"The King of Omashu" with André Sogliuzzo | Avatar: Braving the Elements
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
'Avatar: The Last Airbender': Zuko and Korra Voice Actors Answer Biggest What-If Questions
The actors who played Zuko and Korra talk about the future of the Avatar franchise on Nickelodeon and discuss some of the biggest what-if questions for the original series.
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| Image: IGN. |
Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra voice actors Dante Basco (Prince Zuko) and Janet Varney (Korra) have teamed up for an epic podcast called Avatar: Braving the Elements. Every Tuesday, the dynamic Avatar duo revisits old episodes, where they discuss notable battles, break down key themes, and even share behind-the-scenes trivia. In this week's episode, Dee Bradley Baker (the voice of Appa) is the featured guest.
IGN chatted with Basco and Varney about some of the biggest "what-ifs" from the franchise, as well as what might be in store for the future of Avatar: The Last Airbender on Nickelodeon.
Read on or watch the video below to check out IGN's full interview with Zuko and Korra:
Could Princess Azula Have Been Redeemed?
The battle between Zuko and his sister, Azula, in the Avatar: The Last Airbender finale was one of the most epic animated fight sequences ever! While Azula's story has continued in the comic books, fans are eager to know if Basco believes there's still hope for her character to be redeemed.
"I have brothers and sisters in real life, so I'm always the one rooting for my siblings," Basco told IGN. "And so of course, I would love to have seen Azula be redeemed as Zuko has been redeemed. Zuko is a great redemption arc, who doesn't want to see that in his family member. So who knows as the stories go on? I know she went down a different kind of place in the comic books, but I think there's always room for hope."
Would Korra Have Let Fire Lord Ozai Live if She Was in Aang's Situation?
We all know Korra can be quick to anger when she's pushed to her emotional limits, so would she have been as merciful to Fire Lord Ozai as Aang was in the Avatar finale?
"I would like to think that by Season 4 she would have -- well, in Season 4, she was so scared and shell-shocked from everything," Varney explained. "But moving past that into the future, I do think she learned. But had it happened in Season 3, I don't know. I do not know. And that's one of the things that's been so fun about doing the podcast together, is that we've had fans and our fellow actors who play characters in the show, we've had a handful of people really point out it actually really makes sense that Korra and Zuko would end up on a podcast together."
The Future of Avatar: The Last Airbender Universe on Nickelodeon
Back in February, the Paramount+ streaming platform and Nickelodeon announced Avatar Studios, a new division dedicated to creating new series and movies based in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which will be led by creators and executive producers Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, with the first project being an animated movie. While nothing official beyond that announcement has been revealed, IGN asked if the former Avatar stars could shine some light on what's to come.
"Fully sworn to secrecy," Varney exclaimed. "I can't even remember the context of why I found out a few things. But it is one of those things where, as much as people want to know, and I totally understand, I understand that fandom that wants to steal the Game of Thrones script from the set and leak it because everyone's so passionate about it. I get it. But at the same time, I love knowing that I respect and have so much faith, and I know [Dante] does too, in what Mike and Bryan do. I don't need to know anything because I'm supremely confident that the stories that they're going to tell, whatever they are from whatever era, whatever it is, I'm going to be on board for."
You can listen to the Avatar: Braving the Elements podcast on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else podcasts are heard every Tuesday.
Watch Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra on Paramount+ and Netflix!
Listen to the brand new podcast, Avatar: Braving the Elements!: http://www.nickalive.net/search/label/Avatar%3A%20Braving%20the%20Elements
How Nickelodeon's ‘Hey Arnold!’ and Its Iconic Score Introduced a Generation to Jazz
A conversation with composer Jim Lang, whose music challenged kids but also hooked them in
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Nickelodeon's beloved animated series, Hey Arnold!. To celebrate the milestone, The Ringer's Lani Renaldo recently talked to Jim Lang, who composed the iconic music for the series, as part of their Nick Week.
