Sigourney Weaver’s Journey To Playing A Teenager In Avatar 2 Is A Bizarre One

If you somehow remember what happened in 2009’s Avatar, you might be wondering how, exactly, Sigourney Weaver is returning to the franchise. After all, her character is very dead after the events of that first film. Yet, somehow, she plays a major role in Avatar: The Way of Water. How is that possible? Easy, she plays her own child–sort of.

In The Way of Water, Weaver plays Kiri, the adopted daughter of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who are now parents to a gaggle of children. Interestingly, the 73-year-old Weaver’s character is a teenager in the new film. A strange twist, for sure, but one the actress was very committed to figuring out.

In fact, she was so committed that she went back to school–seriously. Speaking at a press conference for Avatar: The Way of Water, Weaver explained that “Luckily, there was a long time to prepare, and I went to high school classes and a few other things, so I could hear the pitch of [teenagers’] voices, and there’s a big range of who an adolescent is between 12 and 15. And once I saw that, I was like, okay, I can let Kiri come out. Whoever that is, combined with who I was at 14.”

So Kiri is essentially a mix of modern-day teens and Weaver coming of age herself. “I was this tall when I was eleven,” the actress admitted. “So it gave me so much to work with, and by the time I got there, I just so enjoyed leaving this shell behind, and becoming this sometimes brat.”

As for the nitty-gritty of how this all works in the plot, director James Cameron is trying to simplify things. “Well, Grace’s avatar was still alive,” he said. “It has no mind of its own because it needed to be infused with Grace’s consciousness in order to move around and talk and so on. But [she] turned out to be pregnant, a vessel for this little baby.”

So Grace (Weaver) was dead, but the Na’vi body she inhabited wasn’t–but it was also pregnant. Now, Jake and Neytiri are raising the child as their own, and it remains unclear if the child has a father or who that is.

As for what to expect from Kiri, Cameron explained, “There’s something unknown about her, something enigmatic about her, and I think Sig walked a beautiful line of classic teenage awkwardness, and yet as she comes into her power, as she comes into her strength, she’s not a warrior.”

Expanding a bit on the character, Weaver said, “When we first talked about it, it was 2010, and we just had this idea [of] a girl who was more comfortable in the forest with the creatures and the flora and the fauna.”

There’s plenty of forest on the planet of Pandora, but here’s hoping Kiri also feels comfortable in the water if the film’s trailers, clips, and title have anything to say about it.

Avatar: The Way of Water is in theaters on Friday.