James Cameron and Sam Worthington have a very special Hollywood relationship. After all, they are respectively the director and star of one of the industry’s biggest franchises, and given the level of visual effects involved in the making of the Avatar films, it’s a bond that requires a lot of trust. The two men have worked very closely for decades now (including the years it took to develop the series’ seminal blockbuster)… and I love that when they reflect on their collaboration, one key moment that sticks out in mind is a time on set when Worthington puked into his head rig camera.
In the run-up to the release of Avatar: Fire And Ash, Cameron and Worthington paired up for a post-screening conversation with Deadline, and it was during a discussion of “peak actor-director experience ”that the vomit-centric memory emerged. The actor struggled initially to pick out a single incident to particularly highlight (estimating that they’ve spent a cumulative total of seven or eight years working together in the 20 years they’ve known each other), but the director teed him up:
I feel it was when you puked on the head rig camera.
Seemingly pivoting into story-mode, Sam Worthington explained that when an actor works with James Cameron, the “truth is in the details.” What that evidently means is that if there is a scene where a character tastes something gross, the best way to go about capturing that moment is to have the actor taste something gross.
Without offering specific details regarding the “when” or saying which Avatar movie it was for, Worthington and Cameron explained what happened:
- Sam Worthington: I think the scene involved me having to drink something that was described as disgusting. So I said to Jim, ‘Well, you got to just give me something disgusting.’ I think he mixed a concoction of fish oil?
- James Cameron: Yeah, no, we went and got some Vietnamese fish sauce. Like, ‘All right, this is going to set him back.’
The puzzle of how to best shoot a scene where Jake Sully drinks something nasty was solved… but it turns out that the solution worked a bit too well. Sam Worthington most certainly was grossed out when he took a swig of Vietnamese fish sauce, but what James Cameron didn’t account for was the possibility that what went in would almost instantly come back out. The actor added,
So when I drunk it, it did the exact thing you wanted. It was disgusting. But it was so disgusting it came flying out. Of course, we’ve got head cams on, so all the liquid hit the head camera. The problem was then, the head camera kind of set on fire. And me being me, I ran around the room, forgetting that it was connected to my head. When all I had to do was take the helmet off.
James Cameron and Sam Worthington don’t look back on this moment in the making of the Avatar franchise as being a “classy” moment, but as far as representing the work ethic on set and figuring out ways to get things done as best as possible, it’s clearly a highlight for the duo.
Avatar: Fire And Ash is now playing in theaters everywhere (having dominated at the box office this weekend), and you’ll find plenty to read about it in the weeks to come here on CinemaBlend.
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