Elizabeth Yu knows it’s not easy to bring an iconic character to life, especially one as rare and complex as Azula in the live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. But as soon as we jump on our Zoom call, it’s very clear that she’s been having a blast doing it.
“Until the day I die, I’m going to be an Azula sympathizer,” she revealed to Cosmopolitan. “I would go to court for that woman; she means everything to me. I love her.”
The brutal and fiery princess of the Fire Nation was introduced in season 1 (or reintroduced, if you’re a fan of the original animated series of the same name), but season 2 is where the character truly catches fire. Elizabeth gets the chance to play out iconic moments like Azula’s takeover of Ba Sing Se and even brings back the character’s signature nails. But the live-action series takes some darker turns, even surprising the actor on set as she stepped into her heels.
“I’m very prepared for all the questions about Azula’s negative actions in any way,” she said. “I’m up at bat and I’m ready to go.”
Elizabeth, who has shared scenes with legends Daniel Dae Kim and Julianne Moore—and occasionally walked red carpets with her boyfriend, Stranger Things actor Gaten Matarazzo—is ready to step into her own spotlight and show off her skills in the adaptation’s second season. And with a highly anticipated ending for the character still to come, she knows the conversation is just getting started.
Cosmopolitan caught up with Elizabeth to chat about bringing the iconic villain to life, the kind of characters she wants to chase next, and the surprising parts of mixing fame and love.
You really won the lottery with this role—Azula is so incredibly complex. What does it feel like to play her?
I wrote a letter when I first auditioned to Albert Kim, our season 1 showrunner, and the production team, like, “You guys don’t understand, I don’t get to audition for characters like this.” Being a young Asian girl, it is always girl next door or somebody's daughter. There’s always this air of innocence, which I love and I’m excited to play in other projects, but it’s so rare to play a character who’s the smartest person in the room, who is capable of manipulating in the way that she is and is able to clap back at people. I genuinely believe it’s going to be one of the coolest things I’ll get to do in my career.
Even in the original version of the series, Azula is the character that I think about when I say, “I support women’s rights and wrongs.”
Until the day I die, I’m going to be an Azula sympathizer. I would go to court for that woman; she means everything to me. I love her. I know her like the back of my hand at this point. I know all of her intentions.
I feel like that’s your job as an actor—whether you agree on a personal level with what they’re doing, it’s your job to understand why and empathize with them. There were moments in season 3, which we already filmed, where she’s doing the most despicable thing you could think of, and I’m like, Oh my god, I’m having so much fun. I’d sit back and realize there’s no other young ethnic girl onscreen that I can really pull from in this scenario. But how cool that this is the first time that I’m experiencing that as an audience member and as the actor?
You did get to meet Gray DeLisle, the legendary voice actor who originally portrayed Azula in the animated version. What was that encounter like?
I met her for the first time at a comic con when we were in between seasons 1 and 2. She’s like the queen of the con because she’s done so many voices for iconic animated characters. So, like, she was mother. I don’t know how to describe it other than that. She took me in and she knew that we had this kind of connection. I’m curious if there are other actresses who have met her as a live-action person, because it felt so natural. She was everything.
The thing that makes her so fierce is the way that she says things. There’s just a joy in tearing someone to pieces. Especially in season 2, I got to recreate some of those iconic Azula moments and it made me understand why there was so much joy, charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent.
I have to admit that there was a moment in the second to last episode where she leaves a trail of bodies behind that made me go, Wait, is this still a children’s show?
This was the thing. I spent so much time talking about her and how I feel about her while we were filming it. For me, no one is canonically dead coming from Azula. There were certain moments where I’d read a scene and I have a certain idea of what was going on in my head, and then I look around to just seeing bodies lying around. Like the ferry scene—I just read in the script, “lightning,” and then I walk on, I’m like, Oh, they’re just sleeping, no big deal. There are certain things where I’m trying to come up with terms of for when they could be dead, but then they could also wake up, you know?
I’m very prepared for all the questions about Azula’s negative actions in any way. I’m up at bat and I’m ready to go.
There’s a scene between you and Dallas Liu as Zuko where as she’s fighting him, she has this moment of hesitation. Were you surprised by that?
This was such a pivotal moment for her. Is she lying? Is she telling the truth? Is this a confession, or is this useful information to just be telling Zuko?
On that day when we were filming it, there was no “but” in that line. We were doing it so many times and there were a lot of tears, which was like Lizzy feeling bad for Azula and that wasn’t working. I was like, No, she’s resenting him because he’s also abandoned her in the same way that their mother has, and that’s where the “but” came in. That was also a turning point for me as an actor playing her. It really, really sets her up for all of season 3 and what she goes through in that season.
Obviously, we won’t go into spoiler territory for those who don’t know what’s coming up…but what was it like knowing where her story takes her?
Since booking, I knew that that was something I was going to have to do with her in season 3. It was daunting. What I wasn’t prepared for was that a lot of those scenes got pushed to the very end of filming, so it was like a final hurrah of her and it was almost devastating because she’s someone I celebrate so much in my life. To see where she goes, it was hard to do when you root for her.
