Three's The Project is embracing Te Wiki O Te Reo Māori by doing their entire show in te reo on Friday.
The Project's executive producer Jon Bridges said he wanted the team at The Project to step outside their comfort zone and do something different for this year's Māori language week.
"It's something that we can do that's going to be different, exciting and new and ideally catch the imagination of Aotearoa," Bridges told Newshub.
The entire show will be in te reo but it will be subtitled in English so everyone who's watching can enjoy it.
"We want to make sure that is accessible to the whole country because that's the idea, we are not about excluding people," Bridges told Newshub.
He said doing the show in te reo was to embrace the language and show support for it.
"We want to have fun and celebrate the language that is a real taonga for New Zealand."
Project host Kanoa Lloyd said doing a whole show in te reo would be daunting but it is something she was willing to have a go at.
"One thing that really helped me climb this mountain, was thinking of my daughter, and how I can help her connect to Reo Māori. Doing this show is a way for me to show her that she is cool and her whakapapa and her language are cool," Lloyd told Newshub.
Both Bridges and Lloyd said the team behind the show has worked extremely hard to make having the show fully in te reo a possibility.
"We wanted to do an ordinary The Project show, but spoken in Māori, we’ve got a really lovely mix of people in the programme. A leading community doctor, two brothers and their lovely dog, plus musicians, who all speak Reo. I think it’s really special to highlight them, speaking in their own language on a prime-time show," Lloyd told Newshub.
Watch the show tonight at 7:00pm on Three and Three NOW
