what was actually going on. So when we were doing press for the film people would say, ‘How were you able to play him? You were so good.’ And I was like, ‘To be honest I was just playing it straight.’”
Mr. Dickley was a 19th century gentleman. Ta‘imua is a 21st century graduate of an all-boys high school.
Some would call it excellent preparation for a role. Fans of Greenlights might recognize it as living a truth.
After wrapping up his studies at IDSA, Ta‘imua returned to Hawai‘i. His father had been a flight attendant so their family traveled a lot. But Hawai‘i has always been home.
“Traveling a lot opens up the world to you, opens you up to what’s going on out there,” he says. “Then you bring it back and you’re like, ‘Hawai‘i’s a really great place.’ It makes you grateful for everything we have here. Yes, I can go to Japan and all these other places but I can also just go to Kaimukī and experience one of the best restaurants in the world at The Pig & the Lady.”
Back in Hawai‘i, he says he connected with Angela Laprete, who co-founded International Cultural Arts Network with Brian Keaulana and Robert Suka. ICAN aims to elevate AAPI voices in film by offering training in performing arts, screenwriting and industry crafts.
At ICAN, Ta‘imua found a place in the islands that resonated with his inner artist.
“I knew little to nothing about the film community here in Hawai‘i since I started mine in L.A.,” he says. “But (Angela) introduced me to everyone I needed to know and opened the door to so many opportunities, ICAN being one of them.
“I’ve gotten to learn from numerous instructors that ICAN graciously brought in and being a part of that community has been making the transition to living back home easy and invigorating.”
He says he’d love to lend his talents to uplifting other local performers.
For now, he remains focused on acting — and audiences will be seeing more from him. In addition to Hotel Street and Untamed, he’s also in the upcoming indie drama In Starland.
In Starland, set to be released later this year, is the feature directorial debut of actor Ray Panthaki (Boiling Point, Colette) and stars Clarence Maclin (Sing Sing) as a middle-aged man who falls in with a group of young artists. Ta‘imua says his character is best friends with Maclin’s.
“This part is probably the closest to home or my spirit that I got to play,” he says. “He’s very spiritual but grounded. It captures my outlook on the arts. Coming from Hawai‘i, nature and the weight of storytelling just holds a lot of mana. I can’t talk about storytelling without getting spiritual so the weight of that is what the character brought.”
Ta‘imua predicts big things for the project.
“Hopefully we can go the film festival route, to the Cannes Film Festival. But it’s so good, I’m going to put it out in the universe that it’s going to go off.”
To view Jane Austen’s Period Drama, visit janeaustensperioddrama.com. Keep up with Ta‘imua on Instagram (@t8imua).
