14-02-2025
Avan Jogia dissects the dark side of Nickelodeon and teen stardom in 'Autopsy'
When Avan Jogia turned 17, his life changed in two ways. He moved to Los Angeles after landing his first acting job as teenage heartthrob "Beck Oliver" on Nickelodeon's "Victorious," and his mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Abruptly thrown into Hollywood, Jogia faced an unsettling juxtaposition — he was at the start of a promising career, simultaneously navigating newfound independence amid his mother's cancer diagnosis. But before he could establish his identity, an idealized version of himself was being fawned over in Tiger Beat and J-14 magazine spreads.
'I was having a more serious experience than I probably should have been,' he says. 'There's an unreality that orbits Nickelodeon. Everyone's like, 'Wow, these kids got picked out of obscurity and they're going to be stars, and all of their backstories are normal and everyone is healthy.' It doesn't allow for reality, for humanity to occur.'
Jogia turned 33 on Sunday. On Tuesday, he released his second book 'Autopsy (of an ex-teen heartthrob),' a collection of poetry and prose chronicling his coming of age under the spotlight.
Ahead of his sold-out launch party at The Strand in New York, Jogia and I spoke over Zoom. His voice — pensive and composed — has hardly changed since his Nickelodeon days, which he says he also realized while rewatching old interviews from "Victorious." Behind him, an abundance of black, silver, and gold birthday balloons still decorated the walls. He turned the camera to show me a display of decadent mochi donuts, and it seemed like one celebration had bled into the next.
Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
Unlike the festive décor, "Autopsy" is pretty serious. It doesn't shy away from themes of death, exploring suicidal ideation and mortality bluntly alongside the perils of fame.
Teen fame creates a 'weird fantasy relationship'
Jogia says the illusion of unconflicted success is what creates a 'weird fantasy relationship' between the 'teen idol' and the audience member, or the fan, and ultimately disconnected his experience of fame from reality. Jogia always felt like an outsider — even with a front-row seat at parties in Hollywood Hills. "Hollywood is a fraternity, a boys' club I've never felt comfortable or included in," he writes in "Autopsy."
'I'm a poor kid from Vancouver who grew up in government housing, who, as soon as the show started, my mom got cancer,' he says. 'When you remove that context, I think it's a disservice to both myself and to the audience member experiencing me.'
'I imagine Jennette (McCurdy) must have felt the same way about her life," he adds.
'I'm Glad My Mom Died':How Jennette McCurdy escaped her narcissistic mother's 'excruciating' abuse
Jogia got creative with his promotional videos for "Autopsy." In one, he sits in a sterile room as an old interview of him is projected onto a white sheet, draped over a gurney. He lip-syncs to his younger self: "What I love about my job is that I get the chance to hopefully brighten people's day." In the interview, Jogia is indistinguishable from his "Victorious" character Beck, who also had aspirations of being an actor.
'I was Beck at that time," he says. "Those are little Avan's dreams that I'm saying. It was part of the nauseating amount of promo they made us do at that time.'
In 2023 Jogia made his directorial debut with a Canadian film "Door Mouse," and finally "found his role" in the industry. However, "place is a different thing," he says. "I think that what's changed for me is the delusion, or the (idea) that the work that I want is out there for me. I don't feel that anymore. I feel like if I want to be a part of it, I'm going to have to make that personally."
Avan Jogia on filming 'Victorious': 'We weren't seen as the kids we were'
The second to last piece in the book, 'I am on set getting yelled at,' takes place in 2010 during the filming of 'Ice Cream for Ke$ha,' a Season 2 episode of 'Victorious."
'I am still a teenager, and I am shaking with rage. The kind of quiet anger that makes you change… I am tired, I am hungover, and I am bored,' Jogia writes, detailing his frustration as he continuously mispronounces Kesha's name.
'There's a famous 'Victorious' blooper of me messing that line up. That was a horribly embarrassing day for me,' he tells me with a slight laugh, like he is still masquerading the discomfort the reel brings.
And while in past interviews Jogia has said he doesn't look back on 'Victorious' fondly, he wanted to be very clear in our interview that it was 'so much fun on set.' His co-stars — Ariana Grande, Elizabeth Gillies, Leon Thomas, Daniella Monet, Victoria Justice, Matt Bennett and more — are his 'college friends,' and the most important part of his Nickelodeon experience. This week, there's been an outpouring of love between the former co-stars. Grande commented on Jogia's Instagram that she 'couldn't resist' ordering a copy of his book ("i love you," she wrote), and Jogia previously shouted out Thomas' latest album 'MUTT,' which entered the Billboard Top 100 on Feb. 8.
The years spent filming 'Victorious' were 'some of the best years' of Jogia's life, spent with his best friends, but it was also 'grueling' and ultimately a job that required 'long, exhausting hours.' Often, he 'felt alone in L.A.'
'We weren't seen as the kids we were,' he says. 'When I look back at those moments that were embarrassing for me and joyful for others, I'm more interested in how that kind of dichotomy can exist. That my reality and someone else's reality can be so disparate.'
'Autopsy' examines mortality, remembrance and celebrity death
Writing 'Autopsy,' Jogia didn't realize how often thoughts of death landed on the page — the word appears 15 times throughout the book's 225 pages. In the poem 'it's important to die in a cool way,' he writes: 'They say fame is immortality / But it's not really … In order to matter after your death / Firstly, your death must be untimely.'
'A book about self-dissection and looking at an old version of yourself sort of requires you to talk about and look at death for two reasons,' Jogia explains. 'One being, you have to kill off the older version of yourself… and two, your legacy is so closely tied to your mortality.'
But Jogia doesn't believe in immortality, and he's not scared of being forgotten. That's inevitable, he says. But when I ask him if the thought of being remembered as a former Nickelodeon star scares him, he says yes.
'We encapsulate people in general for a single portion of their life,' he says. 'When something really human happens (to a celebrity), like their death, you boil down their entire life to an aspect of their life, and in doing that, you remove their dignity.'
Poetry and what it means to Jogia
At the end of our call, we talk about how a sector of poetry has taken a dark turn towards appeasing the masses — Instagrammable squares that refuse to ignite discomfort.
'It's losing a tiny bit of teeth,' he says. I tell Jogia to read 'Self-Portrait Against Red Wallpaper' by Richard Siken, who he hasn't heard of. There's a line I cite from 'Birds Hover the Trampled Field' that resonates: 'The enormity of my desire disgusts me.'
'Autopsy' wasn't written as an act of healing, or in hopes of virality, but rather as an act of self-discovery and self-dissection, Jogia explains. He attempted to be entirely honest with his lived experience — facing the enormity of his desires and fears as a naïve actor at the start of a burgeoning career, and as a young man who was trying to find his way in the world, just like anyone else.
If his writing makes you uncomfortable or forces you to look inward, that means it's working.
