Netflix’s Casting Search For Toph On 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' Has Officially Begun
Netflix’s Casting Search For Toph On 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' Has Officially Begun
The casting call has gone out! All hail the melon lord!
A familiar face is about to step into the ring. Netflix’s live action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender secured its story’s completion with its renewal for seasons 2 and 3. With it confirmed, every fan, whether of the adaptation or the broader franchise knew this meant that Toph Beifong was finally going to be adapted. Now, Netflix has unleashed the open casting call for the character.
Toph Beifong is the final member of Team Avatar and Aang’s blind Earthbending teacher. She is the most major character to be introduced after season 1 that was not pushed earlier, since Azula’s role was expanded thus allowing sooner debuts of her best friends Mai and Ty Lee. Firelord Ozai exists out of shadow far sooner in the adaptation too. Even the owl-like spirit Wan Shi Tong was introduced in season 2 but brought out sooner in the live action series. Second season music like “Secret Tunnel” and “Leaves from the Vine” was also brought into the first season of the Netflix series. While she didn’t get such luxury as the other characters, it is clear that it is most natural that her beginnings stay faithful to the source material.
The open casting call reflects this. She matches Aang in age in the original series at 12, but here she is mid-to-late teenaged as a blind female Asian. She is described as “sassy, confident, and unfiltered”, memorably needling her friends about her blindness, sometimes playfully. For most of her life her strength and earthbending skills were suppressed by her aristocratic parents who did not understand her capabilities in self-education (or at least finding the education from badger moles on her own) and adaptation, her parents believing her blindness to be more disabling than it actually ended up being. She’s considered a prodigy. Escaping the confines of her parents she essentially is a runaway when she joins Team Avatar, managing to become the discoverer of the next evolution in earthbending when her parents attempt to get her home. The freedom allows her to build herself up to become the “fierce warrior” she knows herself to be.
The search encourages blind and low vision actors to submit, with dance and/or martial arts experience to be a plus. Shooting is expected to begin this fall. Jenny Jue, the casting director at Downtown Casting initiated the call, tweeting it out on Twitter, and it was boosted by the show’s Supervising Producer, Teresa Huang. In her original appearances, Toph was voiced by Michaela Jill Murphy, then going by Jessie Flower in the first animated series, and then Kate Higgins in The Legend of Korra in middle age and Philece Sampler as an elder hermit. She will be voiced by Dionne Quan in the upcoming 2026 animated film.
Sources: Jenny Jue ,
https://twitter.com/jennyjue/status/1800593076236525942?s=46&t=NAJBkevp7St4br2rNqRR5A
Teresa Huang
https://twitter.com/teresapalooza/status/1800621570848940484?s=46&t=NAJBkevp7St4br2rNqRR5A