Zoe Saldaña Explains Why Her 'Avatar' Character Is A Racist

Actress Zoe Saldaña recently declared that her character Neytiri from James Cameron’s Avatar films is a racist.

In an interview with Cinema Blend, Saldaña said, “Let’s face it, Neytiri’s a racist. And she loses sight because of this blind fury that she has. She loses sight that the person that she loves the most and respects the most in her life is her husband and he is human. He is a sky person.”

“And I think it takes a lot of courage with Jake to be honest with her, and to force her — even knowing that she is broken — that he knows that she needs to face this because he sees the direction that she’s heading,” she continued. “And I think it’s much more familiar to him where Neytiri is heading than for Neytiri herself.”

“So it was powerful, and I think that we really needed to go there. But I can’t tel you enough how great it was to also take her off every evening and just put her on the side and just go home without her weight on me.”

Saldaña made similar comments in an interview with Blavity. While discussing her character’s arc, she said, “She was intense. She was feeling a lot of intense emotion. Experiencing the unimaginable tragedy of losing a child is something that no parent ever wants to even talk about. It’s unfathomable. And as a consequence, as a result of that, she’s given up. Man, she’s like a full-blown racist. And she’s so blinded by rage that she’s almost unrecognizable to Jake.”

“And he knows that this is not who she is,” she continued. “And it’s not until the Sully children that they begin to heal her and begin to heal Jake as well that they realize, ‘Oh my god, like this family is our fortress. We can do this.’”

“I think that Jim did not want to shy away from just all the heavy burdens that they were feeling in their bodies and in their lives,” she concluded.

Similarly, in another interview with Collider, she said, “Neytiri’s a full-blown racist in this movie. I was discussing it with Jim. I think it was important for me not to run away from that for her. This is a woman who has experienced an extreme amount of loss at the hands of a race, of a species that she unrecognizes as her own, and that she doesn't understand.”

“She doesn't want to accept them, and yet she falls in love with one of them and has a family with them. So she is being challenged, and her faith is being challenged. But what Neytiri must do is she must grow. She has to, because her children depend on it. Her children are her teachers, and not just her teachers; they’re also Jake's teachers, and I love that Jim allowed Jake and Neytiri to recognize that, to discover the strength and courage in all of their children, and to accept when they needed to be guided by them,” she said.

Saldaña also told MovieWeb, “Spider is a physical reminder of everything that has been taken from Neytiri, and she's so blinded by her fury and her hate. I mean, she's a full-blown racist in Fire and Ash, and to a degree that Jake doesn't really recognize her anymore, and she's a stranger to herself, and she's abandoned the will of Eywa in the sense that it's like it's a child. Doesn't matter where this child comes from; you must love them. You have to take it in. This child doesn't have a home, but every time she looks at that child, she's just reminded of how triggered she is by it.”

“love that arc that Jim was able to give Neytiri because her rage is so big towards the sky people, but if she doesn't conquer the rage within her family, then how can she ever conquer the sky people? It was really beautiful and interesting,” she continued. “Jack Champion played his role as Spider so beautifully because there's this curiosity and this bravado that he's learned from Sully. He’s so brave, and reckless, and yet he's just so humanly humble and empathetic and understanding of the ways of Eywa and his people. So it was just so beautiful.”

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