To prepare for Avatar: The Way of Water, Sigourney Weaver reveals that she actually had to train with a Navy SEAL instructor. Weaver played the scientist Dr. Grace Augustine in the original Avatar before joining Avatar: The Way of Water as Kiri, the adopted daughter of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña). Throughout Avatar: The Way of Water, Kiri learns to harness her connection with Eywa to communicate with nature and exhibit strange powers. With future Avatar movies set to star Kiri, Weaver will continue to have a significant role in the series.
Preparing for Avatar: The Way of Water was far from easy for Weaver, who revealed that she needed to train with military instructors to prepare for the role, as she revealed in an interview with The Wrap.
Because of the demanding stunts and the fact that James Cameron gave intense feedback to Weaver, who was struggling with confidence on-set, she found herself seeking external support through Kirk Krack, who teaches Navy SEALs. The training helped ensure that Weaver could complete her stunts and underwater filming. Check out her quote below:
“[Cameron] would talk about our doing this swimming, where we’d be holding our breath for a minute and a half or something, and that was conservative actually. And I just thought, well, I can only hold my breath for about 30 seconds, period, let alone when I’m moving. And yet, [Cameron] never throws out these challenges unless he backs them up with help so you can get there. So we started training with Kirk Krack, who teaches the Navy SEALs, in May of 2017, and we had our first session in the pool. My husband and I and we were able to hold our breath for a minute, just still in the water and we kind of built from there.”
All The Training For Avatar: The Way Of Water Explained
After 13 years of development, Avatar: The Way of Water was always going to be bigger than the original Avatar, yet the fact that it included a significant water element made the production even more challenging. Not only did actors have to learn parkour and archery, but they also needed to develop free diving skills so that they could film underwater, and all while wearing motion capture suits and trying to live up to Cameron's high expectations. Avatar: The Way of Water isn't alone in its expectations, as a Dune 2 villain also trained with Navy SEALs for the upcoming blockbuster, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a burden on the cast and crew.
Why Training For Avatar: The Way Of Water Was So Difficult
While a great deal of Avatar: The Way of Water is CGI to create the Na'vi people and the Pandora world, there were still many practical effects that made filming challenging for them. Water typically makes productions more difficult, but with motion capture suits, the situations only get more difficult. To add even more difficulty, some of the actors had to get in shape or were much older than their characters. Since she was playing a 14-year-old teenager, even the 73-year-old Weaver had to learn parkour and do burpees for the production, which was a high bar to meet.
The actors signed on to the production well aware of the demands, yet some surpassed those expectations. Avatar: The Way of Water shooting back-to-back with Avatar 3 made the filming even harsher, as there was no time for the actors to decompress and catch their breaths. When considering breaths, with underwater scenes lasting minutes at a time, many other actors went through even more than Weaver did. For instance, by staying underwater for seven minutes and 14 seconds, Kate Winslet broke Tom Cruise's breath-holding record of a little over six minutes, which is incredible demand and shows just how much Cameron asked of her. While Avatar: The Way of Water is a technological masterpiece, it's no surprise it was so harsh for the actors.
Source: The Wrap
