When Ken Leung was approached to star in the live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender for Netflix, the actor thought he was auditioning for an entirely different project that’s also called Avatar. Namely, the James Cameron movies. The Lost star wasn’t familiar with the beloved Nickelodeon series, and the secrecy surrounding the Netflix adaptation didn’t help the confusion.
“I didn’t know the original at all,” Leung told Deadline during The Last Airbender‘s red carpet premiere. “I mean, maybe it’s an age thing? But I didn’t know about it.”
Leung, who landed the role of Commander Zhao on the live-action series, says the audition process kept things purposefully vague and definitely worked in throwing him off track.
“First of all, the audition — you couldn’t tell that it was for Avatar. So it was kind of disguised as a different project. And when I first heard it was for Avatar, I thought I was going to be blue,” Leung said with a laugh.
Before #AvatarNetflix debuts on Thursday, get familiar with the cast. In this clip, Ken Leung tells us about his character (Commander Zhao) and how he landed the role pic.twitter.com/KTMMu8l337
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) February 20, 2024
Confusion aside, Leung is actually happy that he came into the series “blank” and without knowing anything about The Last Airbender‘s epic story and fervent fanbase.
“When you come in, when you have ideas, you can kind of corrupt a pure process,” he said. “When you come in blank, things will come into it that will inform your playing of it in a way that it might not if you came in with preconceived ideas.”
Avatar: The Last Airbender is now streaming on Netflix.
(Via Deadline)
