Some might disparagingly call Toph cocky or egotistical for that statement. Michaela Jill Murphy believes that Toph deserves that cockiness, but also that it’s more complicated. She compares Toph to being a professional in her field, “like a businessman.” If the character had a huge ego but couldn’t live up to her own hype, that’d be pompous. “When can you stand on business and actually follow through with being legit? How much of that is ‘ego’ versus being proud of yourself for getting yourself out of peril and inventing an entire new sub-bending style?” asks Murphy.
Toph’s attitude, according to Murphy, comes from knowing how good she is. She knows she can help people and knows what she’s talking about. Yet when women know their abilities and speak them out loud they can get disparaging labels, seen as too cocky or sure of themselves. It happens, “every day, all the time,” Murphy knowingly says. However, “Toph is more than just cocky. She’s a problem solver and wants to be really great at what she does.”
ATLA Cast and Crew Favorite Moments
In addition to these fan-favorite moments, we also asked the people behind Avatar: The Last Airbender to share their favorite moments in making the show. Whether that be underappreciated scenes, behind-the-scenes memories, or times where the whole show clicked into place.
Jack De Sena (Sokka)
“Episode three where we get the Monk Gyatso context [about what happened while Aang was in the iceberg]. If it wasn’t clear in the pilot, this is about genocide. If you didn’t know, that’s absolutely what we’re talking about here. That was an early moment for me where I was like, ‘this show is not shying away from incredibly difficult subjects and it’s going to tackle them with grace and complexity.’”
Jennie Kwan (Suki)
“[At the end of the series] I’m looking around the room and I keep hearing this voice and I’m like, ‘where is that voice coming from? I don’t see him in the room. He’s really good! I don’t know who it is.’ Then we’re in the courtyard at Nickelodeon, I’m chit-chatting with Dante [Basco] and this man. He walks away and Dante says, ‘Jennie, do you know who that was?’ I’m like no. He’s says, ‘That’s Mark Hamill.’ I was like, ‘Ohhhhhh, okay! There ya go! That’s who the Fire Lord was!’ That was just the biggest ditsy moment ever. [Hamill’s] a very sweet guy.”
Andrea Romano (Voice Director)
“The initial kid who was cast to play Aang was such a good young actor, absolutely delightful, but he sounded like a baby. They had to recast and they found a kid out of New York. We did many episodes with him but he wasn’t really an actor yet. He was working on becoming an actor. It just didn’t work out, he wasn’t strong enough. He is the title character. He is the Avatar. It’s got to be the strongest actor in the whole series. Then they found Zach Tyler Eisen, who was such a remarkable child. Aside from being an instinctually good actor, he was taking violin lessons, archery lessons, regular school, and a ton of other classes.
