Home and Away EXCLUSIVE: Real reason behind Rob Kipa-Williams' exit

Rob Kipa-Williams is best known for his role on Home and Away as the head of the Parata family. The star played Ari Parata for two and a half years, devastating fans when he quit the show in March 2022.

His character was killed off in an emotional scene after succumbing to a rare form of cancer, leaving his onscreen family shattered. Since his exit, the actor has kept a low profile on social media after choosing to move back to Aotearoa (New Zealand).

However, he has been quietly working on one of his most important projects yet. In a chat with Yahoo Lifestyle, Rob reveals the reason he left the soap was due to a ‘calling’ and pull towards his Māori culture.

The Kiwi actor recently purchased a 220-acre farm in the Kaipara with three of his friends, and is currently immersing himself in te reo Māori to become fluent in the language.

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“[There] was definitely a part of me that was calling to come back [to Aotearoa]. It’s always been sort of a calling to learn te reo, and I think it just came up really strongly in the last two years, and then [I] finally made the move to do it,” he tells us.

Te reo Māori has finally had a resurgence over the past three decades, but Māori were previously beaten for speaking their native language, and it was only recognised as an official language of New Zealand in 1987. Rob acknowledges this and explains why he’s making the effort to reclaim te reo.

“It takes one generation to lose a language, and three generations to get it back,” he begins. “My grandfather…and grandmother were in that era that they were beaten at school for speaking Māori. And my grandfather’s older brother, [Māori] was the only language he spoke when he was younger.”

He adds that once his grandfather was older, he could no longer speak Māori, which was passed down to his father and then to himself. For Rob, it’s crucial to have a grasp on te reo Māori so he can represent his family and culture ‘without having to prepare something’ in advance.

“It’s a really important part of the next phase of my life,” he sums up.

Rob’s ambitious new project

The star also touches on an app he has been developing called HAAAA. He began recording Polynesian meditation sounds that were truly authentic and fused them with cinematic music. The word Hā in Māori means ‘breath’ and the app name plays on that word.

"HAAAA is the sound we all make when we exhale regardless of language," he explains. Each ‘A’ also stands for ‘atua’ meaning ‘god’, symbolising the gods of earth, air, fire and water.

“If I was to do nothing else in my life other than this, I’d die a very happy person creating meditation music,” he tells us. “I wanted to create a brand of Polynesian meditation music that maybe hadn’t been heard before.”

The app has meditation tracks in six languages that represent the Cook Islands, Tahiti, Samoa, Tonga, Hawaii and Aotearoa.

The actor’s passion for the project is clear, and one of the key composers for Disney’s hit film Moana, Opetaia Foa’i, jumped at the chance to write the music. His Moana soundtrack spent 23 weeks inside the Top 10 on the Billboard Top 200 Chart when it was released, as well as being nominated for a Grammy Award.

“The thing that interested [Opetaia Foa’i] the most is that one of the areas that I want to specialise in or work towards is helping kids, Polynesian kids, Māori kids with their mental health,” he recalls.

“Then I came back to New Zealand, started recording sounds…it’s was a really cool, creative process to pull these tracks [together].”

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Rob plans to visit different Polynesian islands in the future, something that Covid-19 put a stop to previously, and he wants to be able to communicate freely.

“I want to travel to the islands and meet the people that I wanted to meet…face to face, and be able to stand and say things in my own language,” he says.

"There's a part of me when I'm dealing with musicians and artists...I [want] to fully know my own language so that I can do it justice."

You can download Rob Kipa-Williams’ HAAAA app here or find him on Spotify here.

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