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Who Is Gordon Cormier? Everything About Avatar: The Last Airbender As Star Heads Home To Promote Series
Filipino-Canadian actor Gordon Cormier returns to his roots in the Philippines to promote Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender remake, alongside co-star Gordon Liu, who plays Prince Zuko.
Filipino-Canadian actor Gordon Cormier, who portrays Aang for Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender remake, couldn't be happier to return to his roots after so long. He is currently in the Philippines to promote the show with his co-star Gordon Liu who portrays Prince Zuko.
Avatar: The Last Airbender, Netflix’s live adaptation of the loved Nickelodeon animated television series, follows Aang (Cormier), the last Air Nomad and the next Avatar, as he masters the four elements of Water, Earth, Fire, and Air, and wield them to protect the world threatened by the ruthless Fire Nation and its equally terrifying leader, Fire Lord Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim).
Who is Gordon Cormier?
Gordon Cormier is a Filipino-Canadian teen actor. He played Joe in The Stand (2020) and portrayed Aang in the Netflix live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series. Cormier is of Filipino descent and European descent. He grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia and became interested in acting.
Cormier's debut role was in Get Shorty (2017), where he played Guatemalan Urchin. He also appeared in Lost in Space (2018). His role in The Stand (2020) as Joe, a young boy who becomes the ward of Nadine Cross, brought him to mainstream attention. In August 2021, he was cast as the titular character Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender, a Netflix live-action remake of the animated series of the same name.
Cormier was only 12 when he filmed Avatar: The Last Airbender, the same age as the show’s protagonist. In 2024, he is 14. He was born on October 8, 2009, in Vancouver, Canada, to Canadian dad Gordon and Filipino mom Genalyn Cormier.
Before bringing Aang to life, Cormier was stealing scenes as little Joe in the Stephen King adaptation The Stand, a role that effectively kick-started his acting career after smaller stints elsewhere on television since the age of 9. The 14-year-old is an admitted fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender, a skate enthusiast, and trained in Taekwondo for three years.
Cormier has been very candid about his portrayal of the popular character. While at the premiere of the upcoming series on Thursday, February 15, the actor shared with Deadline what he wanted to bring to his character.
“When I did this character, I mainly wanted to focus on keeping Aang’s joy, happiness, and twelve-year-old spirit in general,” he shared. “I feel like now that this is in live-action, I feel we can dive deeper into Aang’s emotional side because there was a genocide. All of Aang’s family and friends died, so we can visit more of the darker parts.”
While speaking with Entertainment Weekly in January, Cormier revealed that the live-action version will show fans the Fire Nation’s attack on the Air Nomads from the Hundred Year War. “I think the air-bender genocide is really cool … Well, no! No! Not like that,” Gordon joked.
He also teased some impressive air-bending visuals saying, “I mean, yeah, my whole family’s dead, of course. It’s not a good thing, but watching it is going to be sick!”
In a press conference on Wednesday in BGC, Gordon Cormier said that he's been having a fantastic time in the Philippines so far. "I'm back in my homeland," he told members of the press. "It's nice to be back home."
He said the recent pandemic prevented him from visiting the Philippines as much as he would've liked. "I haven't been here in a while because of COVID-19, so it's really nice. I get to see my family. It's incredible," he added. "You guys are awesome. Shoutout to the Philippines!" Gordon also shared his experience visiting the Philippines so far. "It is very warm compared to Canada when I'm used to negative 20. It's really nice... It's crazy people here speak better English than I do. So it is more than impressive," he stated.
In a different interview, Cormier also said that his offscreen friendship with his co-stars became instrumental in portraying the bond of his character with the other characters in the show really well. "You can see our relationships grow throughout this series, because Aang doesn't know these characters yet, but you can tell the second we meet, we do actually know that we're family, and that's kind of happened in real life too, so you can see it develop," he shared.
Cormier also recalled his audition process for the Netflix series saying, "For me it was a very long audition process. It consisted of self-taped, then two call backs, then three chemistry reads." He further said that he and the cast were anxious, but excited, to reimagine the beloved cartoon, Avatar: The Last Airbender, as a live-action series, and they hope fans of the original think what they have created is a worthy successor. "I know that we put pressure on ourselves because we're such big fans," Gordon, 14, said in a recent virtual press conference. "We're feeling exactly what the fans are feeling. And yeah, it's pretty cool."
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