Sullys stick together — both on and off screen.
Avatar: Fire and Ash returns to the world of Pandora, following the close-knit Sully family as they face off against a deadly new threat. The third film in James Cameron’s epic saga has assembled a vast cast of characters, including the return of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña). But much of the film centers on Pandora’s younger generation — including Sully children Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuktirey (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), the human boy Spider (Jack Champion), and their Na’vi friend Tsireya (Bailey Bass) from the water-dwelling Metkayina clan.
The young cast filmed 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water and Fire and Ash concurrently over a period of years, which meant they essentially grew up together. On set, they formed a tight-knit bond, building their friendships as both colleagues and classmates.“
A lot of it was in set school,” Bass tells Avatar.com. “As child actors, we had to have hours where we’re doing homework!”
“I do think a lot of our bond did come from those in-between moments,” Champion adds. “It was those hours in between filming when were in school. It felt like an area where all of us could hang out and bond.”
“When we’d be doing set school, the crew members would often bring their dogs,” Bliss says with a laugh. “Whenever we could get a break, we’d be like, ‘Let’s go pet the dogs!’ At least, that’s what I was thinking about in school.
The young actors had varying levels of experience when they first signed on to join the world of Avatar, but once they arrived on set, they threw themselves into training. They say James Cameron was a particularly welcoming guide, and he helped them navigate both the performance-capture process and the film’s more dramatic moments.
“It was really nice to have Jim lead us through,” Bass explains. “We really got to trust him and just memorize our lines. We did so much training beforehand with dialect and movement and allowed him to lead us through the emotion.”
And there was a lot of training. In addition to learning skills like parkour and free diving, the cast had to learn how to walk and talk like Na’vi. That meant working closely with movement and dialect coaches, as well as their on-screen parents. Bliss, for example, paid close attention to how Saldaña carried herself as Tuk’s mother Neytiri, while Bass studied Kate Winslet (who plays Tsireya’s mother Ronal).
“That’s what we were taught when we were in movement training, to walk with your chest high,” Bass adds. “They don’t move with their heads like humans. They’re walking with their chest.”
Avatar: Fire and Ash also finds the Sully family facing off against a new antagonist: the imperious Varang (Oona Chaplin), who leads the fierce Mangkwan clan. On screen, Varang is a deadly foe, but when the cameras stopped rolling, Chaplin became one of their closest friends.
“She immediately would walk out of the scene as Oona with her beautiful, majestic braid, looking so kind with a smile on her face and a very different laugh than Varang,” Bliss remembers. “She warmed my heart as a person, but it definitely breaks my heart whenever I’m looking at Varang!”
The previous film included plenty of complicated scenes and stunts, but Avatar: Fire and Ash brought several new challenges. Champion’s character Spider takes on an expanded role in the new film, and he remembers shooting one particularly tough sequence, where Spider has to dash through a human settlement. After months of running barefoot on mossy forest floors and sandy beaches, the concrete floor felt strangely unfamiliar.
“The concrete is always wet!” Champion says with a laugh, shaking his head. “I don’t know why they always had to spray it down because it just makes things so slippery! I’m running and sliding into things. All those slips that you see were me actually slipping and running into something. But I just kept going because they wanted those little imperfections to make it look messy, to make it look real.”
“I think it added to the performance, but it also gave me some bruises,” he adds with a laugh.
Bass similarly remembers one brief moment early in the film, where she has to pull herself out of the ocean and on to a small Metkayina boat. “I had to lift myself up and then crawl down into the boat while it’s rocking,” she explains. “It seems so smooth, but I was so proud of myself. I remember Carla [Meyer], our dialect coach, was like, ‘Bailey, I’m so impressed with how effortlessly you just did that!’ It’s a testament to the stunties that trained us on set that we were able to make it look effortless. But it’s not easy to do that!”
All that effort ultimately paid off: Avatar.com spoke to the cast the day after the Avatar: Fire and Ash Hollywood premiere, where they finally got to share the film with fans. Sitting in the dark theater, watching the audience return to Pandora, is a moment they say they’ll never forget.
“I felt this great breath of relief when [the audience] was reacting,” Bliss says. “They seemed so happy and thrilled, and I was on that thrill with them.”
Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters worldwide on December 19, 2025. Get your tickets now.
