Zoe Saldaña Says James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ Documentary Will Likely Arrive Before ‘Fire and Ash’
As Zoe Saldaña prepares for the upcoming release of filmmaker James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash, she has also revealed that another Avatar project will be dropping sooner than later. It’s been an exhilarating year for Saldaña, following her Oscar win earlier this year for best supporting actress for her role in Emilia Pérez, and…
As Zoe Saldaña prepares for the upcoming release of filmmaker James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash, she has also revealed that another Avatar project will be dropping sooner than later.
It’s been an exhilarating year for Saldaña, following her Oscar win earlier this year for best supporting actress for her role in Emilia Pérez, and she’s now gearing up for her Fire and Ash press tour, with the film hitting theaters on Dec. 19.
But before audiences return to Pandora on the big screen, she’s also looking forward to fans getting a behind-the-scenes look at how the cast and crew bring the Avatar world to life with a new documentary that she says Cameron has been working on and is expecting to release before the franchise’s third installment.
“Now I feel that time has arrived where we get to invite people into a deeper sort of place, which is backstage,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter about the forthcoming doc. “And that’s where I honestly believe for all of us artists, that’s where the true magic happens.”
As Saldaña awaits the release of Fire and Ash, alongside eager fans, she’s also been keeping herself busy. The actress just starred in a new T-Mobile ad spot, alongside Jeff Bridges and her husband Marco Perego, for their new iPhone offer, which sees new and existing customers get a freeiPhone 17 Prowith any condition device trade-in on T-Mobile’s Experience Beyond plan.
Below, Saldaña chats with THR about Avatar: Fire and Ash and the future of Cameron’s hit franchise, the newly announced season three renewal of Lioness and her thoughts on AI-generated actors and their impact on Hollywood.
How fun was it to have Jeff Bridges in your real kitchen with your real husband, Marco Perego, for this new T-Mobile spot?
For me, it was a blast. I think that for him, Marco will definitely have something else to say besides that it was fun. He was very nervous, but the whole team at T-Mobile, we’re already so familiar with them, so it was really good. It was a great experience all around. And I think we were both nervous because we were working with Jeff Bridges. Yes, Jeff is so down to earth and so approachable, but he’s Jeff Bridges and to us, it means so much. It was sort of the overall sentiment with the whole team there on the shoot, so we were all kind of fanning a bit (Laughs).
I also want to give you a much-delayed congratulations on your Oscar win earlier this year for Emilia Perez. Now that it’s been some time since that special night, what goes through your mind when you reflect on that moment?
Every actor, every director, every producer, every writer, it’s their dream come true. I never thought that it would happen, and I was already finding so much joy all over again, just being an artist and feeling lucky enough that I was able to still make a living doing what I love. So it was an unexpected and yet very overwhelming and beautiful surprise.
Looking ahead to the end of this year, what are you looking forward to most with Avatar: Fire and Ash finally coming out?
The kind of connection that I receive by playing these characters and being a part of these special stories it’s also one of the reasons that I still do what I do. It keeps me sort of in tune with the world. It makes me feel like we’re all a part of something special, that we’re all trying the very best that we can in a world that sometimes may seem a little broken. I take solace in the fact that I’m able to connect with strangers I’ll never ever get to know. But through one story, through one experience on the silver screen with a story, we’re all kind of connected. And Avatar is that kind of special story that, though it’s a simple story and the themes in Avatar feel familiar — sometimes in a good way and other times in a not-so-pleasant way — it still connects us.
Having filmed Fire and Ash from 2017-19, that’s quite a large gap between production and the film’s release date. What’s it like promoting a film you shot over five years ago?
I think that the hardest part, and many fans can relate with this, [is] I hate having to wait so many years for the stories to come out because I really do personally enjoy them. But I understand being behind the scenes, being backstage with the crew that’s led by James Cameron, just something so special takes time. And Jim is someone that… he’s just a relentless, curious mind and he gets to share that curiosity with everyone that follows him, especially his crew and his team. So I get to feel very honored that I am a part of something that stands the test of time. And in a way, because we don’t have control of how much time it takes to make, it makes it even more precious. There’s something really special about it that is very humbling
You’ve also been a huge champion for motion capture performances and that they deserve recognition by the Academy. Why do you think these types of performances often get overlooked at the Oscars?