We’ve got to talk about the nails. She didn’t have them in season 1, so what was it like putting them on for season 2?
While we were filming, I was like, Oh yeah, wait, is she gonna get nails at some point? She had these fierce claw-like nails that just made her seem so much more intimidating, it really adds to her story, too. I asked Rebecca, the head of our makeup department, and she was like, “If you're okay with wearing nails for over a year of filming and we get it approved, yes.” I was so happy! There are so many fun moments in the show, like when she’s handcuffed and she’s tapping her nails on the table. I would have never been able to do that if I didn’t have those the nails on.
It’s also a celebration of her femininity among all these men who underestimate her.
She’s in full glam, waist snatched in that costume, she’s got her heeled boots on, she has her nails, everything about her…you get a character that takes no BS and is a strong woman. In a lot of ways, people interpret that through masculinity, and I think that that was one of my favorite parts of creating her look for seasons 2 and 3: that the thing that makes her feel powerful is the fact that she is feminine and I live for that.
You’re the opposite of Azula in a lot of ways, but one way is that you are very private about your life. How do you balance that privacy and the obligations of your job?
I’m just really shy. I have social anxiety, which I picked a terrible field for that. This is a job where you meet a lot of really great, cool people. I am actually someone where I live by “never meet your heroes.” If someone I look up to is in the same room, I’m out of there. When it comes to being super public, I’m in a relationship with another actor, and I think that because we are both in the public eye, the most beautiful part about the relationship is that when we are together, it’s just for us. And a lot of those things are something I learned from him: the importance of separation of personal life and professional life. So that also has been a huge lesson to me.
It can be scary sometimes to throw yourself out there, but the people who know me really well think I’m, like, the biggest extrovert and goofball ever!
As I was doing my research and learning more about you, I often saw you referred to as your boyfriend’s girlfriend. How does that feel?
He’s my boyfriend, and I love talking about him. That’s never going to change, but it is weird. In no other scenario would you be asked about another person so much. I’m still trying to figure out what it is. There’s also the scenario of white man, ethnic girl that’s, like, a whole other thing that I’m trying to learn more about. At the end of the day, we never really shy away from talking about each other. I’m still trying to figure that all out, but it’s a tricky one.
I never really ask him for work advice, because it’s so important to me to be doing it on my own and to be figuring it out and what it means to me. But it’s also so helpful to be in a close relationship with someone who gets it. There are different levels to it.
What’s it like when your work overlaps with one another?
I will say we went to a couple comic cons where we were both working and meeting fans and stuff like that, and it would be so fun when someone would go to his table, get his signature, and then come over to me and say, “Oh, I just saw him!” I’d be like, “Oh my god, if you see him again, say, ‘Hi!’”
You previously said that you had a lot of fan art at your place, but it was mostly because of your boyfriend. I’m sure now you’ve got your own stash as well!
I don’t know why I said that. I feel like that sounds so braggadocious. I didn’t mean it like that. In our last apartment, we had this desk, and he was in Dear Evan Hansen at the time, which was very exciting. We’re both theater kids, like, to the extreme that it’s almost embarrassing. And so he had an Evan cast with his name on it. It was so cute! So I was just looking, and I was like, “Oh, yes, there’s fan art all over here!”
I keep all of it in this sweet handmade box in my closet. It’s so, so cool that people take time to make something. Some people are insanely talented, where I’m like, “Baby, you can make money off of this; don’t just give this away.” It’s so cool, and it’s another form of love in a tangible way. It’s so interesting and lovely.
Azula clearly means a lot to you, but have you heard a lot from fans on how much she means to them?
I live in New York and New Yorkers are known to, like, not care. But then I go to, like, K-town and I go to Chinatown and my girls are there. My community sees me. I love that, because I’m seeing something in my community has been affected.
What’s something that you’re manifesting right now?
We’re manifesting more characters to explore in terms of work. It’s really hard to follow up Azula. I don't know if I’m going to be able to play another character that was so rich with turmoil and story as her. So what we’re also manifesting is more conflicted, flawed women, because I just love playing those characters so much.
And my final and possibly most important question is: Have you and your Avatar castmates figured out this year’s Halloween costume yet? I don’t know how you top what you did last year.
I feel like this is a story that needs to be shared and we’ve not had the chance to talk about it yet. We literally were all together on Halloween night. A bunch of people were filming and so we got off from work. We were like, “We’re getting together for Halloween. We’re going to be like normal people and celebrate a freaking holiday.”
So we go to Spirit Halloween in Vancouver and then we just found the James Cameron Avatar and we were like, “We know what we have to do, but we don’t know if we have the strength to do it.” That is how it all came together! That was actually one of the most fun nights I’ve had with the group. It was just stupid, innocent fun.
I hope that we’re all together again for Halloween. We’re all from such different parts of the world. It would be magical to get together again and just do something quirky and fun.
Lead image: Dress Ferragamo, ring Ariana Boussard-Reifel.
Styled by Jessica Neises. Hair by Sky Kim at The Only Agency. Makeup by Mollie Gloss at Forward Artists.
