Avan Jogia arrives at the premiere of Babygirl on Dec. 11, 2024, at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles.Richard Shotwell/The Associated Press
Avan Jogia wants to show you his guts.
The actor-filmmaker’s second poetry collection, Autopsy (of an ex-teen heartthrob), is a retrospective of the years he starred on the Nickelodeon show Victorious and the particular brand of fame it earned him in the early 2010s.
Compiling the book, Jogia said, sent him through the archives of his daily writing practice, selecting poems from when the show – which also starred the likes of Ariana Grande and Victoria Justice – was on the air, and others written more recently with the benefit of hindsight.
“Looking back at those poems, I was sort of taken aback at how similar our voices are, despite there being a little bit more teenage rage,” he said of his 17-year-old self.
“But I don’t know if it’s that dissimilar from the rage I experience today.”
The Vancouver native played Beck, the popular hunk, on “Victorious,” which ran from 2010 to 2013 and landed him in the pages of J-14, Tiger Beat and a nascent Just Jared Jr. right as he was reaching adulthood.
Beneath the squeaky clean, slime green veneer imposed on him by Nickelodeon, there was the grittier reality of being 20 years old, making his own money and living alone in Los Angeles.
His poems, then, are meant to serve as what he calls an “autopsia” – a self-autopsy in which he peels back the glossy layer to cut open his chest and reveal the grit.
He writes of the drug-fuelled parties he attended and the hungover photoshoots that followed; of friendships and acquaintanceships with those more famous and tortured than he; of the fear he had nothing to live for; and of the feeling of sitting at the kids’ table as an adult.
He also writes of the way people treat him now – as a sort of vestige of their youth, though he continues to work both behind and in front of the camera. He directed the 2023 film “Door Mouse” and is due to star opposite Dove Cameron in the Prime Video series “Obsession.”
Compiling Autopsy (of an ex-teen heartthrob), author Avan Jogia said, sent him through the archives of his daily writing practice, selecting poems from when Victorious was on the air, and others written more recently with the benefit of hindsight.HO/The Canadian Press
But when people look at him and see their childhood, it puts him in a strange position, he said, in part because he’s not a fan of nostalgia.
“I think nostalgia is a sedative,” he said. “I think of it as a drug, and we turn to it because tomorrow is so terrifying. We cannibalize our past because we’re scared of what’s in our future.”
In general, he said, he’s not somebody who looks back very much – with the exception of his books. His first, “Mixed Feelings: Poems and Stories,” published in 2019, was a multimedia exploration of race, identity and family.
Generally, though, he said he’s more likely to look forward and think about what’s next.
“When people look to me to get a feeling of nostalgia … I wish I could be the thing that they want me to be,” he said. “I wish I could satisfy the moment they’re trying to have, but so much has happened to me since then – 15 years of life – so I think it’s hard for me to meet them where they left me.”
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, he said. Now 33, he’s grown a lot since he was first on TV.
“I think my life has gotten better and better and better, and more rich and more full and artistically satisfying,” he said.
“My interior life – my soul life – has gotten so much better. Obviously, the world around us has gotten … worse.”
