Toph’s live-action debut is the best thing about Avatar season 2

Aang still has to master earthbending to take down the Fire Nation, and season two opens with him searching for someone who can teach him. Enter Toph Beifong: a secret tournament champion who keeps up a posh public façade. Toph is arguably the franchise’s most beloved character, so the show really needed to get her introduction right.

Winning out over 6000 hopefuls, Miya Cech simply is Toph in almost every way. She worked extensively with blindness consultant Joe Strechay, used contact lenses to limit her sight at times, and rehearsed the earthbender’s physicality so her bending looked effortless; Strechay compared it to "doing a no-look pass in basketball." Cech even kept her shoes off between takes, no matter how cold it got shooting in Vancouver.

Cech aimed to channel Michaela Jill Murphy’s original work, saying she "wanted to be as close to the character as possible" and remembers "slaving over vowels" to find the right register.

Canada, Vancouver

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