Sigourney Weaver has addressed “legitimate concerns” surrounding her kiss scene with a teenage co-star in Avatar: Fire and Ash.
Released on 19 December, the third instalment of James Cameron’s sci-fi epic sees Weaver, 76, reprise her role as Na’vi teenager Kiri, the adopted daughter of Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully and Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actor clarified details surrounding her kissing scene with co-star Jack Champion, who plays the character of Spider, and who was a teenager when they shot the film.
“That scene where I say, ‘You’re perfect just as you are,’ we had to be very delicate about that scene because it included a kiss,” Weaver said.
The star, best known for her portrayal of Ellen Ripley in Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise, made it clear that she and Champion did not actually kiss for the scene, stating: “Obviously, I wasn’t going to kiss Jack, who was 14 or 15, in real life.
Instead, Cameron asked Champion, now 21 years old, to “pick someone [Weaver] could kiss and he did”. Similarly, she said, “I imagine when I wasn’t there, they picked someone appropriate for Jack”.
Speaking about the age gap between them, Weaver continued: “That concern about all of that, which is quite legitimate, was going on. And I’m glad the scene survived, because when I saw it, I believed it.
“It’s so genuine between the two of them, and any concern about Jack’s real age and my real age, I think there’s no room for it there,” she added.
Weaver clarified that the kissing scene was the only time that the duo worked separately in the nearly three-year filming process.
She praised Jack’s portrayal of Spider – a “human boy” who connects with the Na’vi species – saying that he breathed life into this “interesting role”.
“I thought Jack was just terrific in the film. It just drives the whole film,” she said, “that incredible tension in a mixed-race family where the parents have completely opposite feelings and the children don’t have those feelings. I thought it would really resonate in our complicated world.”
In a separate interview with Entertainment Weekly, Champion shed some light on their dynamic, revealing that when he and Weaver first met they only had one scripted scene.
“But then for the next like 30 minutes, Sigourney and I just literally riffed,” he recalled. “We really just used our imagination, and it was fun. Really, since the very beginning, Sigourney and I have been so locked in imaginatively that I’ve always been able [to] see Sigourney, then see Kiri.”
Since its release, Avatar: Fire and Ash has received mixed reactions. In a three-star review, The Independent’s film critic Clarisse Loughrey notes: “James Cameron’s blue epic remains visually impressive, but it’s frustrating how little he gives his actors to do.”
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