Dive into the world of bending with the cast of Avatar: The Last Airbender! Gordon Cormier, Kiawentiio, and Dallas Liu spill on hope, duty, and friendship in our exclusive interview. From tackling emotional scenes to finding personal connections, discover how they brought their characters to life. Don't miss this epic journey starting Feb 22, 2024, on Netflix!
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00:00 The show is amazing and I'm old enough to remember when the cartoon premiered in 2005.
00:04 Oh, the premiere of it.
00:06 Yeah, like I saw the pilot, right?
00:08 Okay.
00:09 And there's a lot of themes that really, I feel like they transcended from the cartoon right into the show.
00:15 Arguably, it underscores themes of duty and friendship and honor and that's not just at an individual level but also of nations.
00:24 I wonder from each of you, what do you hope people take from the show?
00:28 Like for my character, the confidence and growing into who you are and staying true to yourself and stuff like that.
00:36 That's a tough one.
00:41 I'd have to say, obviously, one of Katara's classic lines is "hope", right?
00:48 And I think this show, after having seen it now, gave me hope.
00:52 And I hope that fans are able to pull from that as well and that your life will be this journey of ups and downs.
00:58 But I think as long as you keep progressing and moving forward with whatever it is in front of you, things will start to look up.
01:06 That is inspirational. Y'all gotta make that quote. That's gotta be an Avatar quote.
01:12 With you talking and then the quote popping up.
01:15 Thanks, man.
01:16 And what about you? I mean, you're Aang, you're the Avatar.
01:19 I really hope people draw just like responsibility.
01:25 Because if you follow through with your responsibility or whatever you have to do, things are going to happen.
01:30 And Aang doesn't want to be the Avatar, but he does it anyways and he becomes the Avatar. So it's just incredible.
01:38 Now all of the characters have really devastating backstories, right? Katara's mom.
01:43 My whole nation.
01:45 Your entire nation, right?
01:47 My whole nation.
01:49 Were those really emotional scenes, like when Aang goes back to the destroyed Air Temple, any of those scenes for any of you?
01:56 Were those hard to do? I mean, I saw the show with missing some special effects, right?
02:01 And the work in progress on Netflix.
02:03 And that seems like those were really hard scenes to shoot and there's a lot of emotional scenes.
02:08 Were there any in particular that were challenging?
02:11 A lot of the flashback stuff was really important for me to see.
02:17 I know that Meadow playing my younger self, or young Katara, she did an amazing job with that flashback stuff.
02:26 And I know it was really important for me to be there when they were filming that.
02:31 Just to experience it with them.
02:40 Seeing her again whenever we get to do that one scene, that was pretty tough for me.
02:49 I think it was super important in my mind.
02:53 And in reality it was such an important scene.
02:57 After all this time, after that replaying of that one horrible memory, finally being able to feel her again, that was so huge for me.
03:08 Gordon?
03:10 A really tough scene, or just tough scenes in general for me were really sad scenes.
03:17 Because me and Aang are just so happy and just really deeply energized characters.
03:26 For me to play a sad part of my role where I have to be sad and feel sadness and just that sense of happy was just really tough for me.
03:39 But it turned out.
03:42 All I had to do was, it's funny, I thought of my hamster because of the dog.
03:47 I had a hamster at that time and he passed away.
03:51 Most people are like, "Oh, it's just a hamster."
03:53 But he was my buddy. I just think about him every single crying scene.
03:58 And then like, "Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop."
04:01 Anything that sticks out for you playing Zuko?
04:05 I think all of the flashback stuff was interesting because for the first half of the series you see him as...
04:12 You see how desperate he is to capture the Avatar, but slowly on later in the series you get the flashbacks of him being the complete opposite as a kid.
04:20 He's happy to be a part of the Fire Nation and he hasn't experienced that trauma yet.
04:25 Until you see later on that when he has...
04:28 I've never experienced anything near what Zuko experienced in our show.
04:35 So there wasn't a lot that I could tap into personally, but it was more so something that I had to figure out when I became Zuko.
04:46 Whether it was writing in my journal, listening to music, simple things like that in my daily life when I was off set.
04:53 Awesome. Well, thank you so, so much. It's great to be here with all of you.
04:56 It was nice meeting with you. Thank you so much for speaking with us.