Uli Latukefu
Uli Latukefu is an actor, born 1983.
Playing Dwayne Johnson at eighteen is a peculiar assignment. You have to be recognizably him without doing an impression, and you have to do it in a series the real man is part of. Uli Latukefu took that job on Young Rock and made it work, which is the main reason his name travels.
Born in Sydney in 1983 to Tongan parents, he is an actor and a singer, and his first significant international role was Byamba in Marco Polo, a character written with more interior life than that expensive series usually managed. Ridley Scott then cast him as Cole in Alien: Covenant and in the short prologue that preceded it. At home he played Darren Ngata on Doctor Doctor from 2017 to 2020, Father Matteo in the miniseries Devil's Playground, and Jesse Walsh on Harrow.
The recent run has spread him wide: The Champion in Black Adam, Nicky Salapu in Next Goal Wins, Bombardier Ray Ngatai in Danger Close, Palau in Black Site, Tongan Sam in Last King of the Cross, and roles across the Australian series Laid, Countdown and The Last Anniversary. That is a lot of work in a short stretch, and the parts are still mostly defined by size and presence rather than by what he can do with a scene, which is the standing frustration of a career built this way. Young Rock suggested there is considerably more available.
Movies (5)
TV (9)
Where to start with Uli Latukefu
The strangest job here is also the best place to start: Young Rock. Latukefu plays Dwayne Johnson through his college years, and the trick of the performance is that he catches the cadence and the scale without ever tipping into mimicry. It is a warm, silly, surprisingly well-made sitcom, and he is the reason it holds together.
Marco Polo is the big-budget one, and Byamba is a warrior given more inner life than that show usually bothered with; he takes the opening.
Among the films, Alien: Covenant puts him in a Ridley Scott crew, and Next Goal Wins gives him Nicky Salapu in a true underdog football story, easily the most emotionally direct part he has been handed. Black Adam is the blockbuster paycheck. Of the local work, Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan is the war film and Last King of the Cross the meatiest of the series roles.