Why Josh Gad was rejected by James Cameron’s sci-fi franchise

In James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar. Joel David Moore stars as Dr. Norm Spellman, an anthropologist who travels to a distant moon of Pandora to study its native inhabitants, the Na’vi, as well as the planet’s diverse flora and fauna. Dr. Spellman is gregarious and has a light sense of humor, which makes him a good friend to his fellows, but a bad match for the harsher native Na’vi. His consciousness, like some of the human characters in Avatar, was transferred into the body of a Na’vi/human clone so he could breathe air and move around the terrain more easily. Moore does well in the role and despite his limited screen time imbues Dr. Spellman with a great deal of benevolent humanity.

It looks like Cameron auditioned at least one other big-name comedian for the role, as Josh Gad was apparently a finalist for the role of Dr. Spellman. In 2009, Gad had yet to break through to a mainstream audience. At the time, he was best known for his appearances on “The Daily Show,” a recurring role on the Broadway show “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” and the short-lived 2007 Fox sitcom “Back to You.” That all changed when Gad took the world by storm in 2011 with his performance in the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, followed by his role in the popular sidekick of Olaf the Snowman in Disney’s Frozen two years later.

However, while he was on the rise, Ged auditioned with Dr. Spellman and even got so far in the audition process that Cameron made him a CGI Na’vi avatar. unfortunately as Gad told Entertainment Weeklyhe was denied the role when his Na’vi returned from the lab. It looks like his face and body didn’t match Cameron’s alien patterns.

Making the Avatar movies, as most readers know, is a multi-year process. Cameron is believed to have started jotting down ideas for Avatar back in 1994 while the director was working on the action/comedy True Lies. It was inspired (obviously) by the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (in particular, the stories of the author “John Carter”.) and Kh. Ryder Haggard, and wanted to create his own anti-colonial sci-fi adventure story. Production began in earnest in 2005, with casting taking place in 2006 and 2007.

It appears that part of the elaborate screen testing involved scanning the actors into Cameron’s computer and recasting them as Na’vi. Since Avatar was primarily an animated film, it was essential that Cameron was able to transform his human actors into lanky, nine-foot-tall alien creatures with blue skin and big eyes, cat-like noses and tails. Ged seems to have been funny enough to be considered for the role of Dr. Norm Spielman, but he didn’t fit the Na’vi body. Gad described his audition as follows:

“I put myself on tape and shortly after that I got a call saying that Cameron wanted to fly me to Los Angeles for one last callback at his Lightstorm production office. (…) (It was) a role I apparently didn’t get because, while James Cameron was said to be excited about my audition, when I was turned into a digital Avatar, I supposedly looked like a tall An overweight smurf.’

Lightstorm, of course, is Cameron’s production company.

It’s a sad truth in most Hollywood movies that actors are usually cast because of how they look, not just talent. Ged could have played his human character well, but Cameron, wanting his aliens to look very specific, chose the actors based on their facial structure.

It doesn’t matter. Ged became a superstar without Avatar while being a part of some of the highest-grossing films of all time. He won.