Avatar: The Last Airbender star thought he auditioned for James Cameron's Avatar: "I thought I was going to be blue"
Feb. 26, 2024Do you know your Na’vi from your Netflix?
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Avatar: The Last Airbenderstar Ken Leung was confused about just which version of Avatar he’d auditioned for.
The Netflix series is an adaptation of the hit animated series, and Leung plays Commander Zhao in the live-action show. Thanks to the secrecy surrounding the audition process, though, Leung actually thought he was in the running for a role in James Cameron’s Avatar movies.
“The audition, you couldn’t tell it was for Avatar. So it was kind of disguised as a different project,” Leung toldDeadline. “And when I first heard that it was for Avatar, I thought I was going to be blue.”
The Na’vi of Cameron’s Avatar are of course famously blue. Honestly, it’s an easy mistake to make.
“It’s funny, because the audition was set in an investment bank… I was like this corporate poncho, and it was the meeting [with Zuko], the first scene,“Leung told GamesRadar+ of his audition.
“Zuko was this teenager asking for access to his trust at the bank. I don’t even remember what our names were. Zhao’s speech to his troops was this bank executive speech to the bank employees. I had zero wherewithal, I thought it was a whole different project,” he added.
Next up for Cameron’s movies is Avatar 3, which isset to introduce a new type of Na’vi known as the Ash People. Avatar 4 and 5 are also on the way, though not for some time yet.
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Avatar: The Last Airbender is currently streaming on Netflix. You can fill out your watchlist with our guide to thebest Netflix showsto watch now.
I’m a Senior Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things film and TV for the site’s Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.
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