The Walt Disney Company
Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington are celebrating the re-release of “Avatar” in a new interview with “Extra’s” Katie Krause. The pair dished on the success of the massive box office hit and revealed when they learned there would be more movies to come.
The duo also spilled secrets about the highly anticipated sequel, “Avatar: The Way of Water.”
Katie asked what was different about the training for the sequel and Sam noted, “We’re underwater.”
That took some serious training, and Zoe revealed she can now hold her breath for five minutes!
She explained, “We did work with world-renowned free divers that train Navy SEALs, and he was training us for weeks and months and we then sustained that training. He gets us in a meditative state, and he helps us lower our heart rate. He helps us learn how to, through breathing techniques, put a lot more oxygen into our bloodstream and eliminate a lot more carbon dioxide.”
Sam called it one of the “scariest… most anxious thing I’ve ever had to do.”
Zoe teased other changes this time around, “We’re coming into it a little older, a little crankier. We’re also parents. A lot that we have to think about.”
Sam insisted, “We manned up,” and Zoe joked, “I put on my big-girl pants and I did it.”
Worthington said of shooting scenes for the film, “Having all these protocols and techniques and at the same time then you have to let them all go and do scenes — and we’re not talking just action scenes, we’re talking emotional scenes.”
Saldana teased what fans can expect, saying, “We did the same thing in part two that we did in part one… We surrendered and beautiful and wonderful things came of it. And the frosting on the cake is you also walk away with skill sets that you had no idea you were going to obtain.”
The first “Avatar” was a megahit, and Zoe said she knew it was different when director James Cameron showed her a rough rendering of Jake and Neytiri. “I just, I couldn’t describe it. I had no grammar to describe what my body was experiencing.”
Sam added, “When you’re making it, you’ve got no idea.”
“Avatar” is back in theaters now, and “Avatar: The Way of Water” opens December 16.