Lani Renaldo: I want to start by going back to the ’90s and talking about the golden age of Nickelodeon. You had shows like Blue’s Clues, you had Hey Arnold!, you had Rugrats, and you had people like Coolio doing the theme song for Kenan & Kel. Can you describe the world of Nick at that time and the process of you and the series’ creator, Craig Bartlett, coming together to work on the show?
Jim Lang: Well, first of all, Nick at that time was a product of great, awesome women making animation. The girl power was palpable on the executive level. The women that we worked with and the women that started the network were trying to do something that did not really have anything to do with animation as it was being practiced at the time. Their aesthetic was renegade, and they were really open to making stuff that was just about letting the creators run with some crazy ideas. Ren & Stimpy, perfect example of that. But Craig and I met working for a company that does theme parks and visitor centers, so it was very buttoned-down. In fact, on the gig that I met him, he was locked in a warehouse in Japan with a bunch of Japanese engineers trying to make industrial robots do the “Funky Chicken.”
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| Image: Nickelodeon OOZE News Archive. |
So we bonded on that gig and the rest was history, as they say. But we had done a few things together before Hey Arnold! came along. I knew that Craig was an animator and I had certainly seen the Arnold claymation stuff when we started out. But I didn’t really have much of an idea what the gig was going to turn into or what the show would be. And in fact, I don’t think any of us really did. The whole idea of Hey Arnold! was that he was being called back from daydreaming in class. If you’ve seen the original claymation videos, he’s sitting in church and imagining as they pray, walking through the valley of the shadow of death and all the crazy stuff, visualizing all that stuff. So he was a dreamer, but he hadn’t quite turned into the everyman that he became in the series. And that process of developing that character, watching that character develop and participating in that was really awesome. It was, I think, one of the coolest things about that gig.
I want to talk about you as a composer for a little bit. Talk to me about those recording sessions, the players that you got together, putting together the bands for these tunes. What was that like for you?
Well, technology has a lot to do with it. We all assume that technology is a big part of music because of the way we make music now, but you have to remember, at that point, MIDI was only a few years old. And so the traditional process of making music for TV had been turned upside down because you could sit in a room with a computer and basically build an entire track without having any other warm bodies involved. I played in bands, I toured with Joe Cocker, the Pointer Sisters, Todd Rundgren, and people like that. But for me in bands, there was always a frustration of not being able to get exactly the thing that I wanted, the sound that I had in my head. And now all of a sudden you could use a computer and you could get exactly the sound that you wanted to have in your head.
So a lot of the music-making process on that show for me was throwing these weird elements together and then at the end of the process, having say Nick Kirgo, who played all the guitar on the score, or Bill Liston who played all the woodwinds, having them come in at the end and just put the icing on the cake. I didn’t have a big studio. I was working in my basement. You could stand in the middle of the room and touch the ceiling with your hand. So, having a session was basically watching somebody lug a bunch of sh*t up Baxter Street, which is the third-steepest street in Los Angeles. And then pack them into a corner of the room and then pushing record.
Do you feel like you have a signature sound? Because to me, when I listen back to so much of that music, I hear obviously, the Fender Rhodes sounds, the Moogs. I’m going to take a guess and say the Roland keyboards and the Yamaha keyboards of the ’90s are in there.
I don’t know that I really could. I will say one thing, I love to play bass. I love to play synth bass, and so a lot of times, especially in the Hey Arnold! queues, it would start with a bass groove or a rhythmic figure that incorporated some bottom end in it. I’ve always been a very percussive keyboard player. I don’t have a lot of dexterity, but I love that polyrhythmic thinking where you’re basically playing drums on the keyboard. So I think a lot of the stuff sprang from that, at least the groove-oriented stuff.
I want to jump back to that, the influence of jazz. I recently found out as of yesterday, that you also were a composer on one of my other favorite shows, Lloyd in Space, which is such an underrated show.
Oh, get out of here, that’s great.
