James Cameron He is in luck thanks to the success of Avatar: The Sense of Water, and he does not stop giving interviews and making different appearances in public, and in one of the last ones he has revealed a secret that nobody would have expected.
Specifically, the film director has indicated that during a particular scene he gave the reins of direction to Sigourney Weaver to guide his double, Alicia Vela-Bailey, during the filming of Avatar: The Water Sense.
“I think about the day when (Kiri) was in the spirit world and was with her mother, (Grace), and (Weaver) was going to have to alternate rapidly between Grace… and the daughter, who just needed some emotional support and playing the scene for herself. So, we had a very reliable stuntwoman, Alicia Vela-Bailey, who Sigourney was working with. We did something interesting, which was… Alicia would do some of the things that Sig couldn’t physically, like jumping on the tank like a…happy 15-year-old gazelle girl,” she says.
“I said, ‘Okay, I don’t want to direct Alicia, I want (Sigourney) to direct Alicia,’” Cameron says. “I wanted you guys to go out and create a trusting relationship, where the things you couldn’t physically do, you could tell Alicia how to do them for you. That was my memory of that. So I basically said, ‘Okay, I’m giving you that directorial role,’ so Alicia would do what you saw Kiri acting and moving, and so on. And Sigourney did about 90% of his own stuff, including everything underwater. But there are some things that Alicia did.”
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“AVATAR” Q&A with James Cameron
The role in the shadow of Alicia Vela-Bailey
And it is that Sigourney Weaver, 73 years old, cannot carry out all the scenes of Avatar, especially those that require a great physical condition, and has a double actress with whom she must live for many hours to understand herself.
Specifically, his double Alicia Vela-Bailey is specialized in all kinds of acrobatics and physical demands and, nevertheless, she has already worked as a double in other film licences, and also in the first of Avatar.
Be that as it may, it is surprising to see that James Cameron has given the reins to Sigourney Weaver in a very particular scene and, in view of the results of the film, he was absolutely right about it.
