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Why Avatar’s most emotional relationship worked: Mako was already an Uncle Iroh to the entire Asian American theater community
Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Dante Basco talks about the influence Uncle Iroh actor Makoto Iwamatsu had on his life
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One of the most heartwarming things about Avatar: The Last Airbender was the relationship between Zuko and his Uncle Iroh. It turns out that one of the reasons that the relationship felt authentic was because it mirrored the real-life relationship between the actors.
Dante Basco, who voices Zuko on Avatar, says that Makoto Iwamatsu (credited as Mako in his acting appearances) mentored him like a real-life uncle. Mako tragically passed away in 2006, but Basco says his influence could still be felt today.
“Mako, rest in peace. Amazing guy,” Dante Basco says during an Avatar: The Last Airbender panel at New York Comic Con. “I’ve known him since I was 12-years-old, and it’s the first time I’ve worked with him, and throughout my career, he had played my uncle or my father several times, the last being Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was kind of crazy, as we were doing it, we would talk about this character because he really was like an Uncle Iroh to me in my life.”
Not only was Mako an honorary uncle to Basco, but to many other actors in the theater community as well
“Someone, since I was 12, that I got to work with, and he would check in with me about my life and my career, and tell me all the stories of his life, and he created this theater in LA called South East West Players. He’s one of the founders of it. It’s one of the oldest running theaters for people of color in America, and I also grew up in that theater doing plays and writing plays, so he’s always been Uncle Iroh to me, and to the whole Asian-America film and theater scene. When he passed away, he continued to kind of like teach me lessons. I realized that I too was a part of the lineage of Asian American actors.”
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