+ Behind the scenes on Avatar: The Way of Water with Cliff Curtis and Sam Worthington

Cliff Curtis tells Kylie Klein Nixon about ‘the most Avatar experience it’s possible to have in real life’.

Before he started shooting on Avatar: The Way Of Water, Kiwi star Cliff Curtis went out to Hawaii with the cast to learn how to play a semi-aquatic alien.

The idea was to give the actors a sense of what it’s really like to live and play underwater so Curtis learned to free-dive and hold his breath for increasingly long periods of time.

It was during a night dive in those crystal-clear waters that he had what Avatar producer Jon Landau would describe as ‘‘the most Avatar experience it’s possible to have in real life, on Earth’’ – Curtis was surrounded by a school of giant manta rays.

‘‘It was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life – to be honest,’’ says Curtis (Te Arawa, Nga¯ ti Hauiti), on a Zoom call from Sydney with his co-star, Sam Worthington.

‘‘I remember rehearsing Whale Rider – our little movie from home – with the director [Niki Caro] and Keisha [CastleHughes, the film’s lead] and we had a room with a chair, and that’s what we had to rehearse. We didn’t get to go to Hawaii and go night-diving with manta ray.’’

It’s been 13 years since audiences last journeyed to Pandora, the mythical world at the heart of director James Cameron’s ecologically-minded sci-fi epics, but, for Worthington, it’s like he’s never been away. He started discussing sequels with Cameron in 2013, was shown production designs and early drafts of the scripts in 2015 and started rehearsals – the Hawaii leg of the production – as early as 2017.

For 54-year-old Curtis, this first time as part of the Avatar family is a ‘‘dream come true’’, and he feels ‘‘blessed, grateful, all the superlatives, really’’, to have been involved in Cameron’s sprawling passion project.

‘‘It’s been the best time for me creatively, in my career as an actor, as a storyteller. I was incredibly inspired by the first film. I felt honoured to be a part of this one – and to bring part of my heritage to it, informed by being Ma¯ ori and part of Oceania and Polynesian culture.’’

Curtis plays Tonowari, the leader of a semiaquatic alien people called the Metkayina, a Caribbean/South American/Pasifika-inspired society we meet for the first time in The Way of Water.

He’s said before that he drew on his Ma¯ ori ancestry to create Tonowari, imagining the Metkayina as a kind of idealised, mythological version of ancient Ma¯ ori culture. But their imaginary struggle against human colonisers is also a metaphor for all the real-world struggles indigenous communities face.

‘‘It’s really about keying into those core values of humanity that largely have been forgotten and discarded. If you go to the Amazon right now, they’re fighting to save their forests against foreign interests that need that land, that do whatever they want to get the resources. That’s actually happening on our planet right now. So even though we’re on Pandora, far, far away, and even though I am of Polynesian descent, these conflicts for indigenous peoples, in very many parts of this world, are present.’’

Tonowari’s emotion may be real, but his look is entirely computer-generated, his turquoise cat-like features mapped over Curtis’ real face and performance, using motion-capture (or mo-cap).

Never one to shy away from a challenge, Cameron wanted to kick the difficulty level up a notch, shooting much of the mo-cap action in massive deep water tanks in Wellington and Auckland, the first film to use performance capture underwater.

In fact, Landau says he prefers the term ‘‘e-motion-capture’’, because they pushed the tech to the limit to capture the actor’s full performance, including their expressions and emotion.

‘‘Anything that you see in the water, we actually did for real as actors,’’ says Worthington, who reprises his role as former grunt Jake Sully, the human/giant blue alien cat-boy hybrid hero of the first film.

‘‘We all learned how to free-dive, which is a technique that slows down your heart rate, calms your brain, allows you to bring more oxygen into your blood and be calmer underwater and not drown.

‘‘I did a scene with a young kid that was hard enough to do on dry land, about a father and a son trying to connect – we just did it at the bottom of the 30-foot tank.

‘‘That in itself is something special and unique that Jim has brought to this story because it lends a level of authenticity that’s going to immerse an audience and make them believe in this world.’’

Over the course of shooting, cast lung capacity increased to the point where Kate Winslet, who plays Curtis’ screenwife Ronal, smashed out a new Hollywood underwater record of 7 minutes and 13 seconds holding her breath underwater, sinking Tom Cruise’s 6-minute Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation record.

It’s quite a leap, from the warm waters of the Pacific, to a chilly tank on a backlot in windy Wellington, but, says Worthington, that provides actors an opportunity to put their imaginations to work.

‘‘We know the world that is going to be digitally created – we can see it, we have the technology. But it is all about us having to believe in this situation, no matter how extreme it may be.

‘‘The whole methodology behind this is to play. That’s how it’s designed. It’s what we learned on the first movie.

‘‘It’s truth – absolute truth between two people in imaginary circumstances. And whether you’re 30 foot under the water, or in a heightened grey volume [a tank-like virtual set where backdrops are projected onto LED walls for performers to play against], it’s about connecting.’’

As a director and as a storyteller, Curtis reckons Cameron does ‘‘an incredible job’’ of creating that space for actors, despite the often ‘‘daunting’’ technology.

‘‘He was able to key us into where we needed to be emotionally for the scene to function. Then we take his lead, and we jump, right? We just go.’’

Avatar: The Way of Water splashes into Kiwi cinemas on December 14.