Michael Alisa bombed his first monologue in an acting class.
He loved it.
In acting, the former BYU football player found something he’d lost when his playing career ended — the pressure to deliver. The preparation, the performance, the feeling of having everyone watching, it all reminded him of football. It offered the adrenaline rush he had been missing.
“I just felt such a rush,” Alisa said of that early experience. “I thought to myself, that’s the feeling that I’ve been missing from football, is this feeling of performing and all eyes on you.”
At BYU, Alisa was a promising player whose career was repeatedly interrupted with injuries. The dream of playing professional football never became reality. But the setbacks that ended his football dreams prepared him for another pursuit.
“The biggest thing that prepared me for acting was the setbacks,” Alisa said. “At BYU, I was, unfortunately, I was riddled with a ton of injuries starting with my junior year.”
Alisa climbed the depth during his sophomore season, earning a starting role by the year’s end. But entering his junior year, he broke two bones in his right arm, sidelining him for the season.
He returned for his senior campaign only to suffer another injury that derailed his comeback. During a redshirt season, he was injured again. When Alisa returned for his final year, he said he was playing with “duct tape holding me together.”
“That was so heartbreaking ... you have NFL scouts talking to you and now you’re seeing this dream kind of slip,” he said. “By the end of that, I was almost — I was probably bitter and just very lost. What do I do now if I’m not a football player?”
At the painful end of his college football career, Alisa moved into sales. He later opened a gym and began exploring acting through commercials.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, he decided to take acting more seriously, signing up for classes and throwing himself into auditions. But despite countless attempts, nothing major came from them.
Then he saw an open casting call in Hawaii for dancers in the live-action “Moana.” His first reaction was doubt. Alisa knew he would be competing against professional dancers and felt he was “nowhere near the level of talent that you will have on this island.”
Still, his sister convinced him to audition.
‘This was huge’
Alisa said he went to the live-action “Moana” audition with a simple mindset: Whatever he lacked in talent, he could make up for in effort.
“I’m gonna go all out and high energy, big smile on my face,” Alisa said of his approach. “I went in there with nothing to lose and was just having a good time.”
The strategy worked. Alisa got a callback.
He returned to read lines and was later asked to submit an audition tape with a vocal performance. Then came silence. Four months passed without hearing anything, and Alisa assumed the opportunity had passed.
Then the call came: Alisa has been cast as Tautai Vasa, Moana’s wayfinding ancestor.
The role was small. Tautai Vasa had no lines and only brief screen time in the animated “Moana.” But for Alisa, that didn’t matter. “I just wanted to be part of this film,” he said. “This was huge.”
During his two weeks on set in Atlanta, Alisa noticed the crew was capturing several hero shots of him, leading him to believe his role might be bigger than he initially imagined. Still, he assumed much of what they shot would be snipped from the final cut.
“Then the movie comes out and every single hero shot that we did, that was in there,” Alisa said. “No cuts.”
Seeing the film for the first time during the Los Angeles premiere at the Hollywood Bowl was emotional. Alisa brought his wife to the event, and by the end of the film, she was in tears.
“I had so many different feelings. I cried the first time I saw the animated one, and I still get emotional watching it, just because hearing Pacific Islander languages being spoken on a Disney film, it’s like, for me, it’s just crazy,” said Alisa, who is Samoan.
“To see that representation, it just makes you emotional. Feels like you’re being seen,” he continued. “I felt a sense of pride and just humbled at the same time — that it was me up there.”
A win for Pacific Islander representation
Growing up, Dwyane “The Rock” Johnson was one of the few Pacific Islander faces Alisa saw in entertainment. Now, he is grateful his 10-month-old daughter will grow up with “Moana” — a film that brings Pacific Islander representation to a new generation.
For Alisa, that means his daughter can see a Disney heroine who looks like her and shares a connection to her family’s culture.
“Identity is so important in terms of confidence and self-belief,” he said. “And being able to look back on ancestors, on your heritage, and say, ‘OK, they were doing great things, therefore I must also have greatness inside of me.’”
He has enjoyed seeing a similar response from others in the Pacific Islander community.
“I see people filming in the theater and you can see their kids crying and see adults crying. And it’s so beautiful,” he said. “The reality is that it is so much more than a movie for so many of us because it’s something that we’ve never seen. We’ve never gone to a theater and seen our cultures represented in that way.”
Working with ‘The Rock’
Johnson, who plays the demigod Maui in the “Moana” franchise, visited set only once while Alisa was filming.
When he arrived, production briefly paused. Johnson was accompanied by his mother and two daughters, who were dressed in costume and blended in with the other background actors.
For Alisa, it was a surreal moment. A lifelong fan of Johnson, Alisa was “freaking out” when he saw the actor. Johnson had commented on several of Alisa’s social media posts after he was cast in the film, but Alisa assumed those messages came from a PR team running Johnson’s account.
After completing the take, production wrapped, and Johnson introduced himself to Alisa.
“I was trying not to fangirl too hard,” Alisa said. “That did not go according to plan because I was like, ‘Dude, you’re my hero, I love you so much.’”
Johnson was “gracious and down-to-earth,” Alisa said. During their conversation, Johnson asked about a bodybuilding competition Alisa had recently posted about — revealing he was the person behind the social media comments.
That night, after their conversation on set, Johnson reached out to Alisa with a voice message praising his performance and thanking him for being part of the film.
“That he thought to do that, like, with all the stuff (he) has going on ... that’s what makes him so special,” Alisa said. “That’s why he’s so successful, I believe, he’s that kind of person that really goes the extra mile to make people around him feel special and feel seen.”
He continued, “They say don’t meet your heroes, but meeting him totally blew me away — how present he is with you and just totally makes you feel like you’re the most important person in the world right in that moment.”
Alisa also earned praised from Lin-Manuel Miranda, who co-wrote all the music for the animated “Moana,” and called the actor the “the handsomest man alive.”
“That might have been one of the crazier things that happened,” Alisa said. “I couldn’t believe that this legend in the Broadway scene and just in music and creativity, this brilliant mind and this person that I admire so much would post me. That was insane.”
After the high of receiving praise from his heroes and being part of such a meaningful story, Alisa continues to pour himself into auditions and pursue acting.
He hopes audiences who see the live-action film find something meaningful in it.
“Even though it’s about Pacific Islanders and Pacific Islander culture, I think there’s so many crossovers to other cultures and universal themes that we can all relate to,” he said.