Jacinda Ardern, who was plucked from obscurity, even within New Zealand, to lead her country when she was 37, resigned in exhaustion just over five years later in early 2023. It’s not entirely surprising she was worn out. She came to global prominence for her sympathetic and effective response to a mass shooting in Christchurch in 2019, after which she had to deal with a volcanic eruption that killed 22 people, and then a global pandemic, during which she quickly shut the country’s borders. Fewer than 5,000 people died of COVID-19 in New Zealand (less than 0.1% of the population), but there was deep unrest and lasting protests.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Also, in June 2018, about eight months after assuming office, she had a baby.
Her then partner, now husband Clark Gayford, who was a well-known national television and radio broadcaster before Ardern came to prominence, started to catch some of their private and public moments on camera as her star rose. Those snippets are among the historical footage that makes up the backbone of Prime Minister, a close-up look of what it was like to be a young female leader in a time of global turbulence. It won an Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival when it premiered there in January, had a small theatrical release earlier in the year, and will start streaming on HBO on Sept. 30.
Ardern, who champions a more empathetic and less autocratic style of leadership, sat down with TIME to talk about whether those kinds of leaders still have a role, what advice she’d give to current heads of state, and her odd choice of hero.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity
The new HBO documentary, Prime Minister, is about your style of leadership, which emphasizes compassion and humanity. Does it feel like your approach is not winning right now?
Certainly the alternative approach is very dominant, no question. But it is not the only approach. There are examples of leaders around the world who have at their core the values of empathy and kindness. Mark Carney [of Canada] and Anthony Albanese [of Australia], two recently elected Prime Ministers, both used that critical election-night speech, where you set out your agenda and your vision, to talk about kindness.
You made this movie with your now husband Clark Gayford. He caught a lot of intimate moments, including when you’re about to resign and wondering what to wear. Was there a plan to make a documentary from the beginning?
Clark started picking up his camera, because he’s a broadcaster. I imagine in his mind was, “I’m seeing moments that no one else is seeing, that might end up being important or it might just be good for our family.” And so, no, there wasn’t that set plan; it was just, “I’m gonna catch the moment.” He had to be pretty resilient, because I chastised him, and I ignored him, and I told him off because I’d be working, and then he’d interrupt me with questions, or he’d just have the camera there, and I did treat it as an irritant. I really credit him for persevering.
There’s a moment in the film where it’s clear you’re feeling the weight of the job. And he asks why you don’t delegate more. And you respond in a way that suggests that was not constructive feedback. Did you have a rule about what interactions made into the final cut?
He was the director of photography and a producer. But there’s a reason that he’s not the editor and he’s not the director. The first time I saw the film in full was after it was submitted to Sundance. You just have to trust that if they’re just using footage of you in real life, then it’s going to tell the story.
Would a guy have cared less about what people were saying about them? Is that why more guys go into leadership?
I think it’s actually more a question of personality than strictly gender, what type of leader you want to be and how sensitive you are to the feedback of voters. And nor do
I believe, therefore, that empathetic leadership is the domain of women. We don’t just say, I’ll only teach my daughter kindness, generosity, and curiosity. The values of being a good human should be the values of being a good leader.
You had global attention for a brief period. Most leaders do not have as much road still in front of them after it fades as you do. A. Do you miss the attention or any part of it? And B. How do you figure out what to do next?
Being out of the spotlight is something I’m quite delighted by. However, as time has passed and I’ve looked to what is the next useful thing to do, I’ve discovered I still need to use my albeit small spotlight to talk about the alternatives to the type of leadership we’re seeing now, and to keep trying to be useful on things like climate change and violent extremism and issues that women in public life face. Public profiles and being useful, I’ve discovered, go together.
You had to face and help a country face a horrific shooting. When you hear about the many shootings in the U.S., does it take you back to Christchurch? Where are your thoughts going?