I love that show, but it made me start thinking about the era of the ’90s and early 2000s, and the music that was being created at that time. When you look at a company like Disney, they were very pop-oriented. Was there any pushback when you approached them and said, “Hey, here’s the score for this children’s show. It’s jazz, it’s fusion, it’s funk”?
I think we had one conversation about music with the producers, when we were talking about the theme song for the show. Craig always had the idea that there was a swing mentality around the music somewhere. And he always used to sing this little, “Arnold, you crazy nut,” finger popping in the background. “Arnold, you crazy nut.” And so we sat down with the executives and we were talking about the theme for the show. And we sang that thing and we were about three notes into it and they were low moaning at the other end of the table. So it was like, “OK, well, I guess that’s not going to work.” But that was the only time and then, obviously Craig and I talked about what we wanted to do musically heading into making the show.
Both of us independently had been listening to Jason Bentley’s show back in the day, and Jason was playing a lot of acid jazz. And we just thought that’s a really cool mashup of that great pop jazz era of the ‘60s and contemporary beats. We thought, “Hey, that’s a really good touchstone for making the music Hey Arnold!” But to really answer your question, I never ever got a note from the executives about the music in the show. And in fact, on certain occasions I would try to make them say, “Ouch.” I’d think, “OK, this a chase scene or something like that, I’m going to try and pretend I’m the Art Ensemble of Chicago.” And just see if I can get so out that they’ll say, “No, you can’t do that on TV.” And they never said anything.
Wow, that’s amazing.
It’s a real blessing. Making animation and filmmaking in general is very collaborative and that’s one of the really cool things about it. But also being given your head and being allowed to go out there and explore, do whatever you want, it’s a rarity and it’s awesome when it happens.
I think so often, older people that are working on shows or on media for children, tend to think, “Jazz isn’t relevant. Kids don’t like jazz. Jazz is culturally not important anymore.” But it’s funny because if you look at the basis of a lot of children’s TV shows, I think of The Pink Panther, I think of people like Vince Guaraldi, that’s just straight-up jazz. Why do we get that wrong?
I think people tend to assume that children can’t deal with complexity. I think it’s a curse of making entertainment for kids, animated entertainment especially. Craig and I were working on another show one time and we were making a song that was by its nature complicated. We were trying to make a song about the dinosaurs from A to Z, and you can imagine with names like ichthyosaurus and names like that, you’re making a song where you use all those names, 26 of them. It’s going to be a crazy-making attempt. And the song was really complex, and the conversation with the executives was, “Kids will never get this.” And I said, “One of my favorite songs when I was growing up was “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and the whole deal was it was a challenge to be able to learn how to say that song.”
So, no, kids do actually really love things that they’re challenged by. And as you cited, there’s some really great examples of jazz having been used in kids entertainment. Mister Rogers obviously had nothing but straight-up jazz piano behind that whole show. And they didn’t shy away from it for a second, and it was completely organic.
To hear the full conversation, check out this week’s episode of The Ringer Music Show here.
Hey Arnold! is available to stream on Paramount+. Try it FREE at ParamountPlus.com.
Say Hello To Your Mountain Of Entertainment. Paramount+ Is Now Streaming in Australia.
Say Hello To Your Mountain Of Entertainment. Paramount+ Is Now Streaming.
Hello there. Paramount+ is now streaming in Australia!
Say hello to a mountain of exclusive dramas, original blockbusters, explosive thrillers, mind-blowing mysteries, and small-town secrets.
It’s pretty big.
Paramount+ is streaming now. Priced at $8.99 per month for a monthly subscription or $89.99 for an annual subscription, new subscribers will have access to a free seven-day trial.
Paramount+ subscribers will have access to more than 20,000 hours of content throughout the year delighting Australian audiences with unique stories, iconic stars, live sport and a mountain of entertainment including a robust offering of premier local content.
