Avatar's Zoe Saldaña Clarifies Comments About Being "Stuck" in Major Franchises

After recently expressing that she can at times feel "stuck" being in major franchises, actor Zoe Saldaña more recently clarified her remarks to share her appreciation of the opportunities she's been given and gratitude for the connections she's made from those projects. Having starred in Avatar and Star Trek films, as well as multiple entries into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not only has the actor been part of major franchises, but they've all seen her play a character who spends a lot of time in space, marking an unlikely connection between all of these roles. Saldaña can next be seen in Avatar: The Way of Water, which hits theaters on December 16th.

"I would love to set the record straight," Saldaña shared with Deadline in regard to her previous remarks. "I feel grateful and like the luckiest girl in this town knowing that I was invited to join films with special directors in a special cast. And they resonated with people so much so that we get a chance to come back again and come back another time. If anything, I've reaped all the benefits of that, I've gained friends. I still have mentors that I call and I lean into."

She continued, "But I think that once I started my family, it just became really hard for me to sustain both worlds and also then cater to this curiosity of playing other different characters or playing earthlings, but I'm happy in space. I've always been happy in space. I relate to people that love space as well."

The actor's comments about feeling stuck came about last month while she spoke with WWD.

"I feel that for the last 10 years of my life, I've been just stuck. I felt stuck doing these franchises," Saldaña shared with the outlet. "I'm very grateful for the opportunities that they provided, from collaborating with amazing directors and getting to meet cast members that I consider friends and getting to play a role that fans, especially children, love. But it also meant that I felt artistically stuck in my craft of not being able to expand or grow or challenge myself by playing different sorts of genres and different roles. So this is something that I wanted to do for a very long time. And wrestling, too, with this pressure that society puts on women that your youth is gone as soon as you have children and you go into your 40s."

Saldaña did point out that, while it could seem like a coincidence that she starred in intergalactic adventures, there could be more to those opportunities than audiences realize.

"I relate to men like James Gunn and James Cameron and JJ Abrams, and Steven Spielberg. Because maybe there is a common thread, maybe there's something that we all have in common of knowing what it's like to be misfits, and growing up feeling like you don't belong and finding that space created that blank canvas, where you can imagine the unimaginable," she added to Deadline. "And the fact that they saw me, a little girl from Queens and I can do those things for them, I can only be so grateful if they call me back again and again and again."  

Avatar: The Way of Water hits theaters on December 16th. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is expected to hit theaters on May 5, 2023.

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