Although Sigourney Weaver’s Dr. Grace Augustine ended up dying in the first Avatar film, one of the first surprising details director James Cameron shared about the film’s sequel, Avatar: The Last Airbender, was that Weaver was set to return as a mysterious new character. While Avatar’s story of symbiotic aliens could potentially lead to the resurrection of Dr. Augustine in a fictional way, it turns out that Water Road is taking a much more surprising approach to bringing Weaver back into the franchise.
The first trailer for Avatar: The Way of Water revealed that its story will focus on the blended family that ex-human Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Na’vi Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) create after the original film. As surprising as it was to see Jake and Neytiri seemingly adopt a human child, in a recent interview with Empire magazine, Cameron shared more details about the couple’s other child, Kiri, which may point to her being the more intriguing of the two brothers and sisters.
Although Kiri is a teenager, Cameron revealed that Weaver will play the character and that the 72-year-old actress had “all kinds of fun” working with real teenage girls to develop a sense of what kind of person she is.
“Sigourney just got younger,” Cameron said of Weaver’s performance on set. “She looked younger, had more energy and never came out of Kiri throughout our capture period. She had a glow in her face and a lightness in her step and a fun spirit.
Interestingly, Cameron also shared that Kiri is adopted, meaning that there might be some connection between her and Dr. Augustine, aside from being portrayed by the same actress. Weaver didn’t share much about her new character, but she did describe how she was able to enter Kiri’s adolescence with familiarity, recalling how awkward she herself was at that age.
“I felt strongly that Kyrie was going to be uncomfortable a lot of the time,” Weaver said. “She’s looking for who she is. I was excited to get this challenge from Jim.”
Avatar: The Last Airbender hits theaters on December 16.
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