Jacinda Ardern has a lot to talk about right now.
She’s got a memoir out, A Different Kind of Power, and a HBO documentary, simply titled Prime Minister, on the way. She’s penned an essay for The Guardian, hung out at the Women’s Rugby World Cup, and even found time to write a children’s book.
So it didn’t come as a surprise to see her as a guest on a notable talk show, when Aotearoa’s former PM appeared as a guest on The Daily Show today (September 23rd).
Host Jon Stewart began their conversation by trying to get Ardern’s full name correct. “Right Honourable Dame Jacinda Ardern?” he asked. “It’s a lot,” Ardern replied. “Please, Jacinda.”
Stewart was quick to note the myriad “crises” Ardern had to contend with during her time in office, from the Christchurch terror attack to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were hit with a lot. But at the same, I’d like to think that we still made progress on the things that really mattered to us. We still did a lot on child poverty. We still put in really important climate change law,” she responded.
The high and lows of Ardern’s time in office are fully captured in Prime Minister, which is set for release in New Zealand this week (September 25th).
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The documentary follows her as she deals with the Christchurch terror attack, the Whakaari/White Island volcanic eruption, and the COVID-19 pandemic. It also follows her pregnancy journey, which led to her becoming only the second leader in history to give birth while in office, as well as her private life, all of it captured in home videos filmed by her partner Clarke Gayford.
“Why would she have allowed that clip at that angle?” Ardern said. “More importantly, why would she have allowed her husband to film it?!” Stewart added to a ripple of audience laughter.
“I’ve only seen the final version of it once all the way through, that was at Sundance Film Festival, so it was a very shared experience with the rest of the audience,” Ardern continued. “The bits that are in there it’s fair to say don’t include the number of times I told him [her husband] to leave me alone and stop filming.”
“I’m so glad he persisted… there’s a story I hope that’s told which isn’t just about, you know, what’s it like to lead through a domestic terrorist attack, and through a pandemic, and have a baby,” she added.
“[…] I hope that story is that there’s still humans doing these jobs and we’ll make mistakes. Sometimes we’ll get things right and sometimes we’ll get things wrong. We need more leaders who are willing to be humans while they’re in the job.”
Stewart praised Ardern for her leadership following the Christchurch terror attack, which left 51 people dead after mass shootings took place at two mosques in the city. But, as the host went on to observe, Ardern’s popularity in her home country quickly descended since 2019. “To see that turn was really jarring,” Stewart told her, asking if she was surprised at the decline in public opinion.
“This idea that you’re riding high, I never felt that because I’ve been around politics for so long. I always held on to the idea that what goes up must come down,” Ardern insisted. “And ultimately, whatever political capital that you might have, you’re going to need to spend it.
“The best we can hope for is that politicians spend it on doing the right thing, even if it’s something that’s hard, even if it’s something that you know might not be popular. Just doing the right thing.” It was at this point that Stewart pretended to scribble notes. “I see where we’ve [the US] made a mistake,” he said drily. “‘The right thing’… Yeah, we haven’t tried that one yet.”
Stewart asked Ardern about her previous encounters with Donald Trump, and she recalled a phone call with the current US President following the Christchurch terror attack. Ardern said that she struggled for words in what was a typically formal conversation between two heads of state.
“At that time, I thought, what can I ask? What can I ask of a country like the United States in that moment? And I remember the only thing I asked for was love and support for Muslim communities,” she revealed.
A lighter moment occurred when Stewart told the audience about “a lovely display of New Zealand chocolates on a plate” he discovered in Ardern’s dressing room before the show. With a sheepish grin spreading across her face, Ardern produced an empty packet of the chocolate — Whittaker’s Hokey Pokey Crunch.
“And it was, and I have to say, delicious, but I didn’t know if I was supposed to say, like, ‘Wow, New Zealand. Nice,'” Stewart said. Ardern interjected to ask him to say it directly down the camera, and he happily obliged: “New Zealand… great chocolate.”
Image: Jacinda Ardern at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival Awards Credit: Maya Dehlin Spach/Getty Images
Stewart then asked Ardern about her thoughts on the direction politics is moving in.
“There’s a globalisation of political culture. And I think different nations are feeling it to different degrees,” she said. “But there’s a global survey done by Edelman, it’s a trust barometer. And what they’ve seen across countries is an increase in the grievance people feel. They feel that political institutions are not only not making their lives better, they’re making them harder. 61% of people feel that way.
“And then, as a consequence, 4 out of 10 think hostile action is justified because of it,” she continued, listing “spreading disinformation, or violent online engagement, or even vandalising public property” as examples of this hostile action.
“In order to solve that [hostile action], we also have to think about what’s causing people’s grievance in the first place. And that’s where, as political leaders, we have to take responsibility. The easiest trick is to weaponise fear and blame,” she said.
A potential cure, Ardern contended, “is the type of leadership we have.”
“In these times when people do have a sense of uncertainty, and fear comes out of a sense of uncertainty, when they have financial insecurity, and that is also a feature I think we see globally, when you have those things, leadership matters,” she said.
The conversation briefly veered off track with a discussion of FDR’s positive and decidedly more negative achievements, after which Ardern gave her vision of ideal leadership.
“[…] the answer is empathetic leadership. It takes courage to be empathetic in these times. It is a courageous act to be optimistic in these times. But we need more of it, not less.”
She cited three examples of such leadership: the president of Mexico, “for governing through really difficult times but doing so with dignity and integrity,” and Canada’s Mark Carney and Australia’s Anthony Albanese, who both “used their election night victory speeches to talk about kindness.”
“Why aren’t we talking about that? Why aren’t we talking about those examples where leaders are saying, these are values that matter? So let’s talk about those that are being a little more optimistic in these dark times, rather than some others,” she finished, placing extra emphasis on those last few words.
Stewart ended their conversation with a question Ardern likely expected to hear: will she ever re-enter the political arena?
“I’m very happy as just solely as an ambassador for New Zealand’s chocolate,” was her prompt reply.
It hasn’t even received a wide release in New Zealand yet, but Ardern’s documentary has already had to be publicly defended by its co-director. Some critics have derided the film for not diving deeper into Ardern’s policies and decision-making during her time in office, instead focusing on empathy and kindness.
Co-director Michelle Walshe, however, responded by saying the documentary “was never a political story to me.”
“Politics was the backdrop of a universal story about leadership and a different look into leadership, what leadership looks like with humanity, empathy, kindness at its core,” Walshe told RNZ’s Culture 101.
