Over the last 30 years, Daniel Dae Kim has been a recurring presence on our big and small screens alike, from the culture-shifting Lost to the Oscar-winning Crash. He's played dads (wholesome) and daddies (less wholesome), and sometimes those roles have converged, as in Netflix's live-action reboot of the beloved cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender – a series about a fantasy kingdom separated into four elemental nations that have been ravaged by war – where he takes on the villainous Fire Lord Ozai.
“Very often in my career, I've played good guys,” Kim tells GQ over video call from Seoul. Not so much in Avatar – Ozai is about as far away from a good guy as you can get. He’s callous and deranged, with domineering sheets of metal and leather armour, and a long pointed beard that’s only marginally less sharp than his cheekbones. He's the Big Bad of the series (albeit one that's so ripped it's caused some people to question their allegiance to the show's hero).
As the king, he looms over the Fire Nation, which has imperialist ambitions to rule the rest of the kingdom, as well as his own children, Zuko (Dallas Liu) and Azula (Elizabeth Yu), who he pits against each other and hardens with physical and psychological punishment. He's not exactly in the running for Father of the Year. “I like to think that he's trying in his own way to guide his children,” he says. “He doesn't necessarily listen very well to his kids, but he is trying to solidify his legacy and make this family a dynasty.”
Here, Daniel Dae Kim talks to GQ about the challenges of adapting a much-loved property, his shirtless fight scene and the likelihood of a season 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
GQ: Mark Hamill voiced Ozai in the cartoon. Have you had a chance to meet him?
Daniel Dae Kim: We've never met but we actually had a nice little Instagram exchange because he saw an interview answer that I gave regarding him. He saw a clip and said thank you, so I responded and said it was all true. I have a lot of respect for him, not just as Luke Skywalker, of course, but he's one of our greatest voice actors.
One of the most pivotal scenes in the series is the fight Ozai has with his son Zuko where he gives him his facial scar and then later banishes him. What preparation went into that scene?
The physical preparation was intense. In the animated series, he's shirtless, so I thought ‘Uh oh’. I wasn't sure how authentic they wanted to be, and sure enough, the showrunner was like, 'Oh, yeah, we're gonna do that'. So I started to work out and I started to diet. I'm not immune to vanity, so I thought, well, at least I should try and look pretty good. But I did not want to look like someone who was unreasonably fit, if that makes sense. He's not meant to be a WWE wrestler, he's meant to be someone who has great skill and power that comes from his [fire] bending. You might find this disingenuous, but hand on my heart it's true – some actors enjoy the vanity of being shirtless and welcome it and I've worked with those actors. I am not [one of them]. If that's my last shirtless scene, I won't be sad.
That scene is probably the most vulnerable we see Ozai, where he maybe feels bad about what he's doing to his son. Is that how you interpreted it?
I was trying to add in a little nuance there so that it wasn't just full-on hatred, anger and frustration. There was guilt, there was conflict, there was pain. That's what I was trying to communicate.
What are the challenges of performing fights that have been adapted from a cartoon?
Our stunt team did a great job in helping us imagine what the supernatural elements of the fight would be. We have the physical hand-to-hand combat, but then with the addition of the firebending and the special effects, it required a certain specificity and suspension of disbelief on our parts. [Imagining] a huge beam of fire going 30 feet across and believing the effect that it would have. I give a lot of credit to the stunt team for being so specific about it and saying 'If you want to create this kind of blast, it's this kind of a movement’. That imagination became part of the choreography.
In the original cartoon, Ozai is shrouded in secrecy until he's finally revealed. But in this, you're shown almost immediately. Why was that a necessary change when bringing it to live-action?
I think it was a dramaturgical function. There was an effort made to deepen all of the primary characters earlier on. If you look at Sokka's story and Katara's story, certain elements got pushed up. I think the reason they pushed up my story was in service of Zuko because we wanted to feel what his motivations were and why he was relentlessly chasing Aang. I personally applaud the decision, because I think you care so much more about the primary four than you would otherwise. It's the right decision.
In the finale, we see Ozai has even more deranged plans for world domination. Everything about him is about legacy. What did you try and tap into there?
I kept thinking, like, what happened to Ozai when he was a child that he would think that this is the way to show your kid his destiny? I did look at his line to succession… the fact that he is a second child, and how that's not the natural lineage for a king. So what kind of ambition does it take to supersede the rightful heir to the throne? There's that phrase that I think of – ‘hurt people hurt people’ – and I wonder ‘What was Ozai’s trauma as a child?’ because he's clearly passing it down.
The finale massively sets up a season 2 with a cliffhanger. In the cartoon, Ozai descends further into madness. If season 2 happens, is that something you'd look forward to exploring?
A descent into madness sounds like juicy territory for an actor, and it's not something I've explored before on screen. Should we be lucky enough to get a season 2, I look forward to those conversations. Nothing is inevitable in this business and in this industry climate, but there seems to be a lot of excitement about it.
