Zoe Saldaña is promoting her work on “Avatar: The Way of Water,” one of the biggest releases of the year. She plays the role of Neytiri, one of the film’s leads, having to learn Na’vi, a language that was especially designed for the films.
In a new interview, Saldaña talked about her experience learning fictional languages for films, and which one is tougher.
© GettyImagesIn an interview with TrekMovie, Saldaña and her co-star Sam Worthington talked about her experience in “Star Trek” and “Avatar,” and which language was more difficult to learn and speak.
Johan Albrechtsen, the interviewer, wore a Spock t-shirt, prompting a “Vulcan” salute from Saldaña and the famous line “Live long and prosper.”
“As someone who’s uniquely in the know,” he asks. “Which language is the most difficult to master, Na’vi or Klingon?” Saldaña answered quickly. “I would say Klingon because I had to learn the phrases that I was saying so quickly. But it was quite fun too!”
“When it comes to Na’vi, there were months and months where we were practicing.” she said. Worthing stepped and said that there’s a lot of history associated with Klingon. “With Na’vi, if you can’t roll your ‘R’s, they would change the words accordingly to help you.”
“With Klingon, you really had to get it exactly as it was,” she said.
“Avatar: The Way of Water” premiered this past week, crossing the $550 million mark in ticket sales. In five days, the film has become one of eight films in the year to cross the half-billion mark across the world. The holidays should boost up the film’s sales, although it’s unlikely to overcome the original’s sales, which was the highest grossing film for years until the arrival of “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019.
Following “Avatar”’s rerelease in China in 2021, the film became the highest-grossing film of all time again.
