Quick Facts
Biography
Chelsea Winstanley is a New Zealand Academy-award nominated film producer. She is mostly known for producing What We Do in the Shadows and Jojo Rabbit (2019), both of which were directed by her husband, Taika Waititi.
Career
Winstanley has Ngāti Ranginui and Ngai Te Rangi ancestry through her mother. She has produced short films such as Meathead and Night Shift. In 2014 she produced What We Do in the Shadows with Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. She has co-produced Merata Mita's domestic abuse documentary Saving Grace, Te Whakarauora Tangata, and also directs documentaries.
She was awarded the 2014 SPADA Screen Industry Awards Independent Producer of the Year, shared with her husband Taika Waititi.
In June 2015 Winstanley was named the New Zealand Women in Film and Television's Mana Wahine recipient at Wairoa's Maori Film Festival.
Personal life
At age 20, Winstanley had a son, Maia, whom she raised as a single mother.
She was married to New Zealand director Taika Waititi, whom she first met in her twenties, when she interviewed him for a TV documentary series profiling Maori artists. They reconnected on the set of his film Boy, and married two years later. In May 2012 Winstanley gave birth to their first daughter, Te Kainga o Te Hinekāhu Waititi. In 2015, she gave birth to their second daughter, Matewa Kiritapu.
Winstanley and Waititi separated in 2018.
