Josh Gad is looking back on an early near-miss that, in hindsight, feels almost impossible: he says he came close to landing a role in James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar—until a digital test revealed his Na’vi version wasn’t quite what the filmmakers had in mind.
In his new memoir, In Gad We Trust, Gad recalls that after he was rendered into a CGI Na’vi, he “supposedly looked like a tall, overweight Smurf,” a self-deprecating punchline that he says ultimately cost him the part.
According to Gad, Cameron was pleased with his audition and even brought him to Los Angeles for a final callback at the director’s Lightstorm offices. But when the production tested his look in the film’s signature motion-capture-to-CGI pipeline, Gad says the resulting “digital Avatar” didn’t match the sleek, elongated aesthetic associated with the Na’vi—prompting the decision to go in a different direction.
The role Gad describes aligns with the part of Norm Spellman—Jake Sully’s scientist colleague and Na’vi language expert—played in Avatar by Joel David Moore, who later returned in Avatar: The Way of Water and is expected back in future installments.
Gad frames the story as less heartbreak than Hollywood absurdity: a reminder that, in effects-heavy filmmaking, casting decisions can come down to the most technical (and unexpected) variables—sometimes after an actor has already impressed in the room.
