James Cameron and the AvatarTheWayOfWater cast open up about the rigorous training everyone went through to prepare for the sci-fi sequel's underwater scenes.
James Cameron had the Avatar: The Way of Water cast undergo rigorous underwater training in order to hold their breaths for several minutes. Much of the original cast from 2009's Avatar has returned for the upcoming sequel subtitled The Way of Water, including Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Giovanni Ribisi, Dileep Rao, and Matt Gerald.
Cameron: You want it to look like the people are underwater, so they need to be underwater. It’s not some gigantic leap — if you were making a western, you’d be out learning how to ride a horse. I knew Sam was a surfer, but Sig and Zoe and the others weren’t particularly ocean-oriented folks. So I was very specific about what would be required, and we got the world’s best breath-hold specialists to talk them through it.
Cameron: Kate’s a demon for prep, so she latched onto the free diving as something that she could build her character around. Kate’s character is someone who grew up underwater as an ocean-adapted Na’vi — they’re so physically different from the forest Na’vi, that we’d almost classify them as a subspecies. So she had to be utterly calm underwater, and it turned out that she was a natural.