Join the conversation:
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Miranda Cosgrove On the Difficulties of Rebooting 'iCarly' for Older Fans
With many beloved shows from the '80s, '90s and aughts making a comeback, it’s evident that audiences love to feed their nostalgia cravings with reboots of their once-favourite TV series.
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| Nine years after the series wrapped, iCarly is being rebooted on Paramount+. |
While iCarly can easily be added to this list of ‘television revivals’, the sitcom’s reboot lands with something many other shows are yet to achieve - reintroducing our favourite teenage characters as adults, without tarnishing the show's legacy.
The original Emmy-nominated teen comedy proved to be a huge hit with young audiences on its debut in 2007, breaking viewership records for Nickelodeon up until the show ended in 2012.
The Paramount+ reboot of iCarly takes place almost a decade after that series wrapped, but it’s not just the actors and characters that have aged.
Rather than refocusing its target audience back onto children, star and executive producer Miranda Cosgrove wanted to instead make the revival suitable for the people that grew up with the show.
The decision is something that similar reboots of children’s shows haven’t quite figured out how to navigate yet, with the That’s So Raven spinoff Raven’s Home returning as a family comedy similar to the original.
It’s also well-reported that despite Hilary Duff wanting to revive her Disney series, Lizzie McGuire, for an older audience, the project was scrapped over creative differences.
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| The iCarly reboot has been made for a much older demographic than the original. |
In an exclusive chat with Yahoo Lifestyle, Miranda Cosgrove discussed the difficulties and struggles she has encountered while creating the revamped series of iCarly for a mature demographic.
“We still want families to be able to watch the show together, and we also just didn’t want the show to lose the heart of what it originally had,” she explains.
“So we wanted to keep that without it seeming like a kids show, which is a hard thing to do.
“We're constantly talking with the writers, Jerry [Trainor], Nathan [Kress] and I, and hearing their ideas and trying to balance that, really trying to make sure that even though we still want it to be wacky, that it's not wacky in just like a childish way.”
The first season of the reboot features a number of unexpected moments, including the use of explicit terms like ‘b***h’, adult references, including kinks and furries, and suggestions of Miranda’s character Carly having a threesome.
“It's been really fun getting to do things on the show that we would have never been able to do in the original series,” Miranda continues. “Like for instance, Jerry’s character Spencer accidentally hiring a sex worker for Freddie's character. That would never happen on the original show.
“We don't want to try to make it really edgy every episode, but it is really fun when those moments come up and we'll be filming a scene and we'll kind of look at each other and be like, yeah, there's no way we would have ever been able to do this in the last series.”
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| Miranda says they don’t want to make the reboot “really edgy every episode”, but they have included more mature content than the original series. |
Miranda went on to detail how she wanted the new show to echo the events and situations that she is currently experiencing as a 28-year-old, just as the first series tackled when she was a teenager.
“I just thought it was important to really show the characters ten years later what they’re really like now and touch on a lot of different storylines that are similar to things that I'm going through in real life,” she describes.
“When I did the original show I was 13, and a lot of the things like having a first kiss and going on dates and getting in your first fight with your best friend, those are all things that had happened to me in real life around the same time, but I wanted that to happen again even though the show was for adults now.”
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| Miranda says she was worried about ruining childhood memories with the reboot. |
Miranda also admitted that her biggest concern when she was first approached about an iCarly revival was centred around the fans of the original series.
“We don't want to ruin anyone's childhood memories by making a show that didn't live up to the expectations of whatever people were hoping for,” she says.
“But then when we realised it was going to be a different show, even though it's very similar and a lot of the sets are the same and it's the same universe, it's really aged up a lot and more for adults.”
The actor adds that once she realised it was possible to do the reboot how she wanted, the experience became exciting and “less scary”.
“It's not the exact show and it won't ever be exactly the same as that, but the old show will always be there, and this is kind of like an extension where we get to explore new things that we would have never been able to do on the old show.”
iCarly streaming exclusively on Paramount+ Australia from Wednesday, August 11. In the U.S., new episodes drop every Thursday on Paramount+.
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