Roseanne Liang and Gordon Cormier, who plays Aang, in Avatar: The Last Airbender Photo: Roseanne Liang
Netflix's live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender is arguably one of the biggest productions of the year. The project, which has a budget of US$120 million, has captured imaginations worldwide since its debut last month. Today, Netflix confirmed the series will be renewed for two more seasons.
One of the visionaries behind the new show is Asian-New Zealand creative Roseanne Liang. Serving as co-executive producer and director of episodes five and six, Liang knows the responsibility she carries in taking a beloved story from script to screen.
"It is a huge weight to bear," she says.
"We wanted to provide the best thing in the spirit of why we love the original Avatar and that's all we can really operate through. Have faith, trust our instincts that our hearts are pure, our minds are true and we're doing the best we can."
It all started in 2021, when Liang's agent called her about the show. Netflix was looking specifically for pan-Asian directors and her name was on the list.
"I knew about the show because all my friends had been saying 'you need to watch it' at various points. I was like, 'oh it's a Nickelodeon animation' and they're like, 'no, you don't understand. It is life, it's got one of the best dramatic arcs ever, you've got to watch this show' ... I watched the hell out of the three seasons and became a convert. Everything everyone told me was true."
Liang says there were huge challenges in adapting a 20-episode, half-hour animated series into eight hours of epic live-action television.
"The world is so rich, there's bending, there's all this flora and fauna and animals, it's this pan-Asian, indigenous world that is taking from cultures that seem familiar to us but are different and new. The challenge of that world-building was vast.
"It's also hard to get the tone into your head - you can do silly things like sucking frogs and cactus juice in the animation - because it's animation - but I don't know if you can have the tonal whiplash in a live-action like that.
"We'd always have to find that line. The dramatic can't be too dramatic, we've gotta undercut it with probably a quip or something, but the funny can't be too slapstick cause people will be like, what is this."
Roseanne Liang on the set of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Photo: Roseanne Liang
Liang says casting for the project also came with a bit of pressure. Season one follows a 12-year-old Aang, 14-year-old Katara and 15-year-old Sokka, and finding young actors capable of undertaking the roles was "scary".
"They're all teenagers. I think Dallas (Zuko) is a bit older but still young, just in his early 20s. It's all about casting the right actor - and person. Because the person needs to be able to deal with the pressure of what they're about to go through.
"The children had an incredible support network though. Dallas Liu and Ian Ousley (Sokka), they were best mates, they chose to room together in Vancouver where we shot and they were each other's support buddies. I just love their bromance, it's a beautiful thing when cast members look after each other like that."
The Netflix adaptation attracted some scrutiny after the creators of the original series - Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino - stepped away from the project citing creative differences after being involved for two years. Liang says their departure was "a source of pain and dismay".
"We cared so deeply about the source material ... at the same time, we know what we're doing it for. Some things won't live up to people's understanding, we're never going to be able to completely mimic or mirror the animation, but some things - I've gotta hand it to the writing team - some things they made even better."
A plot tweak in episode six, directed by Liang, follows Zuko's journey in a way that strengthens what the character stands for - Liang argues, better than the animation itself. While episode four features the addition of one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking flashbacks of the series, the funeral of Iroh's son Lu Ten.
"The Leaves from the Vine storyline about how much Iroh grapples with his part in the war and the cost of who he was in the army, the writers were like, we think we can add this moment in here to really cement the relationship between Zuko and Iroh.
"Zuko did an immense kindness to Uncle Iroh by sitting with him in mourning and it is a gift that Iroh repays. That relationship is one of the most rewarding, beautiful, fun, funny relationships of the whole series."
As a Chinese-New Zealander, Liang says it was a huge honour to be involved in a project that highlights the richness of a pan-Asian, indigenous world.
"It was the ethos of the entire production team that we do something new in this sphere that won't draw the silly, polarised calls of "wokeness" because it makes complete sense in this beautiful world that Bryan and Michael created in the original series. It was always diverse and that was their vision.
"All we had to do was serve that vision and it was just the most natural thing in the world."
Roseanne Liang in the RNZ Auckland studios, March 2024. Photo: Samuel Robinson/RNZ
While she hadn't worked on a project of this scale before, Liang could draw on rich experience from her involvement in local productions such as Creamerie (with RNZ's own Perlina Lau), Banana in a Nutshell and My Wedding and Other Secrets. She hopes her success inspires other New Zealand creatives to aim for the stars.
"Just because we come from a small country or are part of a diasporic community, that's no barrier to working at this level ... whether it's your ethnicity or your upbringing, don't let it limit you because you can get there."
In fact, Liang's "New Zealand-ness" was a strength on set. Wearing an 'Aroha Mai, Aroha Atu' shirt, she explained that the Māori phrase means 'love received, love returned' - an understanding that helped connect with the First Nations indigenous crew that worked on the show.
"The ethos that we have in New Zealand, the multi-cultural understanding of people and relating to each other, it helps - so much of my job is feeling people's energy and giving my own energy back to them and growing up in New Zealand where these - usually indigenous - ideas of how to serve people and act with love has served me so well.
"It's really been nothing but an asset to my entire process."