There are very few things that I read about in the political space that don’t take me back in some way. It’s still very fresh—I’ve been gone two years—whether it’s dealing with gun violence or trade negotiations or taking positions on global conflict like Ukraine or Gaza. I don’t regret my decision to leave, but that doesn’t make me stop thinking about what I would do if I was still there.
Is there something you would say to current world leaders?
We all have different domestic issues, but at the core you see a deep sense of uncertainty and fear among citizens. A lot of that’s probably driven by financial uncertainty, incredibly difficult economic times for many Western liberal democracies coming off the back of an incredibly difficult pandemic. In a period of fear and uncertainty, politicians have the choice of either capitalizing on that, stoking it, and driving it towards someone to blame that isn’t the system, because that means that they’re not responsible for fixing it. Or they take the harder road, but the right long-term road, which is being open about the issues people face, working really hard to find the solutions, being honest about how long it will take to make a difference. I think it’s obvious which mode most leaders are taking at the moment.
You say that during the pandemic you wanted to save as many lives as possible, and you wanted to keep people together, and that you succeeded in one of those—saving lives. Do you think that the divisions that we are seeing in many countries are a swing back from that era, when we had to all really pull together?
I’d really love to understand more about the psychology of the period that we’re in. Edelman does the survey of public sentiments towards leadership in political institutions, and also private institutions. And I think what they’ve seen is really interesting: Public trust at the moment is low, but it’s actually about a sense of grievance. People are experiencing hardship, and they have grievances towards those of political leadership and those in leadership in the private sector that they haven’t seen a resolution to the issues that they face. And that then links to their view of what they’re justified doing in response to the grievances.
How do you feel the organizations that fight against violence on social media, one of which you helped found in the wake of the Christchurch shooting, are going?
The Christchurch Call to Action on Violent Extremism and Terrorism Online is a body of tech companies, government, and those who work in the NGO sector and others who have an interest in freedom of expression online, human rights, civil liberties, and so on. It’s got roughly more than 130 organizations that are part of it. It is as important now as it ever was. We didn’t want to just remove extreme violence online. We wanted to address radicalization, and so there’s a lot of work to try and better understand what’s happening to users. We see it, we know what’s happening, but we need more collective action to address it. It is very hard going.
Videos of Charlie Kirk’s shooting, which the mainstream media would not show, were everywhere on social media…
Surely we can agree that publishing standards are there for a reason: to prevent harm, to acknowledge the harm of seeing such horrific acts of violence, to stop the perpetuation of violence. I believe those same standards that apply to mainstream media should apply to social media platforms. I do not believe they are postmen. I believe they are publishers. Can we apply that consistent approach when it comes to fighting extremism?
You were given access to $20 million by Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures to delegate to causes of your choice. Have you found anything?
One of the projects we’re funding is ending maternal mortality in humanitarian crises. Postpartum hemorrhaging is the most common cause of women losing their lives in birth. It is entirely preventable. In areas of conflict and crisis, relatively straightforward measures are not reaching women who need it the most.
What does the future hold for you? Do you have a five-year plan?
Never have, never will. I’m currently at the University of Oxford. Some of the work there is on empathetic leadership. But I’m COP30’s special envoy for Oceania this year. I’m still doing the work with Pivotal. I’m still doing the work with the Christchurch Call to Action on Violent Extremism Online, and I still have the Field fellowship.
The explorer Ernest Shackleton is a hero of yours. He died heavily in debt, he often failed to pay his crew, and was a borderline alcoholic…
He also attempted, badly, to enter into politics. Not a perfect human.
Why him?
Anyone who possessed this overwhelming desire to face near certain death on a regular basis is going to be unusual. The elements of him that I admire are around his leadership in the face of extremely difficult circumstances. He did not succeed at most of the things he set out to do, but in dark times, he never lost sight of the priority of bringing people together, unifying them around a common purpose and maintaining their optimism. He said true optimism is true moral courage, and that it is a courageous act to be optimistic in dark times.