None, however, were a bigger hit than James Sie.
“I’ve got to say, we had a lot of big names.
He was probably the biggest celebrity we had on set,” Kim tells EW.
Nickelodeon; FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images
Avatarfans know Sie well.
Now Sie is reprising the character in live-action form for Netflix’sAvatar: The Last Airbender.
Kim explains how it all came together.
“We were committed to making sure our casting was culturally, ethnically appropriate,” he says.
“So we [had an] all Asian or Indigenous cast in our show.
It’s not something that we wanted to do.
So that actually precluded us from going to a lot of the actors from the original show.”
“One of the things I said was, ‘Why not go back to the original?
Why not get James involved?’
“I’m like, ‘No, no, no, no.
That’s not going to happen,'” he recalls.
“Once I told them we were going [with] James, they all said, ‘Of course!
Yes, that’s a much better idea.'”
For those who aren’t familiar with the world ofAvatar, Sie’s appearance may seem like nothing.
For fans, it’ll be a satisfying Easter egg.
“Some people wore Cabbage Man shirts,” Kim remembers of that filming day.
So that was a fun day.”
Avatar: The Last Airbenderpremieres Thursday, Feb. 22. on Netflix.
