It’s easy to imagine the filmmaking process of the Avatar movies being very complicated. Not only do all of the actors have to imagine the world of Pandora while waring motion-capture suits, but even actors like Jack Champion had to film both live-action and performance-capture scenes. However, there was still apparently some room for goofing around amid production, as the kid actors launched a swear jar while on set. That alone is funny, but what really cracks me up is the pricing for the specific words, including F-bombs.
The 2025 movie release Avatar: Fire and Ash may be PG-13, but Trinity Bliss told THR the set i apparently R-rated when it came to language. She told a funny story about how while filming years ago, she and Jack Champion (who play Sully family members of “Tuk” and Spider, respectively) decided to have some fun and create a swear jar for each on-set curse word:
(Laughs.) Yeah, it’s funny to look back on it now. I’m like, ‘Wow, we did that.’ It’s also really funny because Jack and I became contributors to the swear jar [during pickups]. I feel very sheepish to swear around my Avatar family now because Jack and I were the co-founders of the swear jar on set. We actually donated it to a good cause, a pet shelter. But it wasn’t something consistent.
Well, hey, it was for a good cause! Now, I’m wondering how much money they were able to rack up. If parents have swear jars in their household to teach kids not to curse, I find it hilarious that the kids themselves are enacting this on the adults. Ultimately, it's a good lesson that salty language can literally cost you when you're dishing it out around kids.
You may have heard the expression “put a quarter in the swear jar.” When Trinity Bliss and Jack Champion were running the show, the young actress got real about how cursing cost Sam Worthington and James Cameron a lot more than that. While sharing Cameron and Worthington's responses, Bliss also revealed exactly how much some of those words cost to say, and wow:
If we’re in the middle of a scene or working on set, we weren’t like, ‘Pay up!’ F-bombs were $5; ‘shit’ was $1; ‘ass’ was a penny. I’m not exactly sure how Jack and I decided those ratios, but Sam got to a point where he joked, ‘Just start me at negative $40 every day. Then I’ll get at least eight F-bombs.’ A little while after filming, I auditioned for a role that had to curse a lot, and Jim joked, ‘We foul-mouthed people really prepared you for it.’
Those are pretty expensive rations, if I do say so myself. That would definitely teach me to clean up my language. But at least Worthington was honest about how much dough he'd be spending on future curse words. And I'd like to think Cameron would relish the how his cursing helped young Trinity Bliss nail her next audition, given she learned such foul language from him.
While the Avatar franchise's younger actors must have had a lot of fun with their swear jar, you’ve got to give them credit for the many challenges they faced on set. As the simultaneous filming of Way of Water and Fire and Ash helped further along the franchise releases, Bliss told THR that three years of filming meant the child actors’ heights were outgrowing their characters. They also had to deal with intense action sequences like being “pushed back” by big fans.
Considering the youths spent so many years on set, their co-star, Sigourney Weaver, joked about eventually “looking up” to the them as opposed to “down," particularly when it came to Jack Champion. With the grueling filming challenges these kids had to deal with, I look up to them, too, for pushing through and succeeding.
All that aside, I love that there was some humor on the the Fire and Ash set and that the kids managed to keep the adults in line in some form with the swear jar. Of course, should the stars get to reunite to make the final two movies, I wouldn't be surprised if Trinity Bliss and Jack Champion find themselves cursing a bit more now that they're older and have to pay up a bit.
Don’t miss out on Avatar: Fire and Ash, which is now playing in theaters nationwide. The first two films are also streamable with a Disney+ subscription.
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