Daniel Dae Kim sees Fire Lord Ozai as the Darth Vader of Avatar

You might consider Daniel Dae Kim a living Easter egg for Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender. The actor from Lost and Raya and the Last Dragon voiced roles in the original animated shows on Nickelodeon: earthbender General Fong on the franchise's 2005 flagship of the same name and Asami's dad Hiroshi Sato on the 2012 sequel series, The Legend of Korra. Now he gets to play the franchise's ultimate baddie in live-action form.

"He's deliciously a villain, and that's what I sank my teeth into," Kim says in an interview for EW's Avatar cover story. "That's one of the things that I was really looking forward to doing. He reminded me of the Darth Vader of this show."

The new series, much like the original animated offering, is set in a fantasy world full of benders, individuals with the power to manipulate either water, earth, fire, or air. Ozai is the ruler of the Fire Nation, which is in the midst of a years-long war for global domination. The only one capable of stopping him is the Avatar, a reincarnated being with the unique ability to harness all four elements.

Star Wars icon Mark Hamill voiced Ozai on the animated series, but Albert Kim, the showrunner of the live-action reimagining, was determined to cast Asian and Indigenous actors for roles. "I've known Daniel for years as a friend, and we've talked on and off about trying to find something to work on together, whether it was his involvement as a producer or as a performer," Kim recalls. "We could never really land on something exactly right. Then, when we got around to talking about by Lord Ozai, I very, very quickly jumped to Daniel's name in my mind."

How does Daniel Dae Kim feel about playing a proper villain in the Avatar universe, after playing more heroic characters in the original? (In the case of General Fong, he at least thought he was being heroic.) "A few of my friends brought up that point, too," he says. "They were like, 'Are you sure you want to play a bad guy?' I was like, 'Absolutely!' I don't want to do just one thing all the time. I think he's so unabashedly evil that it's a joy to play."

Dallas Liu stars in Avatar: The Last Airbender as Prince Zuko, Ozai's son who's on a mission to reclaim his honor by capturing the Avatar, with the help of his uncle, General Iroh (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee). Elizabeth Yu plays Princess Azula, Ozai's much more manipulative and calculating child who's determined to prove herself to be the more capable heir to the Fire Nation throne.

“I really enjoyed exploring this idea that he was so unapologetic about the things that he believed in,” the actor says. “It actually reminded me a little bit of our political landscape today because there are certain people who take such extreme positions without apology and with the understanding that their position is the only correct position. That is how Ozai thinks, in a strange way. In his own way, he believes he is parenting the best way he knows how. He is trying to groom his son to be a successor, and he's seeing that his daughter is naturally equipped to succeed him. So he's trying to figure out who is going to lead this nation into the future.”

“A lot of the O.G. series was [told] through the eyes of Zuko,” Yu says. “I feel like our show lets [Azula and Ozai] have their own start to their story before all the stuff that we know them to do later on."

To learn more about Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender, read EW's cover story.

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