Avatar: The Last Airbender star Ken Leung thought he was auditioning for a job in James Cameron’s Avatar as a substitute of that of Commander Zhao on the Netflix sequence.
Chatting with Deadline, Leung admitted he hadn’t heard of the beloved animated sequence earlier than he was awarded the function and laughed that, when he was informed the function was for Avatar, he thought he’d “be blue”.
“I did not know the unique in any respect,” Leung mentioned. “Perhaps it is an age factor however I did not learn about it. To begin with, the audition, you could not inform it was for Avatar, it was sort of disguised as a unique challenge. And after I first heard it was for Avatar I believed I used to be gonna be blue.”
Leung mentioned this served him effectively, nevertheless, as he did not have the strain of realizing the unique portrayal of Zhao and subsequently may let his model of the character flourish.
“Wanting again, I sort of love that I got here in clean,” he mentioned. “As a result of when you’ve concepts you possibly can sort of corrupt a pure course of. You are available in clean, issues will come into it that may inform your enjoying of it in a approach that it may not for those who got here in with preconceived concepts or plans. So I used to be grateful for that.”
The Netflix adaptation premiered on February 22 and likewise stars Gordon Cormier as Aang, Kiawentiio Tarbell as Katara, Ian Ousley as Sokka, Dallas Liu as Zuko, and Paul Solar-Hyungas as Uncle Iroh.
In our 7/10 overview, IGN mentioned: “The live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender sequence enriches the unique story with significant new materials, however its breakneck pacing, exposition-heavy dialogue, and hit-or-miss results aren’t exactly in steadiness.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll discuss The Witcher all day.