When Avan Jogia turned 17, his life changed in two ways. He landed his first acting job as “Beck Oliver” in Nickelodeon’s “Victory,” before moving to Los Angeles, where his mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Jogia was suddenly thrown into Hollywood and faced an uneasy juxtaposition. He was at the beginning of a promising career, and at the same time navigating a new independence in his mother’s cancer diagnosis. But before he established his identity, the ideal version of himself faded with a spread of Tiger Beat and J-14 Magazine.
“I was having a more serious experience than I probably should have,” he says. “There’s an unreality to orbit Nickelodeon. Everyone says, “Wow, these kids will be chosen from ambiguity, they will become stars, and their backstory is all normal, and who I’m healthy. “Humanity will not allow reality to happen. ”
Jogia turned 33 on Sunday. On Tuesday, he released his second book, “The Autopsy of Exeen Heartthrob.”
Jogia and I talked about Zoom ahead of his sold-out launch party in Strand, New York. His voice has hardly changed since his Nickelodeon days. He also says he noticed while rewatching old interviews from “Victory.” Behind him was a wealth of walls decorated with black, silver and gold birthday balloons. He turned the camera and showed us an exhibition of decadent mochi donuts.
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Unlike festive decorations, “necropsy” is quite serious. It does not move away from the theme of death. Alongside the dangers of fame, it dull explores suicidal thoughts and mortality rates.
Teen Fame Creates “Strange Fantasy Relationships”
Jogia says that the unconventional fantasy of success created a “strange fantasy relationship” between “teen idols” and audience members or fans, eventually separating his experience of fame from reality Masu. Jogia always felt like an outsider. “Hollywood is a fraternity and a boys club that I have never felt comfortable with or not included,” he wrote in “An autopsy.”
“I’m a poor kid from Vancouver and grew up in government housing. They have my mother cancer as soon as the show begins,” he says. “When you remove that context, I think it’s at a disadvantage for both myself and the audience experiencing me.”
“I think Jennett (McCurdy) must have felt the same way about her life,” he adds.
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Jogia became creative with the promotional video for “Anatomy.” For one, he sits in a sterile room as his old interview is projected onto a white sheet draped over a gurney. He lip syncs to his younger self: “What I like about my job is that I hopefully get the opportunity to brighten up people’s days.” In an interview, Jogia said he “wind.” “I can’t tell the difference from the character Beck.
“I was Beck at the time,” he says. “These are little avant dreams I’m talking about. It was part of the nauseating amount of promotion they had us at the time.”
In 2023, Jogia made his directorial debut with the Canadian film Door Mouse, and eventually “find his role.” But “the location is a different place,” he says. “I think what has changed for me is the (ideas) delusions, or (ideas) that I want for me. I don’t feel that anymore. I’m going to make it personal You’ll have to make it in a way.”
Avan Jogia on filming “Victory”: “We weren’t considered children.”
The second to final work in the book, “I Am Am Set Getting Elling At,” takes place in 2010 during the filming of “Victorious” season 2 episode, “Ke $HA’s Ice Cream.”
“I’m still a teenager and I’m shaking with rage. The quiet anger that makes you change… I’m tired, I’m hangover, and I’m bored,” Jogia said, adding that he was Kesha’s He details his frustration, constantly misidentifying his name.
“There’s my famous ‘winning’ blooper lined up. It was a horrifying and embarrassing day for me,” he tells me with a slight laugh, as if still pose for the discomfort that reels bring.
And while Jogia said in his previous interviews he didn’t look back on “winning” in nostalgia, he wanted to make it very clear in our interview that it was “so much fun on set.” His co-stars – Ariana Grande, Elizabeth Gillies, Leon Thomas, Daniela Monet, Victoria Justice, Matt Bennett and others are his “college friends” and the most important parts of his Nickelodeon experience. is. This week there was an pour of love among his previous co-stars. Grande commented on Jogia’s Instagram that she “can’t resist” by ordering a copy of his book (“I Love You”), and Jogia previously wrote “I Love You” on Thomas’ latest album, ” Mutt.” I cried. February 8th.
The year spent filming “Victory” was “part of the best year” of Jogia’s life and spent it with her best friend, but it was “stricken” and ultimately “long and tiring.” It was also a necessary job. Often he “feels lonely in LA.”
“We weren’t seen as kids,” he says. “When I look back at moments that were embarrassing to me and joyful to others, I’m more interested in how that kind of dichotomy exists. My reality is very different from someone else’s reality. That there is a possibility.”
“An autopsy” examines mortality rates, memories, and celebrity deaths
Writing “An autopsy,” Jogia didn’t understand how often the idea of death landed on the page. The word is displayed 15 times throughout the 225 pages of the book. “It’s important to die in a cool way,” he writes.
“A book about self-disability and seeing older versions of yourself requires you to talk and see death for two reasons,” explains Jogia. “One need to kill an older version of yourself…and two, your legacy is very closely tied to your mortality.”
However, Jogia does not believe in immortality, and he is not afraid of being forgotten. That’s inevitable, he says. But when I ask him if the idea that he is remembered as a former Nickelodeon star scares him, he says yes.
“We generally encapsulate people as part of our lives,” he says. “When humans really happen (to celebrities), like their deaths, you boil down their entire lives into the aspects of their lives, and by doing that, you remove their dignity.”
Poetry and what it means for Jogia
At the end of our call, we talk about how the poetry sector has made a dark turn towards softening the masses.
“I’ve lost a little tooth,” he says. Tell Jogia to read Richard Sheken’s “Self-Portrait for Red Wallpaper.” There is a line cited from “A bird hovering through a trampled field.”
“An autopsy” is not written as an act of healing or as a viral hope, but as an act of self-discovery and self-disability, Jogia explains. He tried to be completely honest with the experiences he lived. At the beginning of a burgeoning career, and as a young man who, like anyone, was trying to find his way in the world, faces the enormous immenseness of his desires and fear. Other than that.
If his writing forces you to make you uncomfortable or look inward, that means it’s working.