Jonah Takalua
| Jonah Takalua | |
|---|---|
| Summer Heights High, Jonah from Tonga character | |
 |
|
| First appearance | Episode 1 (Summer Heights High) |
| Last appearance | Episode 6 (Jonah from Tonga) |
| Created by | Chris Lilley |
| Portrayed by | Chris Lilley |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Student (Year 9) |
| Family | Rocky Takalua (father) Teresa Takalua (deceased) Mary (sister) Moses (younger brother) Three unnamed siblings Grace (aunty) |
| Relatives | Mamafu (uncle) Aisi (cousin) Melody (cousin) |
Jonah Takalua is a fictional character in the Australian mockumentary series Summer Heights High, and the titular character in the six-part Jonah from Tonga. He is portrayed in brownface by Chris Lilley, who also created the two shows. In 2007, referring to the character's appearances in Summer Heights High Sydney Morning Herald television critic Michael Idato wrote that "Jonah Takalua is well on the way to becoming the voice of his generation."
In writing Summer Heights High, Lilley decided to base the series around three key characters (all portrayed by him) through whom he could examine three different experiences of high school, that of the schoolboy (Jonah), that of the schoolgirl (Ja'mie King) and that of the teacher (Mr G). He created Jonah to explore the world of the male student, with the character's delinquent, disruptive personality arising from Lilley's desire to play a character very different from himself and the person he had been at high school. In order to develop the character's voice and mannerisms, he met and interviewed Pacific Islander children and "just naughty teenage boys", studying their behaviour and speech patterns. "Chris goes out and meets people his characters are like and he makes studies of them, takes notes or interviews people and sometimes films them. He watches those videos over and over and over," says Ryan Shelton, who collaborated with Lilley on his first series, We Can Be Heroes: Finding The Australian of the Year.
As a white man in his late thirties, Lilley knew he could not easily pass for a Tongan teenager, and so deliberately surrounded Jonah with other Pacific Islander boys in order to make him more believable. "I knew that physically I didn't really look like a Tongan kid but if you surrounded him enough with the other kids and got the hair right, maybe people would get the illusion." He found playing Jonah more challenging than his other two roles, Mr. G and Ja'mie, but also considers him "the most rewarding to watch, perhaps because he is the most different to me".
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Wikipedia