From the outside, though, it still looked like Grut was thriving.
His 10,000 Dreams series, in which he posts one video a day of himself asking one person what their dream is, was still going several years in and had earned him tens of thousands of fans on social media.
The series itself had attracted some impressive names, with the likes of Hollywood couple Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, Bear Grylls, Wimbledon winner Jannik Sinner, the Irwin family, and Elmo from Sesame Street all featuring over the years.
But Grut’s goal to make it as a film-maker – the same dream he’d had since the age of 7 – was not happening, no matter how much he hustled.
“That was my dream my whole life, up until maybe 22 or 23. I dedicated everything to that goal,” Grut told Real Life.
“I made a feature film when I graduated from film school at 19, funded by family and friends, and I was like, ‘I’m going to win an Oscar, I’m going to be the youngest Oscar winner of all time’. Then the film bombed and my parents had to mortgage their house.”
A few years later, he told Cowan, Grut hit “rock bottom”. He all but gave up on his film-making dream and his marriage to the person he had been with since he was 13 ended.
“I hit the point of going, ‘You know what? Screw this… I’m done chasing my dream, I’m giving over to you [God]. Now you take the wheel. This ain’t working. I’m all in to whatever the heck you want me to do with my life.’”
That moment, which the committed Christian describes as making an “all-in contract” with God, came just a month before the opportunity that would ultimately launch his film career – co-producing Hot Potato, an Amazon Prime documentary about The Wiggles.
“I look back on my life and all the tough times, the rough things I’ve gone through, and I’m so grateful because it’s made me who I am today, really,” he said.
“I hate to name-drop, but when I was filming Ashton Kutcher’s dream, I told him about my Peter Jackson dream and he said to me, ‘Fraser, you’ll only ever be the second-best Peter Jackson, but you could be the best Fraser on the planet’.
“When he said it to me it hit really hard. It just hits different when someone you look up to says something like that. I think that was the moment I started to embrace Fraser and I was like, ‘wait, I just want to be the best me’.”
Grut told Real Life it’s been a long journey to make peace with the fact he may never emulate his hero Jackson. After wrestling with it for most of his 20s, the 31-year-old thinks he’s finally been able to let go of that goal.
“I still want to make feature films and everything, but ultimately the dream now is to be the best version of myself [and understand] that God’s made me with unique giftings,” he said.
“I look back on my life and all the tough times and rough things I’ve gone through I’m so grateful for because it’s made me who I am today.
“It shaped me, it made me stronger in my faith, and it humbled me big-time. I had a huge ego when I was younger – a huge ego, my goodness. I’ve been humbled multiple times in my life, and I’m so grateful for it.”
Grut says creating the 10,000 Dreams videos is him “being the most authentic version of myself”, but admits that when it started in 2016 he never envisaged that it would end up being what he would commit his life to.
“It started nine years ago as a bet made in Titirangi, Auckland. The plan was for one year, one dream every single day – it was called 365 Dreams,” he told Real Life.
“About 200 dreams in, I think God worked on my heart a little bit and I kind of started to realise maybe this is the thing I was born to do, and so I changed it to 10,000 Dreams because I thought it sounded cool.”
Fair to say, Grut hadn’t done the maths. Filming and posting 10,000 dreams would take at least 27 years and four months to accomplish.
Now nine years and 2247 dreams in, Grut says it has become easier to get high-profile people to feature in the series. He says about 500 have been celebrities.
“Terry Crews, Israel Adesanya, Richie McCaw – there’s been so many and it’s been ridiculous, man. I don’t know how it happens. [It’s] the power of shooting your shot – most of them were cold emails.”
That said, the rejections still keep piling up: “I still get rejected every day by multiple people. You just get used to the no’s, and the no’s don’t scare me off anymore.”
Grut says the project has made him an advocate for people pursuing their dream, no matter how humble or lofty it may seem.
“I believe every single person on the planet has a unique dream that is catered to them.
“That doesn’t have to be ‘I want to change the world’ or ‘I want to be president’. Your dream could just be ‘I want to be a great dad’, ‘I want to have a home’, ‘I want to just have a job’ – that’s an amazing dream.
“I think it took me a long time to realise that. I think maybe the first half of this journey, I was all about the crazy dreams give me the juice, like ‘you want to win a Grammy’, ‘you want to win an Oscar’.
“And now I’m like no, all dreams are just as important and just as special.”
Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7.30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.
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