I just think we don’t understand technology, and not every storyteller is a scientist (Laughs). I think that what makes you a craftsman or craftswoman and an artisan is the fact that you’re just used to making everything with your hands. It almost feels that when a machine is there doing it with you, you almost misinterpret that and believe that artists are having a machine do things for them. And that takes time for everybody to understand. We’re not all techies, not every artist is tech-savvy, myself included.
Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) in Avatar: Fire and Ash.
Courtesy of 20th Century Studios
You also recently mentioned that director James Cameron is working on an Avatar documentary to show what all goes into making these films. Do you have a status update on when fans could see this doc?
Yes! I think we are going to be able to see it before Fire and Ash. It’s still being sort of finished and fine-tuned. And I’m happy! I’m really happy that that time has come where we get to really lift the veil, lift the curtains, and invite everybody backstage to the world of Pandora and what it takes to come together. I know that Jim has been a little hard on himself lately, thinking that maybe he did us and he did the film and the sacrifices that we all made being a part of Pandora, that he did us as a disservice. But I do believe that Jim was doing it for the sake of fans and this desire that he just didn’t want to rob them of being transported into this beautiful planet. When you see the wiring of how things happen backstage, it kind of keeps you from really going on that voyage.
Now I feel that time has arrived where we get to invite people into a deeper sort of place, which is backstage. And that’s where I honestly believe for all of us artists, that’s where the true magic happens. Because you are using everything that you have been teaching yourself, all the resources that Jim and his team have been facilitating to us as artists, we are able to then put that into use. But we can only do that by using our imagination, so it is child’s play at the deepest level. And for adults, that’s all we ever want. We always want to go back to that one time where we felt lost in our own thoughts and our own imagination, and that’s what acting is. So it takes a lot of preparation, it takes a lot of hard work, a lot of physical strain to do that. So I’m most looking forward to the whole world understanding that we’re not just lending parts of us, we’re really pouring everything that’s in us into what we’re doing in Avatar.
I know James recently mentioned that the future of the Avatar franchise, including the fourth and fifth films, is a bit unknown, especially with the rising costs of VFX effects. Have those conversations started about thepossibilityof those films still happening or not?
These are conversations that have already [been] initiated, and look, we’re all under this understanding that the fact that we are about to release Avatar: Fire and Ash is already something that’s unimaginable for all of us. We knew how expensive Avatar one was. The fact that we were able to come back for two and three was such a big sacrifice, and we don’t overlook that. So I do understand that four or five are going to demand that kind of work and time and budget and, at the end of the day, it’s in the hands of our fans. If they go and see Avatar: Fire and Ash and they feel like they want to keep coming back to Pandora, then how could Disney and Fox and James Cameron resist? The fact that we can go to Orlando and visit Pandora in Disney World, that there’s a park opening up in Asia, oh my God, it’s unbelievable. So I would love for this to continue!
In recent years, there’s been a lot of discussion in Hollywood around AI, most recently regarding AI actress Tilly Norwood, who wasunveiledat the Zurich Film Festival last month. What are your thoughts on the threat of AI when it comes to performers and creatives in the industry?
We all play a very important role in this. I think that AI is the next step in living in a world that is connected digitally and through technology. I think we’re 20, 25 years too late trying to prevent something that should have been stopped three decades ago. But the best that we can do is regulate it and you regulate it by creating laws that never permit any of us tampering the integrity of one’s work.
Also, it depends on the storyteller. This is a very powerful tool and it should be handled by people with integrity that are people of their word. And I do believe that this world still has people like that. James Cameron is one of those people. If he looks at you and he says, “Listen, I’m not going to tamper with your performance. This is going to be you,” you believe him. We’re at the mercy of each other, and you want to test a man or a woman’s power, what is it you want to work? You give them power. So at the end of the day, if it falls in the wrong hands, we’re in trouble. But if it continues to be regulated by people of integrity, then rest assured that we will learn how to always manage technology and now allow technology to handle us.
Taylor Sheridan’s Lioness was also just renewed for a third season. How excited were you when you got that news, since it was such a delayed renewal?
I mean, how excited am I to come back and work with Oscar, award-winner Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman, people of certain pedigree like Michael Kelly, Jill Wagner, LaMonica Garrett? I feel honored, and we’re all a part of the Taylor Sheridan umbrella. This is a man that is extremely controversial but also incredibly talented, and he speaks to the working man and the working woman, and that comes in all shades and all sizes from all backgrounds. And I’m happy to be able to sort of incarnate a character like Joe McNamara, that is a woman that is so patriotic, but also she’s a very, very proud woman. So I carry it with a lot of integrity and pride.
