“I’m sure he’s pulling his hair out somewhere in an edit room, but that’s the process,” laughed Aasif Mandvi, who plays Zhao, a nefarious member of the Fire nation and the rival to Dev Patel’s Prince Zuko.
“There’s a lot of martial arts, there’s a lot of really cool special effects and CGI and action,” explained Mandvi, who stopped by to chat with MTV News during the red carpet premiere of the Jude Law-starring “Hamlet” production on Broadway.
We’d chatted with Mandvi back in June on the “Airbender” set, when the actor and comedian seemed much more willing to talk about the production. This time around, when it came to talk of the set design, all he’d say was, “It’s going to look really cool and I know exactly what it’s going to look like and I’m not telling you!”
So Mandvi was being a little more tight-lipped this time around, but he did share some of his experiences working alongside Patel, of “Slumdog Millionaire” fame.
“He’s a black belt,” said Mandvi, who’s best known for his work on “The Daily Show.” “That kid knows his martial arts, so they needed to help me. I was the old guy on set who was like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here.'”
Did Dev share any butt-kicking tips? “He taught me how to cheat at ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,'” he said in a sly reference to “Slumdog.” “That’s really all he taught me.”
-via MTV Splash Page