Avatar: The Last Airbender executive producers Christine Boylan and Jabbar Raisani spoke with ComingSoon’s Tyler Treese about the second season of the hit Netflix show. The pair discussed casting Toph for Season 2, the growth of star Gordon Cormier, and why this season isn’t actually shorter than the first despite having fewer episodes. Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 begins streaming on June 25.
“Avatar: The Last Airbender follows Aang, the young Avatar, as he learns to master the four elements (Water, Earth, Fire, Air) to restore balance to a world threatened by the terrifying Fire Nation. In S2, after a bittersweet victory saving the Northern Water Tribe from the invading Fire Nation, Avatar Aang, Katara and Sokka regroup and set off on a mission to convince the elusive Earth King to aid in their battle against fearsome Fire Lord Oza,” says the official synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Christine, it was so exciting seeing Toph in live action finally. Your team nailed it with the casting. What made Miyako Cech just the perfect choice for Toph?
Christine Boylan: Oh, that’s an amazing question. Thank you, Tyler. Okay, so we’ve both been a part of huge casting sessions before, and Jenny Jue is our casting director on Season 2. She’s really terrific. Her body of work is really amazing. She saw so many people.
Jabbar Raisani: Thousands of them.
Boylan: Thousands, really, and then narrowed it down to, what did we get, a hundred or so?
Raisani: Tapes that we would watch.
Boylan: Tapes she filtered, yeah. Then we went through, and casting for me, I think it is the theater kid in me, it’s all about gut. I had a gut feeling about Miyako when we first saw her. Then when we did the chemistry read, which was live in person with Gordon, the way we used to do casting all the time, Miyako walked in like an earthbender. She held the space. Boom, right away, my gut was just like, “That’s Toph. Toph is here.”
Then she had all the things that we needed. She has amazing technique, she has a great imagination, she’s a lovely person, and is willing to work with everyone. So yeah.
Raisani: I think in that chemistry read, I would give her some really big notes just to see how she took adjustments. We both looked at each other like, “She’s the one. She totally gets it. She nailed it.”
Jabbar, Gordon has grown both physically and as an actor since Season 1. You guys use that to your advantage in Season 2, as there’s a moodiness to Aang, and some tensions flare up. What’s been most fulfilling about getting to present Gordon with more complicated material as the show goes on and that he’s up for the task of really doing it justice as well?
Raisani: Gordon is an extremely hard worker, and it’s great to get to see him really start to grow as an actor and come into his own. Having worked with him on Season 1, it was a different experience. He was 12 years old when I first started working with him, and now he’s a teenager and can think much more deeply about things.
I remember in Season 1 trying to describe an emotion to him that he hadn’t really had an experience he could connect to. Now he’s been through a lot more, so he can draw from a lot more. We also had an amazing acting coach that worked with everyone, Sara Arrington, and she really helped everyone tap into the skills that they already had and continue to develop them.
It’s just so much fun. You get to play a lot more as a director. It’s like, “Hey, let’s try this version” or “Let’s try that version.” It opens up a lot more avenues. In post, we have a lot more choices. We’re like, “Do we want to go down this path or this path?” You can make a much more nuanced performance, which hopefully you’re feeling from having seen the season.
Boylan: Even rewriting on set, we had that opportunity once they showed up and did boot camp for Season 2. You could see what they’re capable of. So, casting Miyako, we got to work with our blindness consultant, Joe Strechay, and kind of start to rewrite and go further and make more jokes and just be wilder.
Seeing where everybody had come back to us from a sense of maturity, they had worked on their stunts, they had worked on their physicality, they’d worked on their acting. So we got to write up even more. Pushing, keep pushing.
Tyler Treese: Christine, this episode count is slightly shorter than the first season. It was seven episodes and ends on a cliffhanger. Can we expect more than seven episodes for Season 3?
Christine Boylan: I cannot tell you anything about Season 3. I’m getting a high “no” sign [laughs].
But I can tell you that there’s not less. There’s only seven episodes, but our runtime is longer for Season 2 compared to Season 1. So we have a lot of story. We have a lot of what are really important to me: moments of character and moments of silence. I’m a big fan of Miyazaki, and my favorite show right now is Frieren. I like quiet moments with characters, so we get to do that. It’s not always running at a crazy action pace. We’ve got both.
Thanks to Christine Boylan and Jabbar Raisani for taking the time to talk about Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2.
